Psalm 140, John Lily, schoolmaster, grammarian, Robert Whittinton, Index Britanniae Scriptorum, Bale, pedagogic, methodology

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censure him will end up tying himself in rhetorical knots. ¹³⁴

In an answer that likewise suggests Skelton’s irreverence, this time through an allusion to the condemnation of serpent-tongued slanderers in Psalm 140, the schoolmaster and grammarian, John Lily, is much more awake to the laureate’s satirical temperament than Barclay. It is Skelton’s satirical viciousness specifically that Lily finds offensive in his attack upon him in return for a slur he claims that Skelton made upon some of his verses: “Quid me Sceltone, fronte sic aperta/ Carpis, vipereo potens veneno?” (“With face so bold, and teeth so sharp/ Of Vipers venome, why dost carp?”, ll.1-2). ¹³⁵ Lily attacks Skelton for the sort of brazenfaced, unrestrained vindictiveness indicative of a provocative satirical temperament, rather than focusing upon points of contention in the Grammarians’ War in which this poem participates. Skelton had taken the side of Lily’s rival grammarian Robert Whittinton in the controversy and in this poem Lily repays him for getting involved. ¹³⁶

In his Index Britanniae Scriptorum Bale cites the first line of a lost response by Skelton that appears to continue the quarrel by answering Lily’s question of why he presents himself as such as venomous, fanged satirist: “Vrgeor impulsus tibi Lille * retundere dentes” (“Spurred on by you Lily with the blunt teeth”). ¹³⁷ The literary quarrel between the grammarians over pedagogic methodology has been transformed into a dispute over satirical methodology here. Lily’s depiction of Skelton as a snarling satyr and

¹³⁴ The debate perhaps extended even further. Bale cites a lost poem of Barclay’s that appears to retaliate against Skelton’s rejoinder (‘Contra Skeltonum’), Ind. Brit. Scrip., p.19 (Cat. B 68).

¹³⁵ Fuller (1662), sig. Kkkiii^r(2).

¹³⁶ On the Grammarians’ War see Carlson, ‘The “Grammarians’ War” 1519-1521, Humanist Careerism in Early Tudor England, and Printing’, MH, n.s. 18 (1992), 157-81. See Cat. H 156, L 199-200, S 260 and W 304.

* The “ere” declension is irregular. The expected orthography would have been “retunsus” from “retundro”, to blunt or dull.
¹³⁷ ‘Carmen inuectiuum in Guilhelmum Lilium poetam laureatum’, Ind. Brit. Scrip., p.253.

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