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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) was early recognized as a prime mover of the revolution in literary taste that occurred in the later eighteenth century. The compilation had stimulated, according to Jeffrey, the “first revulsion” to the older literature. Wordsworth did not think there was “an able writer in verse of the present day” who would not willingly acknowledge his obligations to the Reliques. It had “absolutely redeemed” English poetry. Of Percy's enormous contribution to ballad scholarship proper, one need hardly quote testimony. It is no wonder, then, that literary scholars have gone to such inordinate pains to unravel the complicated editorial history of this (for its time) ambitious work. Since the publication in 1867-68 of Percy's principal source, the precious Folio MS., almost too much has been written about Percy's textual manipulations. Curiosity has been no less lively as to Percy's criteria for admitting ballads and songs to his collection, the guiding purpose behind his arrangement, and the sources of the scholarly data that went into his able headnotes and essays. Excellent hints on these matters abound in Percy's correspondence with the syndicate of scholars that assisted him during the years he was putting together his ballad book—Edward Lye, Thomas Astle, James Grainger, William Shenstone, Dr. Johnson, Richard Farmer, Thomas Warton, Sir David Dalrymple; and though otherwise undistinguished, these letters have been making their way into print for over a hundred years, until they now constitute a shelf of sober volumes. “Shenstone's billets,” the slips on which Percy's most influential mentor rated the contents of earlier poetical miscellanies, were edited twice in two years; no less than five recent studies have been devoted to the cancels and late alterations in the first edition of the Reliques.
1 Rev. of Thomas Campbell's British Poetry in Edinburgh Rev., xxxi (1819), 467.
2 “Essay Supplementary,” Poems (1815), i, 365-366.
3 Several hundred letters to and from Percy are ptd. in J. B. Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, vii (1848), viii (1858). Three vols. of The Percy Letters, gen. eds. D. Nichol Smith and Cleanth Brooks, have been issued by the Louisiana State Univ. Press since 1944; more are to follow. Other publ. collections of Percy's correspondence are cited in later notes.
4 . I. L. Churchill, “Shenstone's Billets,” PMLA, lii (1937), 114-121; “Shenstone's Billets,” App. ii in The Letters of Shenstone, ed. Marjorie Williams (Oxford, 1939), pp. 657-673.
5 L. F. Powell, “Percy's Reliques,” Library, 4th Ser., ix (1928), 113-137; A. N. L. Munby, “Cancels in Percy's Reliques,” TLS, 31 Oct. 1936, p. 892 (see comment by Powell, 7 Nov. 1936, p. 908); A. T. Hazen, Samuel Johnson's Prefaces and Dedications (New Haven, 1937), pp. 158-168; D. A. Randall, “Percy's Reliques and Its Cancel Leaves,” New Colophon, i (1948), 404-407; R. M. Baine, “Percy's Own Copy of the Reliques,” Harvard Library Bull., v (1951), 246-251.
6 Shelfmark 25241.33∗, folder iii, fol. 16. It is ptd. here by permission of the Librarian of Harvard College.
7 Powell, Library, 4th Ser., ix, 118.
8 See S. H. Harlowe, “Letters from Dr. Percy to T. Astle,” N&Q, 4th Ser., iii (1869), 25-27.
9 Percy uses +, ++, +++, the more crosses, the greater merit. This is a simplification of the system used in Shenstone's billets; it is discussed in Shenstone's letter to Percy of 1 Oct. 1760—see Hans Hecht, “Thomas Percy und William Shenstone, Ein Briefwechsel,” Quellen und Forschungen, ciii (1909), 44. I do not know how to weigh Percy's underlining nor the meaning of the superior “o” which occurs several times after titles in Vol. ii, but I copy these marks since they may prove meaningful to someone else.
10 Lovelace's “To Lucasta from Prison” (ii, 57, in the list below) is struck through because Percy confused it with “When love with unconfined” (ii, 59), the interrupted first line of “To Althea from Prison” from Lucasta. “The Prince of England's Courtship” (i, 19), which is “The King of France's Daughter,” Reliques, iii, ii, 16, and “He that loves a rosie cheek” (ii, 44), which is “Unfading Beauty,” i, iii, 13, are not marked. The altered titles— his own work—explain Percy's oversight.
It would seem more logical for Percy to have checked off the items as the Reliques was being printed, but this does not appear to have been what happened. For one thing, the length, angle, and quality of the strokes suggest they were done at one sitting and with the same pen. Moreover, if Percy had checked off the items before they went to the printer, or anytime earlier than the summer of 1764, he would have struck through ballads like “Old Sir Simon the King” and “Cock Lorell,” which were cancelled (see Powell, Library, 4th Ser., ix, 131-132) only a few months before the Reliques was published. The mistakes just cited are additional evidence that Percy did this checking when the material had grown cold; otherwise it is highly unlikely that he would have forgotten the new titles he had concocted for certain ballads.
