ication of Dodsley's "Old Plays," (1744) as,
like Percy's "Reliques," a symptom of the return of the past. Essay on
"Gray."

[14] "Eighteenth Century Literature," pp. 401-03.

[15] It is curious, however, to find Warton describing Villon as "a pert
and insipid ballad-monger, whose thoughts and diction were as low and
illiberal as his life," Vol. II. p. 338 (Fifth Edition, 1806).

[16] Warton quotes the follow bathetic opening of a "Poem in Praise of
Blank Verse" by Aaron Hill, "one of the very first persons who took
notice of Thomson, on the publication of 'Winter'":

"Up from Rhyme's poppied vale! And ride the storm
That thunders in blank verse!"
--Vol. II. p. 186.

[17] See _ante_, p. 57.

[18] See _ante_, p. 181.

[19] To Richard West, April, 1742.

[20] See _ante_, p. 94.

CHAPTER VII.

The Gothic Revival.

One of Thomas Warton's sonnets was addressed to Richard Hurd, afterward
Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, and later of Worcester. Hurd was a
friend of Gray and Mason, and his "Letters on Chivalry and Romance"
(1762) helped to initiate the romantic movement. They perhaps owed their
inspiration, in part, to Sainte Palaye's "Memoires sur l'ancienne
Chevalerie," the first volume of which was issued in 1759, though the
third and concluding volume appeared only in 1781. This was a monumental
work and, as a standard authority, bears much the same relation to the
literature of its subject that Mallet's "Histoire de Dannemarc" bears to
all the writing on Runic mythology that was done in Europe during the
eighteenth-century. Jean Baptiste de la Curne de Sainte Palaye was a
scholar of wide learning, not only in the history of mediaeval
institutions but in old French dialects. He went to the south of France
to familiarize himself with Provencal: collected a large library of
Provencal books and manuscripts, and published in 1774 his "Histoire de
Troubadours." Among his other works are a "Dictionary of French
Antiquities," a glossary of Old French, and an edition of "Aucassin et
Nicolete." Mrs. Susannah Dobson, who wrote "Historical Anecdotes of
Heraldry and Chivalry" (1795), made an English translation of Sainte
Palaye's "History of the Troubadours" in 1779, and of his "Memoirs of
Ancient Chivalry" in 1784.

The purpose of Hurd's letters was to prove "the pre-eminence of the
Gothic manners and fictions, as adapted to the ends of poetry, above the
classic." "The greatest g