5 Thomas Percy (1729-1811) published _The
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_, an epoch-making work in the
history of the romantic movement. The _Reliques_ is a collection of
old English ballads and songs, many of which have a romantic story to
tell. Scott drew inspiration from them, and Wordsworth acknowledged
his indebtedness to their influence. So important was this collection
that it has been called "the Bible of the Romantic Reformation."

In 1770 appeared Percy's translation of Mallet's _Northern
Antiquities_. For the first time the English world was given an easily
accessible volume which disclosed the Norse mythology in all its
strength and weirdness. As classical mythology had become hackneyed,
poets like Gray rejoiced that there was a new fountain to which they
could turn. Thor and his invincible hammer, the Frost Giants, Bifrost
or the Rainbow Bridge, Odin, the Valkyries, Valhal, the sad story of
Baldur, and the Twilight of the Gods, have appealed strongly to a race
which takes pride in its own mythology, to a race which today loves to
hear Wagner's translation of these myths into the music of _Die
Walkuere, Siegfried_, and _Goetterdaemmerung_.

Thomas Chatterton, 1772-1770.--This Bristol boy was early in his
teens impressed with Percy's _Reliques_ and with the fact that
Macpherson's claim to having discovered _Ossian_ in old manuscripts
had made him famous. Chatterton spent much time in the interesting old
church of St.

Mary Redcliffe, of which his ancestors had been sextons for several
generations. He studied the manuscripts in an old chest and began to
write a series of poems, which he claimed to have discovered among the
parchments left by Thomas Rowley, a fifteenth-century monk.

Chatterton was unsuccessful in finding a publisher, and he determined
to go to London, where he thought that, like other authors, he could
live by his pen. In April, 1770, at the age of seventeen, he left
Bristol for London, where he took poison in August of the same year to
escape a slower death by starvation.

His romantic poetry and pathetic end appealed to all the great poets.
Wordsworth spoke of him as "the marvelous boy"; Coleridge called him
"young-eyed Poesy"; Shelley honored him in _Adonais_; and Keats
inscribed _Endymion_ to his memory. Traces of his influence may be
found in Coleridge and Keats.

The greatest charm of Chatterton's verse appears in unusual epithets
and unexpected poetic turns, such, for instanc