SOURCE: “Thomas Percy: The Dilemma of a Scholar-Cleric,” in The Kentucky Review, Vol. 3, No. 3, 1982, pp. 28-46.

In the following essay, Davis examines contemporary controversies surrounding Percy's Reliques, focusing specifically on Percy's accuracy and editorial practices.

“I bestow upon a few old poems,” Thomas Percy wrote to David Dalrymple on 25 January 1763, “those idle moments, which some of my grave brethren pass away over a sober game at whist.”¹ How Dalrymple reacted to Percy's analogy is not known, but the modern reader is likely to dismiss it as a facetious if not wholly insincere depreciation of Percy's own efforts, which were pointing toward the publication of England's most influential anthology, the three-volume Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. Percy's “idle moments” filled up much more than the odd hours and occasional evenings his comment would suggest: mornings and afternoons in the British Museum, for example; eleven days at Magdalene College, Cambridge...