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The Text of The Percy-Warton Letters
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The revival of interest in the picturesque past made the decade following 1760 a period of notable importance. The Ossianic poems, from 1760 to 1763, Evans's Specimens, 1764, Hurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance, 1762, the second edition of Warton's Observations, 1762, the Castle of Otranto, 1764, and Percy's Reliques, 1765, form a rather imposing array as documents of the romantic revival. Anything, therefore, which casts light on this movement during these years may be not without value, and it is to serve this purpose that the group of Percy-Warton letters is here offered to the reader. Some extracts from them were included in footnotes in Dr. Rinaker's study of Thomas Warton, but the correspondence has never been printed entire. The three Percy letters in the Huntington library, which are here added, have not previously appeared in print.
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References
1 Clarissa Rinaker, Thomas Warton (University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, 1916).
Though this Letter comes from one, who has not the pleasure being personally known to you, the subject of it I hopes1 will serve as an apology for the abruptness of the address.
1 Percy had first written he hopes; striking it out, he wrote above it I and then added the word hopes once more.
2 This theory of Celtic origin Percy soon after abandoned for the Scandinavian theory (see the essay “On the Ancient Metrical Romances” published in the 3rd volume of the Reliques). He was led to the second theory by the influence of Mallet, Introduction à l'Histoire de Dannemarc (1755), the work which Percy later issued in translation under the title Northern Antiquities (1770).
3 “The Marriage of Sir Gawaine,” Reliques, p. 563 ff.
4 Observations on the Fairy Queen, 2nd Ed., i, 128.
5 See also the letter from Percy to Warton, printed as a footnote in the Observations on the Fairy Queen, 2nd ed., i, 139 ff.—a letter which is possibly the one alluded to in Letter 4 below.
6 “The Boy and the Mantle,” Reliques, p. 556 ff. This ballad also was in Percy's folio MS.
7 In the preface to the Reliques Percy acknowledges his debt to two friends at Cambridge: “Mr. Blakeway, late Fellow of Magdalen College ...; and Mr. Farmer, Fellow of Emanuel.”
8 Percy's motive in addressing Warton is obvious. In a letter to Percy, Shenstone, among a list of other people they were asking for aid, makes the following comment: “I am glad you wrote yrself, to Mr Warton, for (tho' I would have done it in ye end) yet, to my shame be it spoken, I never wrote to thank him for the Present he made me of his Critique upon Spenser.”—Hans Hecht, “Thomas Percy und William Shenstone,” in Quellen und Forschungen, ciii (1909), 58.
1 The second edition of the Observations on the Fairy Queen (i, 54) draws a parallel to the incident of Florimel's girdle in an “old ballad or metrical romance, called the Boy and the Mantle,” sent to the author by an “ingenious correspondent.”
1 Joseph Warton was headmaster of Winchester. Most of his brother's vacations were spent there, and tradition has it that Thomas Warton was a high favorite among the students of the school.
2 The ballad, “King Ryence's Challenge,” as it appeared in the Reliques was “composed of the best readings selected from three different copies. The first in Enderbie's Cambria Triumphans, p. 197. The second, in the Letter [Laneham's, on the entertainment at Kenilworth] above-mentioned. And the third inserted in MS. in a copy of Morte Arthur, 1632, in the Bodl. Library.”—Reliques, p. 573. See Letters 6, 20 below.
In Letter 6 Warton corrects his spelling to Enderbie. The spelling Enderbury is, however, that used in the second edition of the Observations, p. 25.
3 Titus Livius de Frulovisius, called by Hearne Forojuliensis, Italian adventurer (fl. 1437), author of Vita Henrici Quinti. Proem edited by Hearne, 1716.
1 Percy's edition of Buckingham was printed, but never entirely completed and never published. After occupying space for years in the printer's offices, it was, together with the edition of Surrey, destroyed by fire in 1808. Only a few copies which had been privately distributed escaped.
2 Originally probably; the MS. now reads probabe, the last two letters having been impatiently corrected by one vigorous loop instead of le.
1 See Letter 4, note 2.
2 Percy concluded that it had been composed for that occasion. See Reliques, p. 573.
3 It is not improbable that a number of the miscellaneous and unfused jottings that are included in Warton's “last section” of the Observations were the contributions from Percy and Lye here invited.
