"folio manuscript," Percy's nephew
in the advertisement to the fourth edition (1794), cited "the appeal
publicly made to Dr. Johnson . . . so long since as in the year 1765, and
never once contradicted by him."

In spite of these amenities, the doctor had a low opinion of ballads and
ballad collectors. In the _Rambler_ (No. 177) he made merry over one
Cantilenus, who "turned all his thoughts upon old ballads, for he
considered them as the genuine records of the natural taste. He offered
to show me a copy of 'The Children in the Wood,' which he firmly believed
to be of the first edition, and by the help of which the text might be
freed from several corruptions, if this age of barbarity had any claim to
such favors from him." "The conversation," says Boswell, "having turned
on modern imitations of ancient ballads, and someone having praised their
simplicity, he treated them with that ridicule which he always displayed
when that subject was mentioned." Johnson wrote several stanzas in
parody of the ballads; _e.g._,

"The tender infant, meek and mild,
Fell down upon a stone:
The nurse took up the squealing child,
But still the child squealed on."

And again:

"I put my hat upon my head
And walked into the Strand;
And there I met another man
Whose hat was in his hand."

This is quoted by Wordsworth,[36] who compares it with a stanza from "The
Children in the Wood":

"Those pretty babes, with hand in hand,
Went wandering up and down;
But never more they saw the man
Approaching from the town."

He says that in both of these stanzas the language is that of familiar
conversation, yet one stanza is admirable and the other contemptible,
because the _matter_ of it is contemptible. In the essay supplementary
to his preface, Wordsworth asserts that the "Reliques" was "ill suited to
the then existing taste of city society, and Dr. Johnson . . . was not
sparing in his exertions to make it an object of contempt": and that "Dr.
Percy was so abashed by the ridicule flung upon his labors . . . that,
though while he was writing under a mask he had not wanted resolution to
follow his genius into the regions of true simplicity and genuine pathos
(as is evinced by the exquisite ballad of 'Sir Cauline' and by many other
pieces), yet when he appeared in his own person and character as a
poetical writer, he adopted, as in the tale of 'The Hermit of Warkworth,'
a dictio