11 To conserve space I have adopted the following code for works and collections frequently cited: COB—A Collection of Old Ballads (1723-25): Percy's own copy, made up of vols. from the 2nd and 3rd eds., is in the British Museum, pressmark C60.e.15; pages of a dismembered copy are scattered through the Percy Broadsides and the Harvard Percy Papers, esp. folder 21. ESB—English and Scottish Popular Ballads, ed. F. J. Child (Boston, 1882-98): the 5-vol. canon of British traditional balladry. HPP—The Harvard Percy Papers, shelfmark 25247.20.5∗: transcripts of ballads and scholarly notes collected by Percy for the Reliques, including material for a projected 4th vol. and for an independent collection of English and Scottish poems; annotated by F. J. Child and G. L. Kittredge; sorted by Kittredge into 275 folders (the number hyphenated with HPP in my references denotes the folder; since most folders contain just a few items, I specify folios only when the folder is a thick one). PBR—3 vols. of broadsides collected by Percy and now at Harvard, shelfmark 25245.36∗: most of them were given to Percy by the broadside publisher William Dicey; see Hecht, pp. 59-60. PEP—A collection of some 1800 broadsides formed by Samuel Pepys before 1700 and arranged by him in 5 folio vols.: these are preserved in the Pepysian Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where Percy studied them; selections are ptd. by H. E. Rollins in A Pepysian Garland (Cambridge, 1922) and The Pepys Ballads, 8 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1929-32). PFM—Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript, eds. J. W. Hales and F. J. Furnivall, 3 vols. (1867-68) with a suppl. vol. of Loose and Humorous Songs (1867): the MS. is now Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 27879. RXB—Roxburghe Ballads, edd. William Chappell and J. W. Ebsworth, 9 vols. (Hertford, 1869-97): almost all the Pepys ballads in which Percy was interested are also found in the Roxburghe Collection here reptd.
12 The exception is “William and Margaret” (ii, 64) from Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany.
13 See Hecht, pp. 6-8, 13-14, 17, 21, 24, 27.
14 See Letters of Shenstone, ed. Williams, pp. 660-661, 673.
15 V. H. Ogburn, “Percy's Unfinished Collection,” ELH, iii (1936), 183.
16 “Young Andrew” (Child No. 48), “Erle of Westmorland” (No. 177), “Christopher White” (No. 108), and “Sir John Butler” (No. 16S).
17 iii, 8, “Sir Hugh of the Grime” (Child No. 191); iii, 10, “Johnny Armstrong” (No. 169); and iii, 40, “The Suffolk Miracle” (No. 272).
18 See English and Scottish Ballads, ed. H. C. Sargent and G. L. Kittredge (Boston, 1904), p. 677.
19 See letters to Pinkerton, 3 Jan. 1783 (Nichols, Illustrations, viii, 101) and 12 Mar. 1785 (viii, 107-108) and to Jamieson, 4 April 1801 (viii, 341).
20 See Harlowe, N&Q, 4th Ser., iii, 25-26; cf. The Correspondence of Thomas Percy and Richard Farmer, ed. Cleanth Brooks (Baton Rouge, 1946), pp. 54-55.
21 Harlowe, p. 87. Johnson, interestingly enough, used material from the Reliques to illustrate Shakespeare's knowledge of balladry even before Percy's book appeared; see Plays of Shakespeare (1765), viii, App., sigs. Ilv f.—notes to i, 488.
22 Ancient Songs Chiefly on Moorish Subjects, intro. by D. Nichol Smith (Oxford, 1932).
23 See I. L. Churchill, “Shenstone's Share in Percy's Reliques,” PMLA, li (1936), 968, and Letters, ed. Williams, p. 597.
24 i, 24, 25, 30, 35, 37, 39, 45; ii, 40, 44; iii, 37.
25 Baine, Harvard Library Bull., v, 250.
26 Shenstone to Percy, 6 June 1759; Hecht, p. 17.
27 Letters, ed. Williams, p. 673.
28 Letter of Oct. 1761; Hecht, p. 66.
29 The most compelling reason for thinking that the docketing was done before the first draft was drawn up is that the docket series implies an unculled collection, one considerably larger than that represented by Percy's draft lists. The amount of docketed material can be deduced by paralleling the two series. In going from i, 23 to i, 29 in the draft list (7 items), one advances from iii, 27 to iii, 40 in the docket series (14 items). Again, iii, 45 to iii, 49 (5 items) in the draft series covers i, 50 to i, 58 (9 items) in the docket series. Powell (Library, 4th Ser., ix, 127) has shown that Percy's purpose in interchanging Vols. i and iii of the Reliques was to bring “Chevy Chase,” the opening ballad of the original Vol. iii, into “close proximity” to the dedication to the Countess of Northumberland, head of the House of Percy, whose ancestor is the hero of the ballad. But even in 1761, before this politic dedication had occurred to Percy, he may well have been tempted to give “Chevy Chase” and related ballads pride of place in the Reliques. Addison had dignified this “darling song of the common people” by analyzing it in two Spectator papers. There was also a more personal motive, for Percy daringly traced his descent from one Ralph Percy, a scion of the great northern family.
30 Library, 4th Ser., ix, 121, 127.