Читать книгу The Ancient English Poetry - Various Authors - Страница 13

What were the sources from which Percy obtained the chief contents of his celebrated work? They were:—1. The folio MS.; 2. Certain other MS. collections, the use of which he obtained; 3. The Scotch ballads sent to him by Sir David Dalrymple (better known by his title of Lord Hailes, which he assumed on being appointed one of the Judges of the Court of Session in Edinburgh); 4. The ordinary printed broadsides; 5. The poems he extracted from the old printed collections of fugitive poetry—The Paradise of Dainty Devices, England's Helicon, &c.

In considering the above sources, it will be necessary to give some little space to the discussion of the connection between the folio MS. and the Reliques, as it is not generally understood by the ordinary readers of the latter.

The folio MS. came into Percy's hands early in his life, and the interest of its contents first caused him to think of forming his own collection. One of the notes on the covers of the MS. is as follows:—

"When I first got possession of this MS. I was very young, and being no degree an antiquary, I had not then learnt to reverence it; which must be my excuse for the scribble which I then spread over some parts of its margin, and, in one or two instances, for even taking out the leaves to save the trouble of transcribing. I have since been more careful. T. P."

He showed it to his friends, and immediately after the publication of the Reliques he deposited it at the house of his publishers, the Dodsleys, of Pall Mall. In spite of all this publicity, Ritson actually denied the very existence of the MS. Another memorandum on the cover of the folio was written on Nov. 7, 1769. It is as follows:—

"This very curious old manuscript, in its present mutilated state, but unbound and sadly torn, &c., I rescued from destruction, and begged at the hands of my worthy friend Humphrey Pitt, Esq., then living at Shiffnal, in Shropshire, afterwards of Priorslee, near that town; who died very lately at Bath (viz., in summer 1769). I saw it lying dirty on the floor, under a Bureau in y^e Parlour: being used by the maids to light the fire. It was afterwards sent, most unfortunately, to an ignorant Bookbinder, who pared the margin, when I put it into Boards in order to lend it to Dr. Johnson. Mr. Pitt has since told me that he believes the transcripts into this volume, &c., were made by that Blount who was author of Jocular Tenures, &c., who he thought was of Lancashire or Cheshire, and had a remarkable fondness for these old things. He believed him to be the same person with that Mr. Thomas Blount who published the curious account of King Charles the 2^ds escape intitled Boscobel, &c., Lond. 1660, 12mo, which has been so often reprinted. As also the Law Dictionary, 1671, folio, and many other books which may be seen in Wood's Athenæ, ii. 73, &c. A Descendant or Relation of that Mr. Blount was an apothecary at Shiffnal, whom I remember myself (named also Blount). He (if I mistake not) sold the Library of the said predecessor Thos. Blount to the above-mentioned Mr. Humph^y Pitt: who bought it for the use of his nephew, my ever-valued friend Rob^t Binnel. Mr. Binnel accordingly had all the printed books, but this MS. which was among them was neglected and left behind at Mr. Pitt's house, where it lay for many years. T. Percy."

Mr. Furnivall believes that the copier of the MS. must have been a man greatly inferior to Thomas Blount, who was a barrister of the Middle Temple, of considerable learning.

Percy afterwards kept the volume very much to himself, and Ritson affirmed that "the late Mr. Tyrwhitt, an excellent judge and diligent peruser of old compositions, and an intimate friend of the owner, never saw it."50 Although Jamieson was obliged by receiving a copy of three of the pieces in the MS., he was not allowed a sight of the volume, and no one else was permitted to make any use of it. This spirit of secrecy was kept up by the bishop's descendants, who refused all who applied to see it. Sir Frederic Madden alone was allowed to print some pieces in his Syr Gawayne for the Bannatyne Club, 1839. The public obtained a glimpse of its contents through Dr. Dibdin, who copied from Percy's list the first seventy-two entries, and would have finished the whole, had he not been stopped by his entertainers (Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Isted, of Ecton Hall), when they found out what he was about. He gave in his Bibliographical Decameron a description of the MS. which he thus handled in the winter of 1815. Mr. Furnivall writes as follows of his several attempts to get the MS. printed, and of his success at last: "The cause of the printing of Percy's MS., of the publication of the book, was the insistence 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 had 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. … I tried to get access to the MS. some half-a-dozen years ago. Repulsed, I tried again when starting the Early English Text Society. Repulsed again, I tried again at a later date, but with the like result. Not rebuffed by this, Professor Child added his offer of £50 to mine of £100, through Mr. Thurstan Holland, a friend of his own and of the owners of the MS., and this last attempt succeeded." The less said the better about the conduct of these owners who were only to be tempted to confer a public benefit by the increased offers of two private gentlemen, but there cannot be two opinions about the spirited conduct of Mr. Furnivall and Professor Child. The three volumes51 that the printed edition of the MS. occupy, form a handsome monument of well-directed labour. The text is printed with the most careful accuracy under the superintendence of Mr. Furnivall, and the elaborate prefaces which exhibit that union of judgment and taste for which Mr. Hales is so well known, leave nothing to be desired.

