The Earliest English Translations of Bürger's Lenore: a Study in English and German Romanticism/Chapter 3

by Oliver Farrar Emerson

III. William Taylor and His Translation of Lenore.

The publication of Stanley's Leonora resulted in the speedy printing of William Taylor's first version of the Bürger poem in the Monthly Magazine for March. I say the first version because, as we shall see, Taylor printed a revised form before the close of the year, and this second version is more widely known from its republication, many years later, in his Historic Survey of German Poetry.^[1]

That Taylor's was the next version to be printed seems clear from the fact that Pye's translation is not mentioned among new publications until the April number of the Monthly Magazine. This periodical, it should be said, was issued toward the last of the month, possibly at the very end, a common way with eighteenth century magazines. The proof of this is that in each number occur references to the events of the current month. Thus, letters as late as the twentieth, and events as late as the twenty-second of March appear in the March number. Again, Stanley's Leonora, which could not have appeared until Feb. 8, as shown by the date of its preface, is mentioned among the new books in the February number. The mention of Pye's translation as new only in the April number implies, therefore, that it was not issued until that month, or at the earliest toward the very end of March. This makes practically certain that the Taylor version was the second to be issued, or at least that Taylor's and Pye's translations appeared simultaneously.

William Taylor's interest in German literature is well known, but some additional facts may now be given regarding his translation of this particular poem. To do this we must review briefly certain parts of his life. He was the son of a prosperous tradesman of Norwich, where he was born in 1765. His most important early schooling began at Palgrave near Diss, Norfolk, in 1774. At the head of the school in these years was the Rev. Rochemont Barbauld, husband of the more famous Anne Letitia Aikin, the Mrs. Barbauld of English literature, who also assisted in the school. She was sister of Dr. John Aikin, minor poet and miscellaneous writer of the time. As we shall notice later, this acquaintance with Mrs. Barbauld and Dr. John Aikin was to have important relations to Taylor's translation of Lenore, as well as to one other of the translators of this eventful year. From Mrs. Barbauld the young Taylor received his early training in English composition, with such effect that he later called her "'the mother of his mind', and always regarded her instructions as the most valuable part of the discipline through which he had passed."^[2]

In 1779 Taylor made the first of three visits to the continent, this time through the Netherlands, France and Italy. In April, 1781, he again left for the continent, and about the middle of July settled at Detmold, Westphalia, for the study of German.^[3]

There he spent a year and a few days, becoming an enthusiastic student of the new culture, of which, not many years afterwards, he was to be an early exponent in his native country. As we are not now interested in his later work, it may be hastily summarized. It consisted of much reviewing of German literature, much criticism of more general character in various reviews, some further translations of high character, and finally in the later years of his life his Historic Survey of German Poetry.

Taylor's residence and study in Germany fully account for his later devotion to German literature. Yet it was not at once to bear fruit in translation or exposition of German poetry. This was partly owing to Taylor's association with his father in business from 1784 to 1788, and less actively until the business was given up in 1791. Yet Taylor's interest in literature continued during these years, and he was eager to devote his whole time to it. A further interest in German is perhaps associated with that of his friend Sayers. The latter had given up his medical studies at the University of Edinburgh in 1788 and, devoting himself to literature soon after, published his Dramatic Sketches of Northern Mythology in 1790. As already noted, Taylor visited Sayers at Edinburgh in the former year.^[4] Perhaps, too, the appearance of a new edition of Bürger's Gedichte in 1789 may have turned his attention again to that poet. In any case Taylor began his translations from German poetry about this time. He prepared his English versions of Goethe's Iphigenia and Lessing's Nathan Der Weise in 1790, though they were not printed until later, the first in 1793, the second not until 1805.

It is to 1790 also that Taylor himself assigned his translation of Lenore. In a note at the end of the version printed in his Historic Survey of German Poetry (II, 51) he says:

This was the earliest of them all [the Lenore translations], having been communicated to my friends in the year 1790, and mentioned in the preface to Dr. Aikin's poems, which appeared in 1791.

The latter statement of Taylor is not quite accurate. It is in a note at the end of the poem, not in the preface, that Dr. Aikin says:

The idea of this piece was taken from a ballad translated by an ingenious friend from the German of Buirgher. The story and scenery are however totally different, and the resemblance only consists in a visionary journey.^[5]

It will be seen that Dr. Aikin makes no such definite reference as would establish the time at which Taylor's translation of Lenore was composed. Fortunately much more definite proof that Taylor's poem was known as early as 1791 is given in a letter from a German friend. On August 10, 1791, A. M. Benzler wrote to Taylor from Wernigerode:

Mögten Sie diese treffliche Uebersetzung, zu Ehre der Deutschen Muse, doch bald durch den Druck bekannt machen, so wie auch die Lenore! über welche ich mir eine genaue Kritik noch vorbehalte, da mir jetzt die Zeit dazu fehlt.^[6]

Benzler's reference to "diese treffliche Uebersetzung," and the later "so wie auch die Lenore," shows that the latter at least had been sent him some time before. It therefore proves, more conclusively than the allusion by Aikin, that Taylor's translation was known to others than himself as early as the first part of 1791.^[7]

