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Updated: June 29, 2025
The final appraisement of Sir Wilfrid, to be written perhaps fifty years hence by some tolerant and impartial historian, will probably not be an echo of Prof. Skelton's judgment. It will perhaps put Sir Wilfrid higher than Prof. Skelton does and yet not quite so high; an abler man but one not quite so preternaturally good; a man who had affinities with Macchiavelli as well as with Sir Galahad.
For it is neither bitter nor coarse, but is a dainty and tender lament written for a schoolgirl whose sparrow had been killed by a cat. It is written in the same short lines as Colin Cloute and others of Skelton's poems "Breathless rhymes"* they have been called. These short lines remind us somewhat of the old Anglo-Saxon short half-lines, except that they rime.
The name is taken, as you will remember, from John Skelton's poem. Spenser called his poems Aeclogues, from a Greek word meaning Goatherds' Tales, "Though indeed few goatherds have to do herein." He dedicated them to Sir Philip Sidney as "the president of noblesse and of chivalrie."
"The defection of the western Liberals," says Professor Skelton, "forced from Sir Wilfrid a rare outbreak of anger." The use of the word "defection" is enlightening, as showing Professor Skelton's attitude towards the Liberals who in those trying times adhered to their convictions against the party whip. He is a thorough-going partisan, which, in an official biographer, is perhaps the right thing.
"All right!" shouted one of the men from his cover, "we've plently of time to deal with you Yankee swine! Stay there and rot!" "That was Skelton's voice," whispered Miss Erith with an involuntary shudder. "They'll never attempt that hog-back under our pistols now," said McKay coolly. "Come, Yellow-hair; we're going forward." "How?" she asked, bewildered.
This was in 1863, when Browning had published Men and Women, and Dramatic Lyrics. However, he admitted Skelton's article on the other side, and added, with magnificent candour, that "to this generation Browning's poetry is as uninteresting as Shakespeare's Sonnets were to the last century." The most fervent Browningite could have said no more than that. To Mr.
Does this guy, Recklow, get them?" "He can't get six men alone." "Well, can't he sic the Swiss onto 'em?" A terrible doubt arose in Skelton's mind: "Recklow wouldn't come here alone. He's got his men in these woods! That damn woman fixed all this. It's a plant! She's framed us! What do I care about the Germans on the mountain! To hell with them. I'm going!" "Where?" "Into Alsace.
It will be much easier to have a nice little lunch in the woods than to cook a dinner at home, don't you think? Suppose you and Mary run over to Mrs. Fowler's and see if she can let us have a boiled lobster; she generally is ready to put them on about this time of day, and you might stop at Skelton's on your way back and get some of those good little ginger-snaps."
The limitation is equally true in the case of one like Sir Wilfrid Laurier who, though dead, will be a factor of moment in our politics for at least another generation. Professor Skelton's book is interesting and valuable, but not conclusive.
Henry VIII's favourite, the reckless but pithy satirist, Skelton, was alive to the merits of his great predecessor, and Skelton's patron, William Thynne, a royal official, busied himself with editing Chaucer's works.
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