Ritson, JOSEPH, a learned and honest, but pedantic, acrid, and ill-mannered antiquary, was born of Westmorland yeoman family at Stockton-on-Tees, in 1752. He was bred to the law, and practised as a conveyancer in London, but was enabled by the profits of the office of Deputy High-bailiff of the Duchy of Lancaster to give most of his time to antiquarian studies. He made himself as notorious by his crazy vegetarianism, his whimsical spelling, and irreverence, as by the acerbity of his attacks on much bigger men than himself. Scott alone of his contemporaries kept good terms with him, but then none other had his large heart and genial humour. Undoubtedly Ritson's mind was deranged, and he died in a fit of gloom, 3d September 1803. Ritson's industry was remarkable, and all his forty books are valuable despite the blemishes in which they abound. His first important work was an abusive but well-grounded attack on Warton's History of English Poetry (1782). Next year he assailed Johnson and Steevens for their text of Shakespeare; in 1790 he attacked Bishop Percy with absurd ferocity in the preface to a collection of Ancient Songs; in 1792 appeared his characteristic Cursory Criticisms on Malone's Shakespeare.
Other works were A Select Collection of English Songs (3 vols. 1783); Pieces of Ancient Popular Poetry (1791); The English Anthology (3 vols. 1793-94); A Collection of Scottish Songs (2 vols. 1794); Poems, by Laurence Minot (1795); Robin Hood: a Collection of all the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads (2 vols. 1795); Bibliographica Poetica: a Catalogue of English Poets of the XII.-XVI. Centuries (1802); and Ancient English Metrical Romances (3 vols. 1802). His various North Country Garlands and his Essay on Abstinence from Animal Food as a Moral Duty (1802) were less important. Joseph Haslewood wrote a short account of his Life (1824); his Letters were edited, with a Life, by Sir N. Harris Nicolas (2 vols. 1833).