leridge's
_annus mirabilis_ was 1797, and the publication of _The Ancient Mariner_
is significant of the change. But we need not bind ourselves down to any
given year. Enough that the revolution was effected, and that it is
scarcely exaggeration to say that it was almost entirely due to the
publication of the _Reliques_.

[Footnote 9: 'He [Coleridge] said the _Lyrical Ballads_ were an
experiment about to be tried by him and Wordsworth, to see how far
the public taste would endure poetry written in a more natural and
simple style than had hitherto been attempted; totally discarding
the artifices of poetical diction, and making use only of such words
as had probably been common in the most ordinary language since the
days of Henry II.'--_Hazlitt._]

Sir Walter Scott remembered to the day of his death the place where he
first made acquaintance with the _Reliques_ in his thirteenth year. 'I
remember well the spot where I read those volumes for the first time. It
was beneath a large platanus-tree, in the ruins of what had been
intended for an old-fashioned arbour in the garden I have mentioned. The
summer day sped onward so fast, that, notwithstanding the sharp appetite
of thirteen, I forgot the hour of dinner, was sought for with anxiety,
and was still found entranced in my intellectual banquet.'

Almost immediately competitors appeared in the field, and especial
attention was given to Scotland, exceedingly rich ground, as it proved.
In 1769, David Herd published his collection of _Ancient and Modern
Scots Songs, Heroic Ballads, etc._ Then, at intervals of two or three
years only, came the compilations of Evans, Pinkerton, Ritson, Johnson;
in 1802 Sir Walter Scott's _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, fit to
be placed side by side with the _Reliques_; in 1806 Jamieson's _Popular
Ballads and Songs_; then Finlay, Gilchrist, Laing, and Utterson. In 1828
the egregious Peter Buchan produced _Ancient Ballads and Songs of the
North of Scotland, hitherto unpublished_. Buchan hints that he kept a
pedlar or beggarman--'a wight of Homer's craft'--travelling through
Scotland to pick up ballads; and one of the two--probably Buchan--must
have been possessed of powerful inventive faculties. Each of Buchan's
ballads is tediously spun out to enormous and unnecessary length, and is
filled with solecisms and inanities quite inconsistent with the spirit
of the true ballad. But Buchan undoubtedly gained fresh material,
however