man literature began almost, if not quite, as early as that of William Taylor of Norwich, one of the earliest Englishmen to make his countrymen acquainted with German poetry. As a youth of fifteen, in August, 1781,[1] Stanley set out for the continent, and took up his residence at Brunswick, where he remained a year with most intimate relations to the court and the people of the German principality. In May, 1783, he again returned to the continent, this time residing at Neuchatel, Lyons, and later at Turin, where he remained until the spring of 1785.[2] Once more, in the spring of 1786, he revisited Neuchatel, staying there almost a year and then spending some months in Italy.[3]
Perhaps owing to the circumstances narrated at the last of the Præterita (see last footnote), the young Stanley no longer went to the continent for his education. In 1788, however, he proceeded to the University of Edinburgh where, under Playfair, Dugald Stewart and Dr. Joseph Black, he acquired new interests in mathematics, philosophy and natural science.[4] The latter led to an unusual venture for a young man of twenty-three. He fitted out and commanded a scientific expedition to Iceland in the summer of 1789. The journey was made "in princely style," says the Gentleman's Magazine, "in a private yacht, accompanied by a staff of naturalists, draughtsmen and men of science."[5]
- ↑ It was in July of the same year that William Taylor, at the age of sixteen, settled at Detmold, Westphalia, for a year's residence, and there became an enthusiastic admirer of German literature. The young Stanley's early residence abroad was due to his mother, Margaret Owen, who thought his youthful days "much more profitably spent than those of most English lads are; he sees good company and hears talk of reason, principle, and morals, which few others do." Early Married Life of Maria Josepha, Lady Stanley, by J. H. Adeane, p. 44.
- ↑ The Early Married Life of Maria Josepha, Lady Stanley, by J. H. Adeane, Ld., 1899. The first part of this interesting volume gives extracts from Stanley's Praeterita, an autobiography so called by him half a century before that name appeared on a title-page of Ruskin. The references to this German residence are on pp. 16-30.
- ↑ Young Stanley's experience at Neuchätel was an exact parallel to that of the young Gibbon at Lausanne some years earlier. Stanley fell in love with the beautiful "Adelaide", "the daughter of an old officer", and she "remained through life his ideal of perfect womanhood." (Early Married Life, pp. 53-54). "Obstacles to marriage intervened," we are told, and like the young Gibbon "he sighed like a lover", he "obeyed as a son." The beautiful Adelaide, however, was not so fortunate as the charming Susanne Curchod. She died unmarried, sending back to her English lover at her death his letters to her, with a packet of her journals. His comments (Ibid. p. 53) prove the depth of his affection. It was too early for the international marriage to be commonly accepted.
This unusual European education gave the young Stanley his knowledge of foreign literatures. In the Preface to the Early Married Life (p. viii) ) the author says: "Before he [Stanley] was twenty he had mixed in the court circles of three European capitals, Brunswick, Turin and Rome. French he spoke fluently, German and Italian with facility, and his love of German literature never left him." - ↑ Annual Register (1850), p. 273. Curiously enough the paths of Stanley and William Taylor again cross. The latter visited his friend Frank Savers at Edinburgh university in the same year; see Robberds, Life of William Taylor of Norwich, I, 63.
- ↑ Gentleman's Magazine, Dec, 1850. The language is misleading in our time of far more elaborate scientific expeditions. The companions of Mr. Stanley were Mr. Baine, teacher of mathematics at the university, for scientific observations and drawings; Mr. Wright, medical student at Edinburgh, acting surgeon and botanist; Mr. Benners, a Danish student, keeper of accounts; Mr. Taylor, a collector and setter of minerals in the city.—Early Married Life, p. 58.
