Bishop of Dromore, 1729–1811. Born, at Bridgnorth, Shropshire, 13 April, 1729. Early education at Bridgnorth Grammar School. Matric., Christ Church, Oxford, 7 July 1746; B.A., 1750; M.A., 1753. Vicar of Easton-Maudit, Northamptonshire, 1753–82. Rector of Wilby, 1756–82. Married Anne Gutteridge, 1759. Active literary life. Chaplain to George II., 1769. D.D., Camb., 1770. Dean of Carlisle, 1778–82. Bishop of Dromore, 1782. Suffered from blindness in last years of life. Died at Dromore, 30th Sept. 1811. Buried at Dromore Cathedral. Works: “Hau Kiou Choaun; or, the Pleasing History” (from the Chinese; 4 vols., anon.), 1761; “Miscellaneous Pieces relating to the Chinese” (2 vols., anon.), 1762; “Five Pieces of Runic Poetry from the Islandic Language” (anon.), 1763; “The Song of Solomon, newly translated” (anon.), 1764; “Reliques of Ancient English Poetry” (3 vols.), 1765; “A Letter describing the ride to Hulme Abbey from Alnwich” (anon.), [1765]; “Four Essays” (anon.), 1767; “A Key to the New Testament,” 1769; “A Sermon” [on John xiii, 35], 1769; “Northern Antiquities” (anon.), 1770; “The Hermit of Warkworth” (anon.), 1771; “The Matrons” (anon.), 1772; “Life of Dr. Oliver Goldsmith” (anon.), 1774; “A Sermon” [on Prov. xxii, 6], 1790; “An Essay on the Origin of the English Stage,” 1793. He translated: P. H. Mallet’s “Northern Antiquities,” 1770; and edited: Surrey’s “Poems,” 1763; the “Household Book of the Earl of Northumberland,” 1768.

Personal

  He is a man very willing to learn, and very able to teach; a man out of whose company I never go without having learned something. It is sure that he vexes me sometimes, but I am afraid it is by making me feel my own ignorance. So much extension of mind, and so much minute accuracy of inquiry, if you survey your whole circle of acquaintance, you will find so scarce, if you find it at all, that you will value Percy by comparison. Lord Hailes is somewhat like him; but Lord Hailes does not, perhaps, go beyond him in research; and I do not know that he equals him in elegance. Percy’s attention to poetry has given grace and splendour to his studies of antiquity. A mere antiquarian is a rugged being.

  No bishop in this kingdom exercises the various functions of his office with more ability, diligence, and universal approbation.

  I have had a letter from the Bishop of Dromore of seven sides of paper, the object of which was, to induce me to add to my “Noble Authors” some meditations by a foolish Countess of Northumberland, and to set me to inquire after a MS. Tract of Earl Algernon; with neither of which I have complied or shall. The Bishop having created himself a Percy, is gone mad about that family, tho’ the Percys are more remembered for having lost their heads, than for ever having had a head that was a loss to lose.

  His episcopal functions were most faithfully and efficiently discharged, securing him (as we are told) the respect and love of all denominations; but this is no more than might have been expected from a man of his integrity of character and genuine religious feelings—one who was, in a word, actuated by a high sense of duty.

  Percy had naturally a hot temper, but this cooled down with time, and the trials of his later life were accepted with Christian meekness. One of his relations, who as a boy could just recollect him, told Mr. Pickford “that it was quite a pleasure to see even then his gentleness, amiability, and fondness for children. Every day used to witness his strolling down to a pond in the palace garden, in order to feed his swans, who were accustomed to come at the well-known sound of the old man’s voice.” He was a pleasing companion and a steady friend. His duties, both in the retired country village and in the more elevated positions of dean and bishop, were all performed with a wisdom and ardour that gained him the confidence of all those with whom he was brought in contact. The praise given to him in the inscription on the tablet to his memory in Dromore Cathedral does not appear to have gone beyond the truth. It is there stated that he resided constantly in his diocese, and discharged “the duties of his sacred office with vigilance and zeal, instructing the ignorant, relieving the necessitous, and comforting the distressed with pastoral affection.” He was revered for his piety and learning, and beloved for his universal benevolence, by all ranks and religious denominations.

Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, 1765

  You have heard me speak of Mr. Percy. He was in treaty with Mr. James Dodsley for the publication of our best old ballads in three volumes. He has a large folio MS. of ballads which he showed me, and which, with his own natural and acquired talents, would qualify him for the purpose as well as any man in England. I proposed the scheme to him myself, wishing to see an elegant edition and good collection of this kind.

  The reader is here presented with select remains of our ancient English Bards and Minstrels, an order of men, who were once greatly respected by our ancestors, and contributed to soften the roughness of a martial and unlettered people by their songs and by their music. The greater part of them are extracted from an ancient folio manuscript, in the Editor’s possession, which contains near two hundred Poems, Songs, and Metrical Romances. This MS. was written about the middle of the last century; but contains compositions of all times and dates, from the age prior to Chaucer, to the conclusion of the reign of Charles I. This manuscript was shown to several learned and ingenious friends, who thought the contents too curious to be consigned to oblivion, and importuned the possessor to select some of them and give them to the press. As most of them are of great simplicity, and seem to have been merely written for the people, he was long in doubt, whether, in the present state of improved literature, they could be deemed worthy the attention of the public. At length the importunity of his friends prevailed, and he could refuse nothing to such judges as the Author of the Rambler and the late Mr. Shenstone.

  This ingenious work, which revived the taste for our old poets, is too well known to require being here particularized.

  I remember well the spot where I read these volumes for the first time. It was beneath a huge platanus tree, in the ruins of what had been intended for an old-fashioned arbor in the garden I have mentioned. The summer-day sped onward so fast, that notwithstanding the sharp appetite of thirteen, I forgot the hour of dinner, was sought for with anxiety, and was still found entranced in my intellectual banquet. To read and to remember was in this instance the same thing, and henceforth I overwhelmed my school-fellows, and all who would hearken to me, with tragical recitations from the ballads of Bishop Percy. The first time, too, I could scrape a few shillings together, which were not common occurrences with me, I bought unto myself a copy of these beloved volumes; nor do I believe I ever read a book half so frequently, or with half the enthusiasm.

  The late Bishop of Dromore, if he merit no other distinction, is entitled to the proud praise of being the Father of Poetical Taste, in that department of literature which he has the exclusive merit of having first brought into public notice. His “Reliques” is a publication that reflects lasting honor upon his name; and it has proved the germ of a rich harvest in the same field of the muses.

  A collection singularly heterogeneous, and very unequal in merit, but from the publication of which, in 1765, some of high name have dated the revival of a genuine feeling for true poetry in the public mind.

  I never take up these three heavily-bound volumes, the actual last edition, at which Dr. Johnson was wont to scoff, without feeling a pleasure quite apart from that excited by the charming book itself; although to that book, far more than to any modern school of minstrelsy we owe the revival of the taste for romantic and lyrical poetry, which had lain dormant since the days of the Commonwealth. This pleasure springs from a very simple cause. The associations of these ballads with the happiest days of my happy childhood.

  Perhaps the publication which was as yet at once the most remarkable product of this new taste, and the most effective agent in its diffusion, was Percy’s celebrated “Reliques of Ancient English Poetry,” which first appeared in 1765. The reception of this book was the same that what is natural and true always meets with when brought into fair competition with the artificial.

  The publication of the “Reliques,” then, constitutes an epoch in the history of the great revival of taste, in whose blessings we now participate. After 1765, before the end of the century, numerous collections of old ballads, in Scotland and England, by Evans, by Pinkerton, Herd, Ritson, were made. The noble reformation, that received so great an impulse in 1765, advanced thenceforward steadily. The taste that was awakened never slumbered again. The recognition of our old life and poetry that the “Reliques” gave, was at last gloriously confirmed and established by Walter Scott.

  The “Reliques of Ancient English Poetry,” published in 1765 by Bishop Thomas Percy, produced a purer and more lasting effect than Macpherson’s “Ossian.” They are the fruit of the industry of a loving and careful collector, and proved to every susceptible mind that the essence of poetry is not to be found in formalism, and in sober reflection, but in true and strong feelings. In Percy’s “Reliques” we again meet with undisguised nature, with simple feeling, and with energetic action; they are the poetic reflection of an age of national heroes and whose traditions are closely interwoven with English thought and feeling. Hence the powerful and rapid influence these ancient relics of minstrelsy acquired in England and Scotland, an influence which may be traced in the development of English poetry down to our own days.

