Percy made no secret of the fact that he filled lacunae in his originals with stanzas, and, in some cases, with nearly entire poems of his own composition.  But the extent of the liberties that he took with the text, although suspected, was not certainly known until Mr. Furnivall finally got leave to have the folio manuscript copied and printed.[40] Before this time it had been jealously guarded by the Percy family, and access to it had been denied to scholars.  “Since Percy and his nephew printed their fourth edition of the ‘Reliques’ from the manuscript in 1794,” writes Mr. Furnivall in his “Forewords,” “no one has printed any piece from it except Robert Jamieson—­to whom Percy supplied a copy of ‘Child Maurice’ and ‘Robin Hood and the Old Man’ for his ’Popular Ballads and Songs’ (1806)—­and Sir Frederic Madden, who was allowed—­by one of Percy’s daughters—­to print ‘The Grene Knight,’ ‘The Carle of Carlisle’ and ‘The Turk and Gawin’ in his ‘Syr Gawaine’ for the Bannatyne Club, 1839.”  Percy was furiously assailed by Joseph Ritson for manipulating his texts; and in the 1794 edition he made some concessions to the latter’s demand for a literal rescript, by taking off a few of the ornaments in which he had tricked them.  Ritson was a thoroughly critical, conscientious student of poetic antiquities and held the right theory of an editor’s functions.  In his own collection of early English poetry he rendered a valuable service to all later inquiries.  These included “Pieces of Ancient Popular Poetry,” 1791; “Ancient Songs,” 1792; “Scottish Songs,” 1794; “Robin Hood,” 1795; besides editions of Laurence Minot’s poems, and of “Gammer Gurton’s Needle,” as well as other titles.  He was an ill-tempered and eccentric man:  a vegetarian, a free-thinker, a spelling reformer,[41] and latterly a Jacobin.  He attacked Warton as well as Percy, and used to describe any clerical antagonist as a “stinking priest.”  He died insane in 1803.  Ritson took issue with the theory maintained in Percy’s introductory “Essay on the Ancient Minstrels,” viz.:  that the minstrels were not only the singers, but likewise the authors of the ballads.  But Ritson went so far in his rage against Percy as to deny the existence of the sacred Folio Manuscript, until convinced by abundant testimony that there was such a thing.  It was an age of forgeries, and Ritson was not altogether without justification in supposing that the author of “The Hermit of Warkworth” belonged in the same category with Chatterton, Ireland, and MacPherson.

Percy, like Warton, took an apologetic tone toward his public.  “In a polished age, like the present,” he wrote, “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.”  Indeed how should it have been