Life
1729-1811 [né Piercy]; editor of ‘Reliques of Ancient English
Poetry,’ and bishop of Dromore, 1782-1811 [var. 1783]; ed. Christ
Church, Oxon., MA 1753; DD, Emmanuel Coll., Cambridge, 1770; Reliques
(1765), from a folio manuscript in 17th c. handwriting containing ancient
poems of various dates; this work deemed by Wordsworth and others to be
fundamental to the romantic revival; his works include Northern Antiquities
(1770); removed St. Colman’s Cross from Dromore town to decorate
his garden; also removed nine-foot basaltic column from Giant’s Causeway
for same; longest surviving member of Johnson’s Literary Club; celebrated
on arrival in Dublin for his magnificent silk umbrella; fnd-mbr. Royal
Irish Academy; maintained friendly relations with Catholic prelates; Percy
was one of Charlotte Brooke’s advisers in compiling Reliques;
corresponded with Edward Malone, the great Shakespearean scholar; purveyed
rumours that Mary Wollestonecraft (wife of William Godwin and mother of
Mary Shelley) was anxious at Mitchelstown to ‘Discharge the Marriage
Duties’ with Lord Kingsborough. DNB OCIL [FDA]
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Works
Thomas Percy (Bishop of Dromore), Reliques of Ancient English Poetry,
ed. Henry Wheatley, 3 vols. (London 1891). See Arthur Tillotson, ed.,
Correspondence of Thomas Percy and Edmund Malone (Baton Rouge 1944).
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Criticism
Robert Welch, Irish Poetry from Moore to Yeats (Gerrards Cross:
Colin Smythe, 1980), p. 229; P. J. Kavanagh, Voices in Ireland
(1994), p.21-22.
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Commentary
Terence Brown, Northern Voices, Poets from Ulster (Dublin:
G&M 1975), Percy issued Reliques (1765); came to Ireland in 1782 and
remained apart from visits to Cheltenham, Windsor, and London, until his
death in 1811; [his] position commanded higher stipend than many English
bishopric[s]; undoubtedly happy to play part of cultured gentleman in
18th c. Anglo-Ireland; interest in Celtic and medieval past rather scholarly
and antiquarian than romantic; textual remains of vanished civilisation;
encouraged poetic and scholarly endeavours within confines of Augustan
taste and antiquarianism; close neighbour [to] Countess of Moira; patron
to Boyd, Stott, et al.; cites E. R. R. Green, ‘His presence undoubtedly
strengthened the feeble intellectual life of the country and especially
that of Belfast and the north which were just beginning to be aware of
a regional distinctiveness. Percy stood too near to the sources of romanticism
that transformed Ireland in the next generation to make any estimate of
his contribution in that direction. At second hand, it was undoubtedly
there, but of direct influence what can be said[?]. The prudent course
was simply to recount his life there and to identify the scholars and
writer he knew and encouraged.’ (E. R. R. Green, ‘Thomas Percy
in Ireland’, Ulster Folk Life, Vols. 15-16 (1970), p.231;
Brown, pp.15-16); Brown concludes that his influence was probably a force
for literary conservatism well into the nineteenth century (p.16).
Joseph Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fíor Ghael (1986), ‘Vallancey’s credulous acceptance of the Gaelic claims to prehistoric civility began to invite attacks from the opposite quarter, his Phoenician model which shed its ex oriente lux on the primeval Gaels, was opposed by fellow antiquarians; Bishop Percy, the compiler of the Reliques of ancient English poetry, was sceptical and complained that ‘Vallancey is as hot tempered as he is hot-headed, and downright quarrelled with me one evening at the [Dublin] Society, for presuming to question some of his wild reveries.’ (Percy to Pinkerton, 11 Feb. 1786) [404]. Walter Love comments, ‘it is probably not irrelevant that many of their [Ledwich, Beauford, Percy, and Campbell, all involved in the established Church of Ireland] regarded all attempts to glorify the ancient Irish as a challenge to the English conquest and subsequent domination.’ [405]. ‘it was not until [JC] Walker’s work had met with a positive reception that he and Bishop Percy could prevail on Charlotte Brooke to publish her collection of translations from the Irish’ [422]; Percy thought that the very ablest assistance in this kingdom that he could offer to Pinkerton was that of Campbell and [Theophilus] O’Flanagan. [425]
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period, 1789-1850, Vol. 1 (1980), Dromore school, unique in being only such gathering of writers. Thomas Percy, author of Reliques, Bishop from 1783; fled in 1798, returned, and remained to his death in 1811; under his tutelage, Thomas Stott abandoned his radical tendencies, and was ridiculed by Byron in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. ‘A Group at Dromore’ was painted by Thomas Robinson in 1807; the work of these poets, including Thomas Rodney Robinson, son of the foregoing, Henry Boyd, William Cunningham, and Samuel Burdy, was ordered and mechanical, full of clichés of traditional neo-classical England. Also remarks on William Drummond (see RX supra).
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Quotations
‘If ye go thyther, ye must consider/When ye have lust to dine,/There
shall no meat be for to gette/Nether bere, ale, ne wine,/ne shetes clean,
to lie between.’ (‘The Not Brown Mayd’, Percy’s Reliques,
Series Two; Book the First.)
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xReferences
Margaret Drabble, ed., The Oxford Companion to English Literature (OUP
1986), bio-data: b. Piercy, son of Bridgesnorth grocer, grad. Oxford.;
published from Portuguese version first Chinese novel in English, Hau
Kiou Choaan (1761); Five Pieces of Runic Poetry Translated the
Islandic [sic] Language (1763), includes ‘Death of Ragnor
Lodbrog’; Memoir of Goldsmith (1801); poetry incl. The
Hermit of Warkworth (1771); Reliques, 3. vols. (1765; rep.
4th ed. 1794), influential though later attacked as unscholarly. The Percy
Folio, an MS in mid-17th c. handwriting which belonged to Humphrey Pitt
of Shifnal, and basis of Child’s collection of ballad literature,
includes 14th c. alliterative poetry and ‘Scottish Feilde’,
on Flodden. Printed in entirety, Hales and Furnivall, 1867-68. The Percy
Society was founded in 1840 by T[homas] C[rofton] Croker, Dyce, Halliwell-Phillipps,
and JP Collier for purpose of publishing old lyrics and ballads. Harvey
ed., published Reliques, encouraged by success of Ossianic cult;
successive eds. included new material.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3, highwayman in Behan sourced in Percy, 214n; [The] same Romantic urge had in England produced Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry in 1765, 571.
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Notes
Account of letter by Percy to Dr. Robert Anderson of Edinburgh. MSS 599;
cited in Celtica (1967), catalogue of Gaelic materials in Scottish National
Library [see supra under James Macpherson].
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)