Chatterton's _Rowley Poems_, which in many places seem almost inconceivably banal and artificial to us to-day, caught their accent from the episcopal editor as much as from the ballads themselves.

None the less, whatever its fault, Percy's collection gave its impetus to one half of the romantic movement; it was eagerly read in Germany, and when it came to influence Scott and Coleridge it did so not only directly, but through Burger's imitation of it; it began the modern study and love of the ballad which has given us _Sister Helen_, the _White Ship_ and the _Lady of Shalott_.
But the romantic revival goes deeper than any change, however momentous of fashion or style.

It meant certain fundamental changes in human outlook.

In the first place, one notices in the authors of the time an extraordinary development of imaginative sensibility; the mind at its countless points of contact with the sensuous world and the world of thought, seems to become more alive and alert.

It is more sensitive to fine impressions, to finely graded shades of difference.