Page:Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript. Ballads and Romances.djvu/33



1. Cause of the publication.

2. Groans about it, and gains by it.

3. Description of the MS.

4. Date and dialect of it.

5. Supposed writer of it.

6. Pieces printed from it since the Reliques.

7. Percy's handling of his MS.

8. Proportion of pieces from it in the Reliques.

9. Our handling of the MS.

10. Our Introductions and helpers.

''11. Work ahead. Print the other Ballad Collections.''

1. The cause of the printing of Percy's MS., of the publication of this book, was the insistance, time after time, by Professor Child, that it was the duty of English antiquarian men of letters to print this foundation document of English balladry, the basis of that structure which Percy raised, so fair to the eyes of all English-speaking men throughout the world. Above a hundred years had gone since first the Reliques met men's view, a Percy Society had been born and died, but still the Percy Manuscript lay hid in Ecton Hall, and no one was allowed to know how the owner who made his fame by it had dealt with it, whether his treatment was foul or fair. No list even of its contents could be obtained. Dibdin and Madden, and many a man less known, had tried their hands, but still the MS. was kept back, and this generation had made up its mind that it was not to see the desired original in type. One of that nation, however, whose greatest man since Washington proclaimed its way of getting things done, by his homely phrase "keep pegging away," pegged away at this MS., and the result is before the reader.