As for Scott, he has recorded in an oft-quoted passage the impression that Percy’s volumes made upon him in his school-days:  “I remember well the spot where I read these volumes for the first time.  It was beneath a huge plantain tree in the ruins of what had been intended for an old-fashioned arbor in the garden I have mentioned.  The summer day sped onward so fast that, notwithstanding the sharp appetite of thirteen, I forgot the hour of dinner, was sought for with anxiety, and was still found entranced in my intellectual banquet.  To read and to remember was, in this instance, the same thing; and henceforth I overwhelmed my school-fellows, and all who would hearken to me, with tragical recitations from the ballads of Bishop Percy.  The first time, too, I could scrape a few shillings together, I bought unto myself a copy of these beloved volumes; nor do I believe I ever read a book so frequently, or with half the enthusiasm.”

The “Reliques” worked powerfully in Germany, too.  It was received in Lessing’s circle with universal enthusiasm,[50] and fell in with that newly aroused interest in “Volkslieder” which prompted Herder’s “Stimmen der Voelker” (1778-79).[51] Gottfried August Buerger, in particular, was a poet who may be said to have been made by the English ballad literature, of which he was an ardent student.  His poems were published in 1778, and included five translations from Percy:  “The Child of Elle” ("Die Entfuehrung"), “The Friar of Orders Grey” ("Graurock"), “The Wanton Wife of Bath” ("Frau Schnips"), “King John and the Abbot of Canterbury” ("Der Kaiser und der Abt"), and “Child Waters” ("Graf Walter").  A. W. Schlegel says that Burger did not select the more ancient and genuine pieces in the “Reliques”; and, moreover, that he spoiled the simplicity of the originals in his translations.  It was doubtless in part the success of the “Reliques” that is answerable for many collections of old English poetry put forth in the last years of the century.  Tyrwhitt’s “Chaucer” and Ritson’s publications have been already mentioned.  George Ellis, a friend and correspondent of Walter Scott, and a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, who was sometimes called “the Sainte Palaye of England,” issued his “Specimens of Early English Poets” in 1790; edited in 1796 G. L. Way’s translations from French fabliaux of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; and printed in 1805 three volumes of “Early English Metrical Romances.”

It is pleasant to record that Percy’s labors brought him public recognition and the patronage of those whom Dr. Johnson used to call “the great.”  He had dedicated the “Reliques” to Elizabeth Percy, Countess of Northumberland.  Himself the son of a grocer, he liked to think that he was connected by blood with the great northern house whose exploits had been sung by the ancient minstrels that he loved.  He became chaplain to the Duke of Northumberland, and to King George III.; and, in 1782, Bishop of Dromore in Ireland, in which see he died in 1811.