While the reference of Dr. Aikin is not as definite as it might be, there can be no reasonable doubt that it refers to Taylor's Lenora. Indeed the Arthur and Matilda of Aikin is much more closely modeled upon Bürger's poem and Taylor's translation than the author's note implies. Reversing the situation of the German poem, Aikin's hero is sailing in a "stately ship o'er the Indian seas," ardently longing for home. In this mood he sees a little boat guided by a maiden, whom he soon recognizes as his betrothed Matilda. She calls to Arthur to embark with her, but when he does so insists that he should not touch her. Under her guidance of the boat they sail all night and at daybreak into the mouth of a cavern. Here they disembark and Arthur follows "Matilda's ghastly form" up "a narrow winding path," until they come to heaps of "mould'ring bones." Matilda proclaims this as her home, and asks Arthur to "take a bride's embrace." He "stretch'd his doubtful arms,"

"grasp'd an empty shade," and then fortunately "all the vision fled," the abrupt conclusion of a ghostly tale.^[8] It is clear, though Dr. Aikin may not have realized it, that there was much more resemblance between his poem and the Lenora than the "visionary journey" which he admits.

The second statement of Taylor in his note on the poem in the Historic Survey, that he had communicated the translation to his friends some years before its publication, is also substantiated by references in both the Critical and Monthly Reviews. The first says, in its notice of Stanley and Pye:

We can not forbear mentioning, that we have seen some years ago, in private circulation, a translation of this piece, which has lately been inserted in a periodical publication, and which is superior to either of these. . . . Those who have read the excellent translation of Goethe's Iphigenia may perhaps guess to whom they owe the obligation.^[9]

The Monthly Review also begins a similar notice of Stanley and Pye as follows:

It will appear extraordinary that a poem, written a considerable time since, and known in this country at least for some years, should on a sudden have excited so much attention as to employ the pen of various translators, and the pencil of more than one designer.^[10]

In the next sentence it adds of this translation, "since published, as we understand, in a new magazine," an evident allusion to the Monthly Magazine of March. Twice afterwards does the same Review refer to the priority of Taylor's version. In the! next volume, reviewing Taylor's second version, called Ellenore, it says:

This is the translation to which we some time ago alluded, as being the earliest in point of time, of the various English versions of this fashionable ballad.^[11]

We have already accounted for the way in which Dr. Aikin knew of Taylor's translation, through the acquaintance of Taylor with Mrs. Barbauld, Dr. Aikin's sister. The acquaintance with Dr. Aikin also accounts for Taylor's printing his translation in the Monthly Magazine. The former had recently founded that periodical with the understanding that Taylor should coöperate.^[12] It was natural, therefore, that the new English interest in Bürger should have resulted in Taylor's translation appearing in that magazine.^[13]

Taylor's version, called Lenora, a Ballad from Bürger, was preceded by the following note:

The following translation (made some years since) of a celebrated piece, of which other versions have appeared and are now on the point of appearing, possesses so much peculiar and intrinsic merit that we are truly happy in being permitted to present it to our readers.

At the close of the poem also appears a brief note, reading "For a particular account of Bürger see p. 117." The brief account alluded to is called, "Some account of the Poems of G. A. Bürger, by the translator of Goethe's Iphigenia in Tauris", the last clause a bracketed note by the editor of the magazine. The identity of the translator of Lenore is thus indirectly made known. The statement regarding Bürger's work gives dates of the editions of his poems, some general characteristics, and especially notes his use of English Ballads as a basis for some of his own. It closes with the remark that "a few shorter poems and two of his wholly original ballads may give some idea of his peculiarity to the English readers." To this is added, in parentheses and italics, to indicate an editorial note: "For these our readers are referred to our poetical department of this and the following months."^[14]

Close student of German literature as Taylor was, he by no means made a literal translation of Bürger's poem. He was the first to give it the ballad form in English. Stanley used a six-line stanza, riming aabccb. Pye and Spencer chose an eight-line stanza made up of two independent quatrains of double rime, the line being one of four stresses. Pye's verse was trochaic catalectic, all others iambic in flow. In imitation of English ballads also, Taylor used a somewhat archaic diction and spelling, a feature which was to have its influence as we shall see. Taylor, too, caught more clearly than any other translator, except possibly Scott, the spirit of the original. Apart from this, he made one significant change in the story. He threw back the scene from the period of the Seven Years' war to the time of the crusades. Perhaps this was to make the supernatural element seem more appropriate, perhaps it was only a ballad imitation in respect to time.^[15]

He also transferred the home of William and Lenora from Germany to England, as he made the names English in form. For such change of locality Taylor had the example of Bürger himself. He had already noted, in his account of Bürger's poems,^[16] that the German poet had transferred to Germany the scene of all English poems he had used. Thus in his Lenore, which is based upon the English ballad of Sweet William's Ghost, Bürger had transferred the scene to the German wars of Frederick and the Queen of Austria. Taylor's modification merely returned the story to the country from which it had been originally taken.