  So ready and inflammable was the material prepared for these living coals, unraked from the ashes of departed years. The “Reliques” were largely composed of the lyrics of earlier and later writers. The ballads yielded the key-note, and then gave place to the melody of more modern verse, the most free and national in its character. Lyric poetry, less ambitious than other forms, more close to the individual sentiment, is wont to be the refuge of the most genuine, simple and passionate strains; to be most deeply infused with the national temper.

  Percy’s “Reliques” is commonly mentioned as the turning-point in the taste of the last century, but it was quite as much the result, as the cause, of the renewed interest in old ballads. Percy did more completely what had been done feebly before. Still, it is well to bear in mind the date of the publication, 1765, as mnemonic point, for this was by far the most important of the collections. A copy of the book fell into the hands of Bürger (1748–94), who translated many of the ballads into German, and was inspired by it to write his own “Lenore.”… It would be fair to say that Percy’s “Reliques” had more influence in Germany than in England. Bürger and his fellow-poets of the “Hainbund,” who were all young men with a confused hatred of tyrants and great affection for the full moon, took to writing more ballads after the old pattern, as illustrated by Percy’s “Reliques” and explained by Herder, and soon Herder established the new lines in which German thought was destined to run, substituting the intelligent study of the past for the faithful following of academic rules.

  In undertaking the supervision of a new edition of the “Reliques of Ancient English Poetry,” I felt that no safer or better guidance could be followed than that of Bishop Percy himself; and as he always strove, in the several editions published by himself, to embody therein the sum of the knowledge of his times, so I, following at a distance, have endeavoured, by gathering from many quarters particulars published since his death, to make his book still more worthy of the great reputation it has acquired.

  It was an epoch-making book, and is usually spoken of as one of the chief causes of the great re-awakening in English poetry. But the course of our studies in the ballad revival proves that Percy’s book was fully as much a result as it was a cause of the Romantic movement.

  Percy was a critic of admirable poetical taste and literary skill, but he was not altogether proof against the temptations to which these qualities exposed him. In the collection of ballads which he “edited” from the MS. in his possession, he did not scruple to alter and supplement the original text whenever he thought that by so doing he could improve the general effect. By these practices he roused the wrath of an able and relentless antagonist.

  Percy not only rescued, himself, a number of ballads from forgetfulness; what was equally important, his book prompted others to hunt out and publish similar relics before it was too late. It was the occasion of collections like Herd’s (1769), Scott’s (1802–03), and Motherwell’s (1827), and many more, resting on purer texts and edited on more scrupulous principles than his own. Furthermore, his ballads helped to bring about a reform in literary taste and to inspire men of original genius. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Scott, all acknowledged the greatest obligations to them. Wordsworth said that English poetry had been “absolutely redeemed” by them. “I do not think there is a writer in verse of the present day who would not be proud to acknowledge his obligations to the ‘Reliques.’ I know that it is so with my friends; and for myself, I am happy in this occasion to make a public avowal of my own.” Without the “Reliques,” “The Ancient Mariner,” “The Lady of the Lake,” “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” “Stratton Water,” and “The Haystack in the Floods” might never have been. Perhaps even the “Lyrical Ballads” might never have been, or might have been something quite unlike what they are.

General

  Dr. Percy was so abashed by the ridicule flung upon his labours from the ignorance and insensibility of the persons with whom he lived, that, though while he was writing under a mask he had not wanted resolution to follow his genius into the regions of true simplicity and genuine pathos (as is evinced by the exquisite ballad of “Sir Cauline,” and by many other pieces), yet when he appeared in his own person and character as a poetical writer, he adopted, as in the tale of the “Hermit of Warkworth,” a diction scarcely in any one of its features distinguishable from the vague, the glossy, and unfeeling language of his day. I mention this remarkable fact with regret, esteeming the genius of Dr. Percy in this kind of writing superior to that of any other man by whom in modern times it has been cultivated.

  Percy was not, perhaps, a man of much originality of genius, or great strength, or richness of mind. Johnson was probably right when he said, “He runs about with little weight upon his mind.” Yet he was unquestionably endowed with certain rare qualities. He had ardent enthusiasm, an enthusiasm which, like that of Scott, was the same in kind, although different in direction, from that of his warlike ancestors; he had a vivid sympathy with the old writers, and could think their thoughts, feel their passions, and talk their language; he had invincible diligence, an enormous memory, and had written some ballads of his own, such as “Sir Cauline,” which entitle him to an independent and considerable poetical reputation.