collection, who, at an early period of life, with such materials and such subjects, formed a work which hath been admitted into the most elegant libraries; and with which the judicious antiquary hath just reason to be satisfied, while refined entertainment hath been provided for every reader of taste and genius.

THOMAS PERCY,

Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford.

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

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 music.

The greater part of them are extracted from an ancient folio Manuscript, in the Editor's possession, which contains near 200 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 ages 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.

Accordingly such specimens of ancient poetry have been selected, as either show the gradation of our language, exhibit the progress of popular opinions, display the peculiar manners and customs of former ages, or throw light on our earlier classical poets.

They are here distributed into three independent series of poems, arranged chiefly according to the order of time, and showing the gradual improvements of the English language and poetry from the earliest ages down to the present. Each series is divided into three books, to afford so many pauses, or resting-places to the reader, and to assist him in distinguishing between the productions of the earlier, the middle, and the latter times.

In a polished age like the present, I am sensible that many of these reliques of antiquity will require great allowances to be made for them. Yet have they, for the most part, a pleasing simplicity, and many artless graces, which in the opinion of no mean critics have been thought to compensate for the want of higher beauties, and, if they do not dazzle the imagination, are frequently found to interest the heart.

* Chaucer quotes the old romance of Libius Disconius, and some others, which are found in this MS. (See the essay prefixed to vol. iii. p. 15 et seq.) It also contains several songs relating to the Civil War in the last century, but not one that alludes to the Restoration.

† Addison, Dryden, the witty Lord Dorset, etc. See the Spectator, No. 70. The learned Selden appears also to have been fond of collecting these old things.

To atone for the rudeness of the more obsolete poems, each volume concludes with a few modern attempts in the same kind of writing: and, to take off from the tediousness of the longer narratives, they are everywhere intermingled with little elegant pieces of the lyric kind. Select ballads in the old Scottish dialect, most of them of the first-rate merit, are also interspersed among those of our ancient English minstrels ; and the artless productions of these old rhapsodists are occasionally confronted with specimens of the composition of contemporary poets of a higher class; of those who had all the advantages of learning in the times in which they lived, and who wrote for fame and for posterity. Yet perhaps the palm will be frequently due to the old strolling minstrels, who composed their rhymes to be sung to their harps, and who looked no farther than for present applause and present subsistence.

The reader will find this class of men occasionally described in the following volume, and some particulars relating to their history in an Essay subjoined to this Preface.

It will be proper here to give a short account of the other collections that were con sulted, and to make my acknowledgments to those gentlemen who were so kind as to impart extracts from them; for while this selection was making, a great number of ingenious friends took a share in the work, and explored many large repositories in its favour. The first of these that deserved notice was the Pepysian Library at Magdalen College, Cambridge. Its founder, Sam. Pepys, Esq., Secretary of the Admiralty in the reigns of Charles II. and James II., had made a large collection of ancient English ballads, near 2000 in number, which he has left pasted in five volumes in folio; besides Garlands and other smaller miscellanies. This collection, he tells us, was "begun by Mr. Selden; improved by the addition of many pieces elder thereto in time; and the whole continued down to the year 1700; when the form peculiar till then thereto, viz. of the black letter with pictures, seems (for cheapness' sake) wholly laid aside for that of the white letter without pictures."

In the Ashmolean Library at Oxford is a small collection of ballads made by Anthony Wood in 1676, containing somewhat more than 200. Many ancient popular poems are also preserved in the Bodleian Library.

The archives of the Antiquarian Society at London contain a multitude of curious political poems in large folio volumes, digested under the several reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, Elizabeth, James I., etc.

In the British Museum is preserved a large treasure of ancient English poems in MS., besides one folio volume of printed ballads.

From all these some of the best pieces were selected; and from many private collections, as well printed as manuscript, particularly from one large folio volume which was lent by a lady.

