He did not satisfy every one. Ritson’s immediate outcry is famous--and Ritson stood almost alone. He did, indeed, go so far as to deny the existence of the Folio Manuscript, and Percy was forced to confute him by producing it. In the later editions of the _Reliques_, Percy sought to conciliate him by revising his texts, so as to approximate them more closely to his originals, but still Ritson cried out for the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And by this time he had supporters. But the whole truth as regards the Folio was not to be divulged yet. The manuscript was most jealously guarded. Meanwhile the influence of the publication was having its effect. The poetry of the schools, the poetry of the intellect, the poetry of art, brought to its highest pitch by writers like Dryden and Pope, was shelved; metrically exact diction, artificiality of expression, carefully balanced antitheses, and all the mechanical devices of the school were placed in abeyance. There was a general return to Nature, to simplicity, to straightforwardness--not without imagination, however. Wordsworth, besides insisting, in a famous passage, the Preface to the _Lyrical Ballads_, on the spontaneity of good poetry, recorded his tribute to the _Reliques_: ‘I do not think that there is an able writer in verse of the present day who would not be proud to acknowledge his obligation to the _Reliques_.’ While failing often to catch the gusto of ancient poetry--witness his translations from Chaucer--Wordsworth was full of the spirit--witness his rifacimento of _The Owl and the Nightingale_--and, best of all, handed it on to Coleridge.[9] These two fought side by side against the conventions of the preceding century, against Dryden, Addison, Pope, and last, but not least, Johnson. Some have gone so far as to place the definite turning-point in the year 1798, the year of the publication of the _Lyrical Ballads_. Coleridge’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._]