RITSON Joseph (1752-1803), was the most militant and ill-tempered, and at the same time one of the most learned and accurate, of the antiquaries of the 18th century. Born at Stockton-on-Tees, of a Westmoreland yeoman family, in 1752, he was bred to the law, and settled in London as a conveyancer at the age of twenty-two. Already he had shown eccentricity of temper, had become a fierce apostle of vegetarianism, and a zealous student of antiquities. His first notable publication was in 1782, an attack on Warton’s History of English Poetry. The fierce and insulting tone of his Observations, in which Warton was treated as a showy pretender, and charged with cheating and lying to cover his ignorance, made a great sensation in literary circles. In nearly all the small points with which he dealt Ritson was in the right, and his corrections have since been adopted, but the unjustly bitter language of his criticisms roused great anger at the time, much, it would appear, to Ritson’s delight. In the following year Johnson and Steevens were assailed in the same unceremonious fashion for their text of Shakespeare. Bishop Percy was next subjected to a furious onslaught in the preface to a collection of Ancient Songs (printed 1787, dated 1790, published 1792). The only thing that can be said in extenuation of Ritson’s unmatchable acrimony is that he spared no pains himself to ensure accuracy in the texts of old songs, ballads, and metrical romances that he edited. His collection of the Robin Hood ballads is perhaps his greatest single achievement. Scott, who admired his industry and accuracy in spite of his temper, was almost the only man who could get on with him. On one occasion, when he called in Scott’s absence, he spoke so rudely to Mrs Scott that Leyden, who was present, ...