As an Englishman one could not but feel it a disgrace that an American should take more interest in an English MS. than oneself, and the more a disgrace that in this case the genuineness or falsity of the text of a score of our best ballads was involved. Was one to acknowledge that the old Sidney spirit had taken flight from its native land, and found a new home even in that noble North which had at last gone "thorough" for the slave, fighting the worthiest fight one's life had seen? Hardly ; much as one admired that home. So, though the Percy MS. was long after the time of my section of Early English work, though my hands were otherwise more than full, I tried to get access to the MS. some half-dozen years ago. Repulsed, I tried again when starting the Early English Text Society. Repulsed again, I tried again at a later date, but with the like result. Not rebuffed by this, Professor Child added his offer of 50£ to mine of 100£ through Mr. Thurstan Holland, a friend of his own and of the owners of the MS., and this last attempt succeeded. We obtained the right to hold the MS. for six months, and make and print one copy of it. This six months the owners kindly extended from time to time to thirteen, to enable all the proofs and revises to be read with the MS. before it was returned to them—for sale, as we afterwards heard, to the British Museum.
2. Of the value of the work, others must judge. The long delays and the trials of temper involved in it, the large money-risk still impending,[1] the unsatisfactoriness of being able to give only half-hours of hardly-earned pause from other work to points that needed a week's leisure to study, the great annoyance by which one subscriber has answered our efforts in the cause, these things have dulled one's pleasure in the book, have lowered one's estimate of the usefulness of it. Still, to say the least, it is the getting done a thing which ought not to have
- ↑ The debt on the book is over 800£