4 The marriage of George III to Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, September 8, 1761. Warton was a contributor to the Oxford collection in honor of the occasion.
1 Warton was evidently in error. See Letters 11, 13 below. He had Rowlands' “mighty poor thing” in mind.
2 The second edition of the Observations on the Fairy Queen was published in August, 1762. See London Chronicle for August 20, 1762.
1 The letter contains many deletions, now indecipherable. Probably Percy recopied these two pages and thus they came to be preserved among his papers.
1 Richard Johnson, 1592. The stories, more or less retold, formed a boys' book immensely popular in the eighteenth century.
2 William Collins, the poet. Though no direct influence of romances is shown in Collins's work, the fact of his interest is another demonstration of the link between romances and romanticism. See also Letters 12, 20, 21, 24.
I have been unable to trace the work to which Warton refers. It is probable that Warton's memory was inexact.
3 One of Percy's projects at this time seems to have been a collection of romances (apparently in both the Spanish sense of ballad and the English sense of tale of chivalry) illustrative of Don Quixote. Evidently the two romances translated in the Reliques (“Gentle River,” p. 236, and “Alcanzor and Zayde,” p. 241) were a tentative sample, to feel out the public sentiment. So also the essay “On the Ancient Metrical Romances,” published in the third volume of the Reliques, was to test the public interest in his projected collection of English metrical romances. Neither collection was produced by Percy. But John Bowie's Spanish edition of Don Quixote (1781), which has the distinction of being the first critical edition of that great book published in any country, was announced by a pamphlet, Letter to Rev. Dr. Percy concerning a New and Classical Edition of Don Quixote (London, 1777), and the edition itself was dedicated to Percy.
4 Percy later (Letter 13) corrects the name of the author to Rowlands.
5 See Letter 28 below.
1 Lacurne de Sainte-Palaye, Mémoires sur l'Ancienne Chevalerie, 2 vols., Paris, 1759, reprinted from Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, xvii (1751), 787–99, and xx (1753), 595–847. See below Letters 13, 14, 16, 20, 21.
2 George IV, born August 12, 1762. Warton refers to another collection of Oxford verse.
3 If the reference is to Bonnell Thornton, the wit and essayist, Warton's well-bred astonishment is distinctly understandable. Thornton's famous Ode, which was set to music by Dr. Burney, performed at Ranelagh in 1763, published in quarto, and reprinted in the supplement to Dodsley's Collection, was entitled Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, adapted to the Antient British Musick; it is possible that in 1762 Percy had heard of the poem, with no more information than this much of the title, so that his error is explicable. Unfortunately, the poem is a riotous burlesque, and the title concludes, “viz. the salt-box, the jew's-harp, the marrow-bones and cleaver, the humstrum or hurdy-gurdy,” etc. Boswell relates that Dr. Johnson was much amused by it, and even repeated a favorite passage on occasion (Life of J., July 1, 1763):
In strains more exalted the salt-box shall join,
And clattering and battering and clapping combine;
With a rap and a tap while the hollow side sounds,
Up and down leaps the flap, and with rattling rebounds.
4 “Birth of St. George,” Reliques, p. 703 ff.
1 “King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid,” Reliques, p. 135 ff. In the allusion to Every Man in his Humour Percy makes an error as to act number—it should be Act iii—which he corrected in the Reliques. The items by Richard Johnson given in this letter are listed in the introduction to the “Birth of St. George,” Reliques, p. 703.
2 Grubb's ballad, “St. George for England, the Second Part,” was included in the Reliques (p. 767; see also pp. 1056–59).
3 “The Legend of Sir Guy,” Reliques, p. 625 ff.
4 “Guy and Amarant,” Reliques, p. 631 ff. See also Letters 14, and 15, postscript.
1 See Letters 15 and 16. The poem was the King's Quair.
2 See postscript, Letter 15.
3 This is illustrative of Warton's carelessness in details. Sainte-Palaye reads “la Coupe,” “Arioste,” “tenue,” and both times prints “chevalier” with small c.
