Thomas Percy: Antiquarian vs. Man of Taste

Thomas Percy was a born scholar. He loved the meticulous detail-hunting his studies required—or he would not have done so much of it. But pure scholarship offered him little opportunity for advancement. Given a post, one might be a solitary worker, like Wanley, content with doing one's duty to the books without much interest in the public. And if Percy had obtained the assistant librarianship in the British Museum about which he inquired, he might have become a scholar of that type. But he was expecting scholarship to subserve literature as a means to clerical advancement. And clerical advancement required pull. Percy had no pull—he must make it himself. He must become widely known; his approach must be literary.