It is a pity that this accurate scholar could not have had a sufficient amount of literary taste, to say nothing of good manners, to inspire others with a fuller trust in his method.

Scott expresses impatience with him for seeming to prefer the less effective text in many instances, "as if a poem was not more likely to be deteriorated than improved by passing through the mouths of many reciters."[47] He admitted, however, that it was not in his own period necessary to rework the ballads as much as Bishop Percy had done, since the _Reliques_ had already created an audience for popular poetry.

His purpose evidently was to steer a middle course between such graceful but sophisticated versions as were given in the _Reliques_, and the exact transcript of everything to be gathered from tradition, whether interesting or not, that was attempted by Ritson.

In his later revisions he gave way more than at first to his natural impulse in favor of the added graces which he could supply.[48] It is easy to see how his own contributions of word and phrase might slip in, since his avowed method was to collate the different texts secured from manuscripts or recitation or both, and so to give what to his mind was the worthiest version.

Believing that the ballads had been composed by men not unlike himself, he assumed, in the manner well known to classical text-critics, that his familiarity with the conditions of the ancient social order gave him some license for changing here and there a word or a line.