SOURCE: "Skelton," in The Charted Mirror: Literary and Critical Essays, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960, pp. 3-24.

In the following excerpt, Holloway praises Skelton's vernacular poetry as well as his careful attention to common experience.

To discuss Skelton effectively is to do more than elucidate the past on its own terms, and for its own sake. There is no constraint on anyone to do more than this, and to think that there is, is to think like a barbarian. But if a critic finds that his subject empowers him to do more, he ought to say so. Although Skelton was writing more than 450 years ago, there are certain respects in which his poetry offers us enlightenment and guidance in the literary and cultural problems which confront us today. To seize on the essence of his poetry is to be wiser for our own time. Were that not so, I should...