This is all rather quaint, artificial, and affected, unless one realizes
that he was writing according to the dictates of his age. In the
same way he uses repeticio, as in the Magnyfycence, where eight
successive lines begin with the word counterfet. ¹ And occasionally
he uses actual cryptograms as where he substitutes numbers for
letters or makes a jargon by transposing Latin syllables. In
general it may be said that his knowledge both of the humanistic
writers and the older English poets saved him from the excessive
puerility of the worst of the school. Or perhaps there is so much
more virility in his work than in that of the others, that the
modern reader is more charitable and the puerility passes by un-
noticed.

In the scansion of the line, to follow the former order, Skelton
uses the free procedure noticed before. This is easily seen
in his most regular poem, the Bouge of Courte. Here as he is
writing the iambic pentameter, theoretically each line should have
but ten syllables. This is usually the case.

In autumpne, whan the sonne in Virgine
By radyante hete enryped hath our corne;
Whan Luna, full of mutabylyte,
As emperes the dyademe hath worne
Of our pole artyke, smylynge halfe in scorne
At our foly and our vnstedfastnesse;
The tyme whan Mars to werre hym dyde dres . .

With the exception of the second line, where radyante was prob-
ably a trisyllable, every line has exactly ten syllables. That is
not true of the next

I, callynge to mynde the greate auctorytè,

nor of

His hede maye be harde, but feble is his brayne . . . ²

This might be illustrated ad libitum. Obviously he writes by ear
and provided that the accents fall correctly, he is little troubled
by an extra syllable. The fact that the modern reader also is not
troubled, shows how completely the old theory has been assimi-
lated.

-163-