Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/450

 He proceeded D.D. from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1770.

In 1753 he was presented to a college living—the vicarage of Easton-Maudit, Northamptonshire. This was his home for twenty-nine years, and there his most important and influential works were produced. Among his parishioners were the Marquis of Northampton and the Earl of Sussex. Among the neighbouring clergy was the distinguished Anglo-Saxon scholar [q. v.], at Yardley Hastings. Even at that time Easton-Maudit was not inaccessible from London. The vicar was often to be seen in town; and Dr. Johnson himself, not to speak of lesser folk, sojourned for some weeks at the vicarage in 1764. In 1756 Percy was appointed also rector of Wilby, some half-dozen miles off.

Meanwhile he was busy with various literary undertakings. Of no great originality, he was by nature peculiarly susceptible to the currents and tendencies of his age. It was an age that was wearying of its old and longing for new idols—wearying of ‘didactic poetry’ and excessive modernness, and longing for pictures of life; not only of present and European life, but of the life of the past and of the distant in place as well as in time. Accordingly Percy began his literary life by translating from a Portuguese manuscript a Chinese novel, viz. ‘Hau Kiou Choaun, or the Pleasing History, with an appendix containing the Argument or Story of a Chinese Play, A Collection of Chinese Proverbs, and Fragments of Chinese Poetry, with Notes,’ 4 vols. 1761. This he followed with two volumes of ‘Miscellaneous Pieces relating to the Chinese,’ 1762. An interest in China and in the East generally was ‘in the air.’ But more noticeable was the growing interest in the older poetry of Europe. Deeply impressed by Macpherson's studies in Gaelic and Erse poetry, Percy in 1763 published ‘Five Pieces of Runic Poetry, translated from the Islandic Language.’ In this book he gratefully acknowledges the assistance of his neighbour Lye. In 1763 he also edited Surrey's ‘Poems,’ giving some account of the early use of blank verse in English.

Percy was already engaged upon the work that was to immortalise him. For some time he had possessed an old folio manuscript containing copies, in an early seventeenth-century handwriting, of many old poems of various dates. He had found it one day ‘lying dirty on the floor in a bureau in the parlour’ of his friend Humphrey Pitt of Shifnall in Shropshire, ‘being used by the maids to light the fire,’ and had begged it of its careless owner. The suggestion that he should turn this treasure to some account seems to have come from Shenstone—though he did not live to see the ripe fruit of his advice—and was entertained as early as 1761. ‘You have heard me speak of Mr. Percy,’ runs a letter from Shenstone to Graves, dated 1 March 1761. ‘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.’ A few months later Shenstone wrote to a Mr. McGowan of Edinburgh to ask if he could send any Scottish ballad for Percy's use. Many others lent their assistance; among them Thomas Warton (the younger), Grainger, Birch, Farmer, Garrick, and Goldsmith. Warton ‘ransacked the Oxford libraries’ for him; he himself visited Cambridge and explored Pepys's collection, besides receiving help from ‘two ingenious and learned friends’ there; he secured correspondents in Wales, in Ireland, in ‘the wilds of Staffordshire and Derbyshire.’ At last, in 1765, appeared Percy's ‘Reliques of Ancient English Poetry’ (3 vols. sm. 8vo). The book made an epoch in the history of English literature. It promoted with lasting effect the revival of interest in our older poetry. Percy had serious misgivings as to whether he was employing his energies profitably, but expressed the hope that ‘the names of so many men of learning and character’ among his patrons and subscribers would ‘serve as an amulet to guard him from every unfavourable censure for having bestowed any attention on a parcel of Old Ballads.’ He occasionally tampered with his texts and inserted at the end of each volume, in conformity with current sentiment, a ‘few modern attempts in the same kind of writing to atone for the rudeness of the more obsolete poems.’ Dr. Johnson, Warburton, and other contemporary authorities were not sparing in their condemnation and contempt. A second edition of the ‘Reliques’ was, however, called for in 1767, a third in 1775, and a fourth, revised by his nephew, (1768–1808) [q. v.], in 1794. In 1867–8 the original folio from which Percy drew his materials was edited by Prof. J. W. Hales and Dr. F. J. Furnivall, and published in three volumes.

His next contribution to antiquarian knowledge was the editing of ‘The Household Book of the Earl of Northumberland in 1512,