The tendency to present the old ballads in an eighteenth century dress had soon revealed itself; at least, the editors of the early collections often felt themselves obliged to apologize for the obsolete style of their material.[150] But in 1760 the first attempt at a critical text appeared when Edward Capell, the famous Shakespearian editor, published his “Prolusions”; or “Select Pieces of Antient Poetry—compil’d with great Care from their several Originals, and offer’d to the Publick as specimens of the Integrity that should be found in the Editions of worthy Authors.” Capell’s care was almost entirely directed to ensuring textual accuracy, but the “Nut-Browne Maid,” the only ballad included, receives sympathetic mention in his brief _Preface_.[151] Five years later, the most famous of all the ballad collections appeared, Thomas Percy’s “Reliques of Ancient English Poetry” (1765). The nucleus of Percy’s collection was a certain manuscript in a handwriting of Charles I’s time, containing 191 songs and ballads, but he had also had access to various other manuscript collections, whilst he was quite ready to acknowledge that he had filled gaps in his originals with stanzas and, in some cases, with nearly entire poems of his own composition. Much censure has been heaped upon Percy for his apparent lax ideas on the functions of an editor, but in decking out his “parcel of old ballads” in the false and affected style of his age, he was only doing his best to meet the taste of his readers. He himself passes judgment on his own labours, when, alongside of the genuine old ballads, with their freshness and simplicity of diction, he places his own “pruned” or “refined” versions, or additions, garbed in a sham and sickly idiom. It was not until over a century later, when Percy’s folio manuscript was copied and printed,[152] that the extent of his additions, alterations, and omissions were fully realized, though at the same time it was admitted that the pruning and refining was not unskilfully done. Nevertheless the influence of the “Reliques,” as a vital part of the Romantic revival, was considerable:[153] it was as if a breath of “the wind on the heath” had swept across literature and its writers, bringing with it an invigorating fragrance and freshness, whilst, on the purely formal side, the genuine old ballads, which Percy had culled and printed untouched, no doubt played their part in directing the attention of Wordsworth to the whole question of the language of poetry. And when the great Romantic manifestoes on the subject of “the language of metrical composition” were at length launched, their author was not slow to bear witness to the revivifying influence of the old ballads on poetic form. “Our poetry,” he wrote, “has been absolutely redeemed by it. I do not think that there is an able writer in verse of the present day who would not be proud to acknowledge his obligations to the “Reliques.”[154]