But  "  The  Beggar's  Daughter  of  Bednall  Green  "  and
"  Sir  Andrew  Barton  "  and  "  Young  Waters  "  and
"  Mary  Ambree  "  and  "  The  Brave  Lord  Willoughby  "
and  "The  Spanish  Lady"  —  how  infinitely  better
must  have  been  the  state  of  a  man  of  any  mark  or
likelihood  in  ways  literary  after,  as  compared  with
before,  his  reading  of  these  !  There  are  nine  "  Books  "
in  the  Reliques,  and  we  have  got  past  the  centre  with  the
end  of  the  Fifth  ;  but  there  is  still  plenty  to  be  thankful
for.  The  Essay  on  Langland's  verse,  which  opens  the
Sixth,  is  of  course  unillumined  by  many  of  our  later
lights  ;  but  there  are  some  things  in  it  which  show  that
mother-wit  can  sometimes  dispense  with  book-lore.
1  As  that  excellent  and  humorous,  but  perhaps  now  by  some  forgotten,  Yorkshire
gentleman,  traveller,  and  taxidermist,  used,  by  his  skill  in  the  last-named  art,  to  fashion
fantastic  or  appalling  creations,  appropriately  stuffed  from  nature,  so  did  Percy  here
finish  off,  or  rather  introduce  the  finish,  of  the  older  piece  by  the  very  striking
incident  of  the  lonesome  lodge  and  the  attempted  suicide,  which  he  took  from  a
wretched  late  chap-book  form.  The  difference  between  the  scholar  and  the  pedant
could  hardly  be  better  shown  than  in  Child's  frank  and  reasoned  acknowledgment
of  this  "  improvement  "  as  being  really  a  great  one.