Amid such a fund of materials, the Editor is afraid he has been sometimes led to make too great a parade of his authorities. The desire of being accurate has perhaps seduced him into too minute and trifling an exactness; and in pursuit of information he may have been drawn into many a petty and frivolous research. It was however necessary to give some account of the old copies; though often, for the sake of brevity, one or two of these only are mentioned, where yet assistance was received from several. Where anything was altered that deserved particular notice, the passage is generally distinguished by two inverted "commas." And the Editor has endeavoured to be as

RELIQUES OF ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY:

CONSISTING OF

OLD HEROIC BALLADS, SONGS, AND OTHER PIECES
OF OUR EARLIER POETS;

TOGETHER WITH SOME FEW OF LATER DATE.

DEDICATION.

ΤΟ

ELIZABETH,

LATE DUCHESS AND COUNTESS OF NORTHUMBERLAND,

IN HER OWN RIGHT BARONESS PERCY,

ETC. ETC. ETC.,

Who, being sole heiress to many great families of our ancient nobility, employed the princely fortune, and sustained the illustrious honours, which she derived from them, through her whole life with the greatest dignity, generosity, and spirit, and who for her many public and private virtues will ever be remembered as one of the first characters of her time, this little work was originally dedicated; and, as it sometimes afforded her amusement, and was highly distinguished by her indulgent approbation, it is now, with the utmost regard, respect, and gratitude, consecrated to her beloved and honoured memory. T. P.

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FOURTH EDITION. TWENTY years have near elapsed since the last edition of this work appeared. But although it was sufficiently a favourite with the public, and had long been out of print, the original Editor had no desire to revive it. More important pursuits had, as might be expected, engaged his attention; and the present edition would have remained unpublished, had he not yielded to the importunity of his friends, and

to Mr. Blakeway, late fellow of Magdalen College, he owes all the assistance received from the Pepysian Library: and Mr. Farmer, fellow of Emanuel, often exerted, in favour of this little work, that extensive knowledge of ancient English literature for which he is so distinguished.*

Many extracts from ancient MSS. in the British Museum and other respositories, were owing to the kind services of Thomas Astle, Esq., to whom the public is indebted for the curious preface and index annexed to the Harleian Catalogue. The worthy Librarian of the Society of Antiquaries, Mr. Norris, deserved acknowledgment for the obliging manner in which he gave the Editor access to the volumes under his care. In Mr. Garrack's curious collection of old plays are many scarce pieces of ancient poetry, with the free use of which he indulged the Editor in the politest manner. To the Rev. Dr. Birch he is indebted for the use of several ancient and valuable tracts. To the friendship of Dr. Samuel Johnson he owes many valuable hints for the conduct of the work. And, if the Glossary is more exact and curious than might be expected in so slight a publication, it is to be ascribed to the supervisal of a friend, who stands at this time the first in the world for northern literature, and whose learning is even better known and respected in foreign nations than in his own country, It is perhaps needless to name the Rev. Mr. Lye, editor of Junius's Etymologicum, and of the Gothic Gospels.

The names of so many men of learning and character the Editor hopes will serve as an amulet, to guard him from every unfavourable censure for having bestowed any attention on a parcel of Old Ballads. It was at the request of many of these gentlemen, and of others eminent for their genius and taste, that this little work was undertaken. To prepare it for the press has been the amusement of now and then a vacant hour amid the leisure and retirement of rural life, and hath only served as a relaxation