"The manuscript itself is a 'scrubby, shabby paper' book, about fifteen and a half inches long by five and a half wide, and about two inches thick, which has lost some of its pages both at the beginning and end. … The handwriting was put by Sir F. Madden at after 1650 A.D.; by two authorities at the Record Office whom I consulted, in the reign of James I. rather than that of Charles I., but as the volume contains, among other late pieces, one on the siege of Newark in Charles I.'s time (ii. 33), another on the taking of Banbury in 1642 (ii. 39), and a third, The King inioyes his rights againe, which contains a passage52 that (as Mr. Chappell observes in Pop. Mus. ii. 438, note 2) fixes the date of the song to the year 1643, we must make the date about 1650, though rather before than after, so far as I can judge. I should keep it in Charles I.'s reign, and he died Jan. 30, 1649, but within a quarter of a century one can hardly determine. … The dialect of the copier of the MS. seems to have been Lancashire, as is shown by the frequent use of the final st, thoust for thou shalt, Ist for I will, youst for you will, unbethought for umbethought, and the occurrence of the northern terms, like strang, gange, &c. &c. Moreover, the strong local feeling shown by the copier in favour of Lancashire and Cheshire, and the Stanleys, in his choice of Flodden Feilde, Bosworth Feilde, Earles of Chester, Ladye Bessiye, confirms the probability that he was from one of the counties named. That much, if not all, of the MS. was written from dictation and hurriedly is almost certain, from the continual miswriting of they for the, rought for wrought, knight for night (once), me fancy for my fancy, justine for justing."53

A very erroneous impression has grown up as to the proportion of pieces in the Reliques which were taken from the MS. This is owing to a misleading statement made by Percy in his preface, to the effect that "the greater part of them are extracted from an ancient MS. in the editor's possession, which contains near two hundred poems, songs, and metrical romances." The fact is that only one-fourth were so taken. The Reliques contain 180 pieces, and of these only forty-five54 are taken from the manuscript. We thus see that a very small part of the manuscript was printed by Percy. He mentions some of the other pieces in various parts of his book, and he proposed to publish a fourth volume of the Reliques at some future period that never came.

Mr. Furnivall has the following remarks on the gains to literature by the publication of the manuscript: "It is more that we have now for the first time Eger and Grime in its earlier state, Sir Lambewell, besides the Cavilere's praise of his hawking, the complete versions of Scottish Feilde and Kinge Arthur's Death, the fullest of Flodden Feilde and the verse Merline, the Earle of Westmorlande, Bosworth Feilde, the curious poem of John de Reeve, and the fine alliterative one of Death and Liffe, with its gracious picture of Lady dame Life, awakening life and love in grass and tree, in bird and man, as she speeds to her conquest over death."

In 1774 Percy wrote: "In three or four years I intend to publish a volume or two more of old English and Scottish poems in the manner of my Reliques." And again in 1778: "With regard to the Reliques, I have a large fund of materials, which when my son has compleated his studies at the University, he may, if he likes it, distribute into one or more additional volumes." The death of this son put an end to his hopes, but before the fourth edition was required, the bishop had obtained the assistance of his nephew, the Rev. Thomas Percy. In 1801 he wrote as follows to Jamieson, who had asked for some extracts from the folio: "Till my nephew has completed his collection for the intended fourth volume it cannot be decided whether he may not wish to insert himself the fragments you desire; but I have copied for you here that one which you particularly pointed out, as I was unwilling to disappoint your wishes and expectations altogether. By it you will see the defective and incorrect state of the old text in the ancient folio MS., and the irresistible demand on the editor of the Reliques to attempt some of those conjectural emendations, which have been blamed by one or two rigid critics, but without which the collection would not have deserved a moment's attention."

Percy has been very severely judged for the alterations he made in his manuscript authorities; and Ritson has attempted to consider his conduct as a question of morality rather than one of taste. As each point is noticed in the prefaces to the various pieces, it is not necessary to discuss the question here. It may, however, be remarked that, in spite of all Ritson's attacks (and right was sometimes on his side), the Reliques remain to the present day unsuperseded.

