With all its imperfections—­perhaps partly in consequence of its imperfections—­the “Reliques” was an epoch-making book.  The nature of its service to English letters is thus stated by Macaulay, in the introduction to his “Lays of Ancient Rome”:  “We cannot wonder that the ballads of Rome should have altogether disappeared, when we remember how very narrowly, in spite of the invention of printing, those of our own country and those of Spain escaped the same fate.  There is, indeed, little doubt that oblivion covers many English songs equal to any that were published by Bishop Percy; and many Spanish songs as good as the best of those which have been so happily translated by Mr. Lockhart.  Eighty years ago England possessed only one tattered copy of ’Child Waters’ and ‘Sir Cauline,’ and Spain only one tattered copy of the noble poem of the ‘Cid.’  The snuff of a candle, or a mischievous dog, might in a moment have deprived the world forever of any of those fine compositions.  Sir Walter Scott, who united to the fire of a great poet the minute curiosity and patient diligence of a great antiquary, was but just in time to save the precious reliques of the Minstrelsy of the Border.”

But Percy not only rescued, himself, a number of ballads from forgetfulness; what was equally important, his book prompted others to hunt out and publish similar relics before it was too late.  It was the occasion of collections like Herd’s (1769), Scott’s (1802-03), and Motherwell’s (1827), and many more, resting on purer texts and edited on more scrupulous principles than his own.  Futhermore, his ballads helped to bring about a reform in literary taste and to inspire men of original genius.  Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Scott, all acknowledged the greatest obligations to them.  Wordsworth said that English poetry had been “absolutely redeemed” by them.  “I do not think there is a writer in verse of the present day who would not be proud to acknowledge his obligations to the ‘Reliques.’  I know that it is so with my friends; and, for myself, I am happy that it is so with my friends; and, for myself, I am happy in this occasion to make a public avowal of my own."[48] Without the “Reliques,” “The Ancient Mariner,” “The Lady of the Lake,” “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” “Stratton Water,” and “The Haystack in the Floods” might never have been.  Perhaps even the “Lyrical Ballads” might never have been, or might have been something quite unlike what they are.  Wordsworth, to be sure, scarcely ranks among romantics, and he expressly renounces the romantic machinery: 

    “The dragon’s wing,
    The magic ring,
    I shall not covet for my dower."[49]

What he learned from the popular ballad was the power of sincerity and of direct and homely speech.