*To the same learned and ingenious friend, since Master of Emanuel College, the Editor is obliged for many corrections and improvements in his second and subsequent editions; as also to the Rev. Mr. Bowle, of Idmistone, near Salisbury, editor of the curious edition of Don Quixote, with annotations in Spanish, in six vols. 4to; to the Rev. Mr. Cole, formerly of Bletchley, near Fenny-Stratford, Bucks; to the Rev. Mr. Lambe, of Norham, in Northumberland (author of a learned History of Chess, 1764, 8vo, and editor of a curious poem on the Battle of Flodden Field, with learned notes, 1774, 8vo); and to G. Paton, Esq., of Edinburgh. He is particularly indebted to two friends, to whom the public, as well as himself, are under the greatest obligations; to the Honourable Daines Barrington, for his very learned and curious Observations on the Statutes, 4to; and to Thomas Tyrwhitt, Esq., whose most correct and elegant edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, five vols. 8vo, is a standard book, and shows how an ancient English classic should be published. The Editor was also favoured with many valuable remarks and corrections from the Rev. Geo. Ashby, late Fellow of St. John's College, in Cambridge, which are not particularly pointed out, because they occur so often. He was no less obliged to Thomas Butler, Esq., F.A.S., agent to the Duke of Northumberland, and clerk of the peace for the county of Middlesex, whose extensive knowledge of ancient writings, records, and history, has been of great use to the Editor in his attempts to illustrate the literature or manners of our ancestors. Some valuable remarks were procured by Samuel Pegge, Esq., author of that curious work the Curialia, 4to; but this impression was too far advanced to profit by them all; which hath also been the case with a series of learned and ingenious annotations inserted in the Gentleman's Magazine for August 1793, April, June, July, and October 1794.

† Since Keeper of the Records in the Tower.

from graver studies. It has been taken up at different times, and often thrown aside for many months, during an interval of four or five years. This has occasioned some inconsistencies and repetitions, which the candid reader will pardon. As great care has been taken to admit nothing immoral and indecent, the Editor hopes he need not be ashamed of having bestowed some of his idle hours in the ancient literature of our own country, or in rescuing from oblivion some pieces (though but the amusements of our ancestors) which tend to place in a striking light their taste, genius, sentiments,

cr manners.

Except in one paragraph, and in the notes subjoined, this Preface is given with little variation from the first edition in MDCCLXV,

LIFE OF BISHOP PERCY.

BY THE PRESENT EDITOR.

Dr. Thomas Percy, Bishop of Dromore, and the author of Reliques of Ancient Poetry, was, according to his own account, of an old Worcestershire family, a branch of the noble house of Percy. He was born in April 1729, in an old-fashioned timber house, in a street called the Cartway in Bridgenorth, Shropshire, where his father, Mr. Arthur Lowe Percy, was in business as a grocer. He received his early education at the Grammar School of his native town, and, having obtained an exhibition, went in due course to Christ Church, Oxford, where he was entered as a commoner. His name appears in the books as "Thomas Piercy," and the same orthography occurs in the list of Oxford graduates, from which it appears that he took his Bachelor's degree in May 1750, and proceeded Master of Arts in July 1753. It is uncertain by what bishop he was ordained, or what curacy he served; but in the same year in which he put on his Master's gown at Oxford, he was presented by Christ Church with the small living of Easton Maundit, near Northampton. In the register of this parish he writes his name Percy, probably for the first time-the result, doubtless, of those poetical and antiquarian studies to which he had already devoted himself from childhood, like his greater and far more celebrated disciple, Sir Walter Scott. In the little vicarage of this rural village he lived for more than a quarter of a century; there he married his wife, Nancy Gutteridge, and there all his children were born. The squire of his parish was the Earl of Sussex, whilst Castle Ashby, the seat of successive Earls of Northampton, was only a mile and a half distant. In these great houses Percy met with society through whom he was kept better acquainted than most country parsons of his time with what was passing in the world of letters and of fashion in London. Here in the summer of 1764, Dr. Johnson spent several months as his guest, when doubtless the parlour and little library were the scenes of literary discussions at which more than one of the Muses would have wished to have been present unseen. A terrace in the vicarage garden still traditionally called Dr. Johnson's Walk.

Whilst living at Easton Maundit, namely, in 1761, Percy published in four volumes a Chinese novel, translated from the Portuguese, and dedicated to the Countess of Sussex; this he followed up by Miscellaneous Pieces from the Chinese, dedicated to Lady Longueville, as also a Translation of the Song of Solomon from the