Mr. Thoms communicated to the Notes and Queries (5th series, v. 431) the following note, which he made upwards of forty years ago, after a conversation with Francis Douce:—

"Mr. Douce told me that the Bishop (Percy) originally intended to have left the manuscript to Ritson; but the reiterated abuse with which that irritable and not always faultless antiquary visited him obliged him to alter his determination. With regard to the alterations (? amendments) made by Percy in the text, Mr. Douce told me that he (Percy) read to him one day from the MS., while he held the work in his hand to compare the two; and 'certainly the variations were greater than I could have expected,' said my old friend, with a shrug of the shoulders."

Of the other sources from which Percy drew his materials little need be said. 2. Some of the ballads were taken from MSS. in public libraries, and others from MSS. that were lent to him. 3. The Scotch ballads supplied by Sir David Dalrymple have already been referred to. 4. The printed ballads are chiefly taken from the Pepys Collection at Cambridge. 5. When the Reliques were first published, the elegant poems in the Paradyse of Daynty Devises, England's Helicon, were little known, and it was a happy thought on the part of Percy to intersperse these smaller pieces among the longer ballads, so as to please the reader with a constant variety.

The weak point in the book is the insertion of some of the modern pieces. The old minstrel believed the wonders he related; but a poet educated in modern ideas cannot transfer himself back to the times of chivalry, so that his attempts at imitating "the true Gothic manner" are apt to fill his readers with a sense of unreality.

After the first edition of the Reliques was printed, and before it was published, Percy made a great alteration in its arrangement. The first volume was turned into the third, and the third into the first, as may be seen by a reference to the foot of the pages where the old numbering remains. By this means the Arthur Ballads were turned off to the end, and Chevy Chase and Robin Hood obtained the place of honour. Several ballads were also omitted at the last moment, and the numbers left vacant. These occur in a copy of two volumes at Oxford which formerly belonged to Douce. In Vol. III. (the old Vol. I.), Book 1, there is no No. 19; in the Douce copy this is filled by The Song-birds. In Vol. II., Book 3, there are no Nos. 10 and 11; but in the Douce copy, Nos. 9, 10, and 11 are Cock Lorrell's Treat, The Moral Uses of Tobacco, and Old Simon the Kinge. Besides these omissions it will be seen that in Book 3 of Vol. III. there are two Nos. 2; and that George Barnwell must have been inserted at the last moment, as it occupies a duplicate series of pages 225–240, which are printed between brackets. In 1765 the volumes were published in London. In the following year a surreptitious edition was published in Dublin, and in 1767 appeared a second edition in London. In 1775 was published the third edition, which was reprinted at Frankfort in 1790. The fourth edition, ostensibly edited by the Rev. Thomas Percy, but really the work of the bishop himself, was published in 1794. Many improvements were made in this edition, and it contains Percy's final corrections; the fifth edition, published in 1812, being merely a reprint of the fourth.

The year 1765 was then a memorable one in the history of literature. The current ballads which were bawled in the street, or sung in the ale-house, were so mean and vulgar that the very name of ballad had sunk into disrepute. It was therefore a revelation to many to find that a literature of nature still existed which had descended from mother to child in remote districts, or was buried in old manuscripts, covered with the dust of centuries. It is necessary to realize this state of things in order to understand Percy's apologetic attitude. He collected his materials from various sources with great labour, and spared no pains in illustrating the poetry by instructive prose. Yet after welding with the force of genius the various parts into an harmonious whole, he was doubtful of the reception it was likely to obtain, and he called the contents of his volumes "the barbarous productions of unpolished ages." He backed his own opinion of their interest by bringing forward the names of the chiefs of the republic of letters, and ill did they requite him. Johnson parodied his verses, and Warburton sneered at him as the man "who wrote about the Chinese." Percy looked for his reward where he received nothing but laughter; but the people accepted his book with gladness, and the young who fed upon the food he presented to them grew up to found new schools of poetry.

Few books have exerted such extended influence over English literature as Percy's Reliques. Beattie's Minstrel was inspired by a perusal of the Essay on the Ancient Minstrels; and many authors have expressed with gratitude their obligations to the bishop and his book.

How profoundly the poetry of nature, which lived on in the ballads of the country, stirred the souls of men is seen in the instance of two poets of strikingly different characteristics. Scott made his first acquaintance with the Reliques at the age of thirteen, and the place where he read them was ever after imprinted upon his memory. The bodily appetite of youth was unnoticed while he mentally devoured the volumes under the huge leaves of the plantain tree. Wordsworth was not behind Scott in admiration of the book. He wrote: "I have already stated how much Germany is indebted to this work, and for our own country, its poetry has been absolutely redeemed by it. I do not think there is an able writer in verse of the present day who would not be proud to acknowledge his obligation 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." After such men as these have spoken, who can despise our old ballads?