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Excerpt from Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, Vol. 1 of 3: Consisting of Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, and Other Pieces of Our Earlier Poets; Together With Some Few of Later Date Neither of these works was ever published, although both were printed. He proposed, besides, to have republished all the undramatic blank verse preceding the Paradise Lost, including Tuberville, Gascoigne, Chapman, Christopher Marlowe, &c. In 1763 he published live pieces of Runic poetry, with translations into Latin prose, which met with only moderate success. In 1764 appeared a Key to the New Testament - a work which proved that he was not neglecting his professional studies, and which became popular. This year Johnson visited him at his vicarage, and remained most part of three months in the highest enjoyment - now poring over the old Spanish romance of Felixmarte of Hyrcania, now helping Mrs Percy to feed her ducks, and now talking learnedly to her learned lord. Percy had before this commenced the work which was destined to make him immortal - the collection of old ballads. He had himself a large folio MS. of ballads, and he set to work to procure others from every part of the British empire - from Derbyshire, Wales, Ireland, and even the West Indies. In these researches he was either aided or encouraged by the most eminent men of his day - by Goldsmith, Garrick, Thomas Warton, Shenstone, and Gray, as well as by such professed antiquarians as Birch, Farmer, and Stevens. Percy seems to have been personally popular with all of these; and most of them, besides, admired old poetry. Grainger, too, author of the forgotten Sugar Cane, and of the beautiful ode to Solitude, was a warm friend and an efficient ally to Percy. In February 1765 the Reliques appeared. Percy received 100 guineas for the first edition. Their reception at first was not specially flattering. Johnson, Warburton, and Hurd coalesced for once in treating contemptuously a style of poetry which, not from weakness, but from strong prejudice and want of imagination, they were unable to appreciate. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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