4 A Catalogue of the Curious Collection of Pictures of George Villiers [1st] Duke of Buckingham ... With the life of G. Villiers [2nd] Duke of Buckingham, ... by B. Fairfax, never before published. Edited by Horace Walpole, 79 pp., London, 1758.
1 “Phillida and Corydon,” Reliques, p. 600 ff.
2 “K. Edward IV. and the Tanner of Tamworth,” Reliques, p. 320 ff. See below, Letters 19, 20, 21.
3 This information is repeated in the “Additions and Corrections, Vol. iii” (Reliques, p. 807).
1 Evidently “Valentine and Ursine,” Reliques, p. 745 ff. Valentine and Orson and Guy of Warwick were apparently the most popular of the romances surviving into the eighteenth century, if one may judge from the number of editions produced. Chapbook versions varying in length from 24 to 347 pages were simply poured out, and consumed by children and common people.
2 The plan about the middle of the eighteenth century of reprinting the text of Cædmon with a translation was not carried to completion.
1 The scribe first wrote hir brow and then struck it through and replaced it by his bowe. Percy printed hir browe in the Reliques.
1 Dr. John Hoadly, chancellor of the diocese of Winchester, son of Bishop Benjamin Hoadly, later referred to in this letter. Bishop Hoadly had died in 1761. See also Letters 22 and 38.
2 I.e. Winchester.
3 Richard Farmer, master of Emmanuel College, book collector. Percy tenders thanks to him in the preface to the Reliques.
1 See Letter 29, note 2.
2 See Letter 4, note 2.
1 Peter Whalley, editor of Ben Jonson's Works, 7 vols., 1756. See “Additions and Corrections, Vol. iii,” Reliques, pp. 807, 809. See also Letter 12. There is but one reference to Sion College in the Reliques: the mention of a lost copy of Davison's poems (1611), quoted from the Catalogue of Sion College Library.—Reliques, p. 458.
2 See Warton's History of English Poetry, 1st ed., iii, 117. Time, of course, forbids any connection between this note and the information concerning stie given in the last section of the Observations (2nd ed., ii, 63–64), for which, I should say at a venture, Warton was indebted to Dr. Lye. See Letter 6.
3 Evidently Percy could make no more of the passage than Warton; there is no reference to the item in the introductions to the ballads on Rosamund, Jane Shore, and the Tanner of Tamworth as published in the Reliques.
1 Doubtless Richard Warner (1713?–1775), botanist, classical and Greek scholar, and friend of Garrick. Warton has evidently forgotten that he had told Percy of the book in the two preceding letters.
2 William Shenstone, who was to have been co-editor of the Reliques with Percy, died September 11, 1763.
1 Largely rewritten by Percy. See Reliques, p. 82 ff.
1 “Gernutus the Jew of Venice.” Note the references to Warton and to the Connoisseur, Reliques, p. 150 ff.
1 Doubtless Warton refers to the song, “For the Victory at Agincourt,” published in the Reliques.
1 “Edom o'Gordon,” Reliques, p. 88 ff.
2 This reference, with the quotation of this and the succeeding line, is given in the “Additions and Corrections, Vol. i,” Reliques, p. 800.
1 He is not mentioned in the Reliques. Evidently the information about him was not received, at least in time to be of use. See Letters 29, 30.
2 Francis Wise, archæologist, died at Elsfield, Oct. 5, 1767. He never recovered from this illness.
3 Samuel Johnson spent part of the summer of 1764 as Percy's guest at Easton Maudit and there read through the Spanish romance of Felixmarte of Hircania. See Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. Hill, i, 57, 562.
1 In 1766 Percy was appointed tutor to the younger son of the Duke of Northumberland. His duties in the household became numerous, and lasted for about fifteen years, till his new duties as Bishop of Dromore compelled him to surrender them. The appointment as tutor was doubtless the result of Percy's dedication of the Reliques to the Countess of Northumberland.
2 Theocriti Syracusii quae supersunt ... 2 vols., Oxford, 1770. £1 5 s in sheets. Published before July, 1770. See Letter 34.
1 This visit is not mentioned in Boswell's Life.
2 Evidently Percy was already becoming discouraged with his undertaking. Like the edition of Buckingham, Percy's edition of Surrey's poems, with an account of early English blank verse, was printed but never completed and published, and eventually was destroyed by fire.
