"Sounds like Sharp held the "lower and unlettered classes" in some admiration, possibly before he even began collecting.
Remember how thrilled he was by a chance encounter with the singing of John England - which started him on his new avocation."

I agree enirely with the first sentence, and Sharp's admiration certainly shines through in his accounts of meeting singers of a different social status from himself.

The meeting with John England probably wasn't the 'chance event' of Sharpian mythology, though, as Derek Schofield's paper referenced above explains in some detail.