Satires are of two general types. Those in which the general characteristics of humanity are subjected to ridicule, and those in which the attack is directed at specific individuals and definite events. The first, since humanity has not greatly changed thru the centuries, always retains about the same amount of interest. Nor is it ever much resented because, as Swift says, “satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for any offense by any, since every individual person makes bold to understand it of others, and very wisely removes his particular part of the burden upon the shoulders of the world, which are broad enough, and able to bear it.” This however by no means applies to satire of the second type. There the contemporaneous interest, heightened by the excitement of the knowledge of the persons or the events, is purchased at the expense of posterity enlightened only by a depressing foot-note. Unhappily it is to the second class that Skelton's satires belong. In his lifetime he was palpitatingly alive; as is shown by Hall, his epigrams were on everyone's lips, and even before his death, as in Eastall's Hundred Mery Talys (1526), he was a celebrated character; today his satires are like old riddles the answer to which has been forgotten. The reason for this condition is not only that he dared not, or cared not, to be too plain, but also that, owing to an absence of dates, we cannot be sure exactly to what period his allusions refer. The earliest editions that we have, altho undated, are at least twenty years after his death. This may be because all the copies of the early editions have perished, or because, as he himself intimates in Colin Clout (1239-41), no early editions were allowed to be printed. A second result arising from this condition is that equally we can never be sure of his text. Consequently his satires, at times apparently intelligible, are yet as a whole hopelessly confused.