1 Percy had agreed with Tonson, May 5, 1764, to furnish notes for an edition of the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian, for which he was to have 100 guineas. He was now trying to identify the authors of occasional papers. Letters to Birch about the project are dated April and May, 1764. Percy never completed the edition, but later gave his notes to Dr. Calder, who made use of them, especially in the edition of the Tatler published by Nichols in 1786. (See Nichols, Lit. Anecdotes, ix, 805, and Illust. of Lit. Hist., vii, 568, 573, etc.)
2 The second edition of the Reliques was published in 1767.
1 Warton's Life of Sir Thomas Pope, founder of Trinity College, Oxford, chiefly compiled from Original Evidences, with an Appendix of Papers never before printed, was published, London, 1772, 8vo.
1 Percy's edition of the Household Book of the Earl of Northumberland in 1512 at his Castles of Wressle and Leconfield in Yorkshire, 1768. This book, the first of a long line of such domestic records to be published, was privately printed and circulated by the Duke of Northumberland, Percy's patron (see Letter 28, n. 1). Though Percy was editor, he was permitted the distribution of only a very few copies to friends approved by the Duke.
1 Possibly Percy's Key to the New Testament, 1769, or the edition of Buckingham. Warton had seen both the Northumberland Book and the Surrey, and the date is probably too early for Northern Antiquities (1770).
1 Warton is confused in his recollections. William Winstanley's Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) was evidently in his mind, but the book annotated by Oldys was Langbaine's Account of the English Dramatic Poets (1691). Oldys's MS. notes, written in the margins and between the lines, add to the text much valuable material. His copy, which at the time Warton wrote was owned by Thomas Birch, had been lent to Percy, who transcribed the notes in an interleaved volume of Langbaine. Percy's copy is now in the British Museum.
2 Garrick had the chief part in planning and carrying out the Shakespeare Jubilee, celebrated at Stratford in September, 1769. He had evidently stopped at Oxford on his way home from a preliminary visit to the scene of his labors; a letter to him from Warton dated June 23, 1769, clearly refers to the fact, in expressing the wish that he “could have had the pleasure of a longer conversation with you at Oxford.” The same letter continues in a strain which shows that Garrick was also “curious in our Way,” at least to the extent of collecting literary antiquities for his library; Warton discusses the projected History and makes a request for the loan of some metrical romances which, he knew from Percy, Garrick possessed. A note added to the letter in Garrick's handwriting gives a list of romances sent to Warton, who made liberal use of them. See Private Correspondence of David Garrick (London, 1831), i, 355.
1 The extract and acknowledgment appeared in Warton's History, 1st ed., ii (1778), 102.
2 Robert Allott, editor of the Elizabethan miscellany, England's Parnassus (1600).
1 No doubt the second issue of Sir Thomas Hanmer's edition of Shakespeare (originally published 1744–46), which was brought out at Oxford in 1770–71; the plates were those of the first issue, from designs by F. Hayman, R. A., and Hubert Bourguignon, called Gravelot.
2 Two issues of the Oxford Standard edition of the Bible appeared in 1769; one in folio, which is now scarce because much of it was destroyed in a warehouse fire, and one in quarto. The text for both—a corrected edition of the authorized version—had been prepared for the Clarendon Press by the Hebrew scholar, Benjamin Blaney, D.D., whose work was generally commended for its accuracy.
1 Warton is confused in details; only one book was involved. The copy of Surrey's translation of the Æneid belonged to Warner, but was lent Percy on the recommendation of Dr. Hoadly. See Letter 22. Percy had had the book in his possession about seven years, it may be noted.
Whether Percy was offended by the request does not appear. Here, however, the correspondence—at least this collection—abruptly stops.
1 Thomas Astle, antiquarian and palæographer, collector of a valuable library, assisted Percy in gathering material for the Reliques; the debt is acknowledged in the preface. Huddesford's request concerns the writings of Edward Lhwyd, Welsh antiquarian; he had edited some of Lhwyd's work, and was collecting data for a biography.
