[35] In 1830.
[36] Ritson's principal works were as follows: Select Collection of English Songs (1783); Pieces of Ancient Popular Poetry from Authentic Manuscripts and Old Printed Copies (1791); Ancient Songs from the Time of Henry III. to the Revolution (1792); Scottish Songs with the Genuine Music (1794); Poems by Laurence Minot (1795); Robin Hood Poems (1795); Ancient English Metrical Romances (1802).
[37] Ellis published his Specimens of the Early English Poets in 1790, and it was reissued with the addition of the Introduction in 1801 and 1803. He edited also Way's translations of the Fabliaux (1796), and Specimens of Early English Romances in Metre (1805).
[38] Review of Dunlop's History of Fiction, July, 1815.
[39] The Magnum Opus of Robert Surtees was his History of Durham, published 1816-1840.
[40] Douce published Illustrations of Shakespeare in 1807. Later he edited Arnold's Chronicle; Judicium, a Pageant; and a metrical Life of St. Robert. The two latter, which appeared in 1822 and 1824, were done for the Roxburghe Club. In 1824 he also wrote some notes for Warton's History of English Poetry.
[41] Age of Wordsworth, p. 39.
[42] A number of volumes containing old ballads together with modern imitations had been published both before and after the appearance of Percy's Reliques, but Ritson's collections were the first, except Percy's, to treat the material in a scholarly way.
[43] The discussion centered upon the social and literary position of minstrels. The first edition of the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, published in 1765, contained an essay on the History of Minstrelsy, and one on the Origin of the Metrical Romances, which, taken together, says Mr. Courthope, "may be said to furnish the first generalized theory of the nature of mediaeval poetry." (History of English Poetry, Vol. I, p. 426.) Percy considered the minstrels as the authors of the compositions which they sang to the harp, and as holding a dignified social position similar to that of the Anglo-Saxon scôp or the old Norse scald. This theory was vigorously attacked by Joseph Ritson in the preface of his Select Collection of English Songs in 1783, and again in his Ancient English Metrical Romances in 1802, and in his essay On the Ancient English Minstrels in Ancient Songs and Ballads (1792). Ritson contended that minstrels were musical performers of a low class, or even acrobats, and that they were not literary composers. Scott used his knowledge of ballads and romances and the customs depicted in them to reinforce his own decision that the truth lay somewhere between the two extremes. He pointed out that the word may have covered a wide variety of professional entertainers. A modern comment (by E.K. Chambers, in The Mediaeval Stage, Vol. I, p. 66) seems like an echo of Scott: "This general antithesis between the higher and lower minstrelsy may now, perhaps, be regarded as established. It was the neglect of it, surely, that led to that curious and barren logomachy between Percy and Ritson, in which neither of the disputants can be said to have had hold of more than a bare half of the truth."
[44] Scott's theory as to the authorship of ballads is even now held by Mr. Courthope. At the end of his chapter on Minstrelsy, in The History of English Poetry, he thus sums up the matter: "All the evidence cited in this chapter shows that, so far from the ballad being a spontaneous product of popular imagination, it was a type of poem adapted by the professors of the declining art of minstrelsy, from the romances once in favour with the educated classes. Everything in the ballad—matter, form, composition—is the work of the minstrel; all that the people do is to remember and repeat what the minstrel has put together." This statement represents a position which is actively assailed by the adherents of the communal origin theory. Another critical idea which originated in Germany, and in which Scott had no interest, though he knew something about it, was the Wolffian hypothesis in regard to the Homeric poems. He once heard Coleridge expound the subject, but failed to join in the discussion. (Journal, Vol. II, p. 164; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 193.) He said the theory could never be held by any poet. See a note by Lockhart on the essay on Popular Poetry. Henderson's edition of Minstrelsy, Vol. I, p. 3.