"Nor can much be said for John Skelton (1460?–1529), not the last poet-laureate hardly to deserve the first part of his title, though his idiosyncratic doggerel breathed vigour, a crude humour, and—especially in his attacks on Wolsey (Speke, Parrot and Why Come Ye Nat Courte?, 1522–3)—a genuine savagery. ... But the man who could think of commending a lady with the pedestrian lines "How shall I report/All the goodly sort/Of her features clear/That hath none earthly peer?" ... was a very long way from true poetry."
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Geoffrey Elton, England Under the Tudors (3rd edn., 1991), p. 443
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Skelton
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John Skelton
John Skelton (c. 1460 – June 21, 1529) was an English poet, variously asserted to have been born in Armathwaite, Cumberland, or Yorkshire. Many of his works included scathing indictments of the church or church figures, and although they were likely circulated in his day, they were not officially published until some time after his death.
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