2 Undoubtedly of the Theocritus.
3 William Huddesford, son of George Huddesford, President of Trinity College, Oxford, was an antiquarian, and curator of the Ashmolean Museum from 1755 until his death in 1772. He edited, and assisted others to edit, catalogues and works by such scientists as Martin Lister, and such antiquarians as Hearne, Humphry, and Anthony à Wood.
1 No edition of the Reliques appeared between 1775 and 1794. Ever since 1778, Percy had planned to have his son (then fifteen) edit some supplementary volumes of the Reliques, probably with a re-edition of the old ones, to give the youth an introduction to the literary world and an elegant diversion during his university days. Percy had already laid by some materials for him. After the son's death in 1783, the project was transferred to Percy's nephew, Thomas Percy, then aged about sixteen. When the 1794 edition appeared, it was ostensibly edited by the younger Percy, though it is improbable that he had much to do with the changes in the text. Percy even conducted some of the business with printer and publisher. See Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, 8 vols., London, 1817–58, viii, 88, 94, 101, 107, 308–12.
1 The installation of the Duke of Portland as chancellor of Oxford, 1792. Crowe, who had been a school-fellow of Caldecott's at Winchester, dedicated to the latter his Treatise on English Versification (1827). Percy includes Crowe's name among the acknowledgments in the preface to the 1794 edition of the Reliques.
2 A range of buildings in the Temple. Caldecott was a lawyer and book collector.
3 A fourth volume of the Reliques, to be edited by the younger Thomas Percy, was under way, and is often mentioned in the Percy correspondence (Nichols, Illust, of Lit. Hist.). The nephew's death in 1808 and Percy's approaching blindness closed any such prospect, and the volume was never completed.
1 The MSS. of the three following letters, previously unpublished, are in the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California.
2 The bookseller Cadell so valued his chief assistant, Robin Lawless, that he had Lawless's portrait painted by Beechey and displayed it as a chief ornament of his drawing-room. The story is told that at the end of one hard year Lawless begged of his master as a favor that his wages might be reduced. (See Nichols, Lit. Anecdotes, iii, 386–7.)
1 Probably the Rev. Mr. Brooke Bridges, rector of Orlingbury, Northamptonshire, and grand-nephew to John Bridges, author of the History of Northamptonshire. Though John Bridges had died in 1724, the materials for the history were so mishandled that the work was not published entire until 1791 (2 vols., Oxford). How far Brooke Bridges was concerned in this belated publication does not appear, but he was distinctly an enthusiast about it; he not only possessed but eagerly displayed illustrations for the history, designed by Tilleman, and erected a monument to the historian at his own expense. The papers which he had lent to Percy were not unlikely materials from his uncle's collection. Brooke Bridges is erroneously called John by Cullum. See Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, viii, 682; ii, 105–08; and Gentleman's Magazine, lxxi, pt. ii (1801), 1151.
2 The word them, first written, is replaced by it.
3 Percy had first written My Family begs leave ... to yourself & Lady, but struck out the first and last words, interlining above them the expressions which now stand.
1 At the bottom of the sheet on which this letter from Percy is mounted is written in a small, very neat hand the following:
THOMAS PERCY, D.D. was born at Bridgenorth in 1728; educated at Christchurch, Oxford, where he took his Master's Degree in 1753; and on entering into orders, was presented to the Vicarage of Easton Mauduit, Northamptonshire, which he held with the rectory of Wilbye, in the same county. In 1769 he was made Chaplain in Ordinary to the King; dean of Carlisle in 1778, and in 1782 advanced to the Bishopric of Dromore in Ireland, where he died in 1811.
His literary works are 1. Miscellaneous Pieces relating to the Chinese. 2 Vol. 1762.
Song of Solomon translated. 1764.—3. Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. 3 Vol. 1765. which have been several times reprinted 4. Key to the New Testament. 12 mo.—5.
Northumberland Household Book. 8vo. 1770.—6. Hermit of Warkworth. a poem in the ballad style. 4to. 1771.
Both the first and second editions of the Hermit of Warkworth were published by Thomas Davies in 1771. Percy had aided Nichols in his Select Collection of Miscellaneous Poems, 4 vols., 1780, 4 more in 1782, and was in correspondence with Nichols, 1782–83, iconcerning an annotated edition of British essays. See Letter 30, note 1.