ell
Of this old Cytye _Troynouant_;
But not thereof the halfe dell;
Connyng in the Maker is so adaunt:
But though he had the Eloquence
Of _Tully_, and the Moralytye
Of _Seneck_, and the Influence
Of the swyte sugred _Armony_,
Or that faire Ladye _Caliope_,
Yet had he not connyng perfyght,
This Citye to prayse in eche degre
As that shulde duely aske by ryght.

Sir _John Suckling_, a prime Wit of his Age, in the Contest betwixt the
Poets for the Lawrel, maketh _Apollo_ to adjudge it to an Alderman of
_London_; in these words;

He openly declar'd it was the best sign
Of good store of Wit, to have good store of Coyne,
And without a syllable more or less said,
He put the Lawrel on the Alderman's Head.

But had the Scene of this Competition been laid a hundred and fifty
years ago, and the same remitted to the Umpirage of _Apollo_, in sober
sadness he would have given the Lawrel to this our Alderman.

He died at _London_, Anno 1511, and was buried at St. _Michael's_
Church in _Cornhil_, with this Epitaph;

_Like as the Day his Course doth consume,
And the new Morrow springeth again as fast;
So Man and Woman by Natures custom
This Life do pass; at last in Earth are cast,
In Joy and Sorrow, which here their Time do wast,
Never in one state, but in course transitory,
So full of change is of the World the Glory_.

Dr. _Fuller_ observeth, That none hath worse Poetry than Poets on their
Monuments; certainly there is no Rule without Exceptions; he himself
instancing to the contrary in his _England's Worthies_, by Mr.
_Drayton's_ Epitaph, and several others.

* * * * *

_JOHN SKELTON_.

_John Skelton_, the Poet Laureat in his Age, tho' now accounted only a
Rhymer, is supposed to have been born in _Norfolke_, there being an
ancient Family of that Name therein; and to make it the more probable,
he himself was Beneficed therein at _Dis_ in that County. That he was
Learned, we need go no further than to _Erasmus_ for a Testimony; who,
in his Letter to King _Henry_ the Eighth, stileth him, _Britanicarum
Literarum Lumen & Decus_. Indeed he had Scholarship enough, and Wit too
much: _Ejus Sermo_ (saith _Pitz._) _salsus in mordacem, risus in
opprobrium, jocus in amaritudinem_. Whoso reads him, will find he hath
a miserable, loose, rambling Style, and galloping measure of Verse: yet
were good poets so scarce in his Age, that he had the good for