fties of the eighteenth
century, and is described by him in some detail. His account is so
interesting that it deserves quoting.

'I cannot quit Skelton,' he writes, 'without restoring to the public
notice a play, or MORALITY, written by him, not recited in any catalogue
of his works, or annals of English typography; and, I believe, at present
totally unknown to the antiquarians in this sort of literature. It is,
_The_ NIGRAMANSIR, _a morall_ ENTERLUDE _and a pithie written by Maister_
SKELTON _laureate and plaid before the king and other estatys at
Woodstock on Palme Sunday._ It was printed by Wynkin de Worde in a thin
quarto, in the year 1504.'

Against this Warton makes the following note: 'My lamented friend Mr.
William Collins . . . . shewed me this piece at Chichester, not many
months before his death (Collins died in 1759), and he pointed it out as
a very rare and valuable curiosity. He intended to write the History of
the Restoration of Learning under Leo the Tenth, and with a view to that
design had collected many scarce books. Some few of these fell into my
hands at his death. The rest, among which, I suppose, was this Interlude,
were dispersed.'

Warton then goes on to describe the book in detail, and this
circumstance, together with the fact that he quotes one of the stage
directions ('_enter Balsebub with a Berde_') seems to point to the fact
that he actually had the volume in his hands. It concerned the trial of
Simony and Avarice, with the Devil as Judge. 'The characters are a
Necromancer or Conjurer, the Devil, a Notary Public, Simonie, and
Philargyria or Avarice. . . . There is no sort of propriety in calling
this play the Necromancer: for the only business and use of this
character is to open the subject in a long prologue.'[3] Unfortunately
there is no other mention of this interesting work, and of recent years
its very existence has been doubted.

'It was at Chichester,' wrote Hazlitt, 'that the poet Collins brought
together a certain number of early books, some of the first rarity; his
name is found, too, in the sale catalogues of the last century as a buyer
of such; and the strange and regrettable fact is that two or three items
which Thomas Warton actually saw in his hands, and of which there are no
known duplicates, have not so far been recovered.' Mr. Gordon Duff, in
his 'English Provincial Printers,' mentions seventeen books described by
Herbert at the end of the eighteenth century, of whic