The references to Taylor's translation in the reviews of the other versions are proof that it was appreciated. Other evidence is furnished by letters of literary people of the time. One of the earliest I have found is by Anna Seward, often called the Swan of Lichfield. In a letter of June 1, 1796, she asks:

Have you read any of the translations of a short German poem, called William and Lenora? I hear there are several, but that the one which was shown to me is the best, and it is printed entire in the Monthly Magazine of March last. It is the wildest and oddest of all terrible things, and has made considerable noise amongst our few poetic readers. [She notes the relation of Lenore to the English Sweet William's Ghost, and thinks Bürger was also influenced by the Scripture 'Death on his white horse.'] The short abrupt measure of the translation before mentioned, suits the rapidity of a midnight journey of a thousand miles. The German poet has given a great accession of sublimity, in spite of the vulgarness of cant phrases, used for the purpose of picturesque sound. The pale steed, on which the lover mounts with his mistress—the flying backward to right and left of woods, rocks, mountains, plains, and towns, by the speed of travel, and overhead the scudding back of the moon and stars—the creeping train of the swarthy funeral, chanting the death-psalm, like toads croaking from the dark and lonely moors—the transformation of the knight to a bony and eyeless skeleton—the vanishing of the death-horse, breathing charnel-fires, then thinning to smoke, and paling and bleaching away to nothing—are grand additions to the terrific graces of the ancient song.^[17]

Yet this literary judgment of the Swan of Lichfield was soon to be surprisingly transformed. In July she received from Lord Bagot a copy of Mr. Spencer's Leonora with the designs of Lady Beauclerk, and ever after she was a fervent admirer of that version of the German ballad. Yet she does occasionally have a lingering appreciation of the Taylor translation. In a letter of July 19, announcing the gift of Lord Bagot, she writes:

Before I received this superior version, another in a simpler style had impressed me extremely; and I now think that, in one or two passages, it transcends Mr. Spencer's . . . . generally more spirited, more elevated paraphrase—especially here:

It creeps, the swarthy funeral train,
 The corse is on the bier.
Like croak of toads from lonely moor,
 It slowly meets the ear.

Black'ning the night, a funeral train
 On a cold bier a coffin brings,
Their slow pace measur'd to a strain
 Sad as the sadest night-bird sings.

[She comments at length to the advantage of the Taylor version, but adds the following sentence]: But the Spencer paraphrase, rich in general superiorities, need not grudge to its rival the transcendence of one or two passages.^[18]

Far more important than these letters of Miss Seward are those of men soon to bring in a new era in literature. Lamb, writing to Coleridge July 17, 1796, asks:

Have you read a ballad called 'Leonora' in the second number of the 'Monthly Magazine'? If you have!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There is another fine song, from the same author (Berger), in the 3rd No., of scarce inferior merit.^[19]

We have no word of Coleridge in reply to Lamb, and he was in such personal difficulties himself that he may not have answered.^[20] Later, however, while in Germany, Coleridge was in correspondence with Taylor regarding the latter's poem and praised it highly. He and Wordsworth had disagreed as to the value of Bürger's poetry, Coleridge supporting it enthusiastically. The correspondence shows that Wordsworth also knew Taylor's translation of the Lenore. He wrote:

We have read 'Leonora' and a few things of Bürger; but on the whole we were disappointed, particularly in 'Leonora' which we thought in several passages inferior to the English translation. 'Wie donnerten die Brücken'—how inferior to

The bridges thunder as they pass,
But earthly sound was none, &c, &c.^[21]

The English lines here quoted are from Taylor's version, though with a slight change in the last, doubtless due to imperfect memory.

Southey also had read the Bürger translations of Taylor, though he seems to have preferred the second in the Monthly Magazine, The Lass of Fair Wone, to the Lenora. He writes to Bedford, July 31, 1796:

Lenora is partly borrowed from an old English ballad—

Is there any room at your head, William?
Is there any room at your feet?[quotes six lines more.]

But the other ballad of Bürger, in the Monthly Magazine, is most excellent. I know no commendation equal to its merit; read it again, Grosvenor, and read it aloud. The man who wrote that should have been ashamed of Lenora. Who is this Taylor? I suspected they were by Sayers.^[22]

Some years later Southey seems to have felt a higher regard for Taylor's Lenora. He had come to know who Taylor was, and was now in correspondence with him. On May 30, 1799, he writes:

Lewis, the Monk-man, is about to publish a compilation of ballads, a superb quarto I understand, with prints. He has applied to me for some of mine, and to some person who had translated 'Lenore,' and to whom your translation had been attributed; so that instead of yours he has hampered himself with a very inferior one. I suppose he will get rid of it and request yours.^[23]

Taylor's answer to Southey perhaps indicates something of the chagrin he may rightly have felt at the preference shown for another version less excellent than his own. He wrote on June 23, "Of Mr. Lewis I have heard nothing, and conclude that he prefers to associate with Mr. Spencer's rank and style in poetry."^[24] Lewis did finally print Taylor's first version, though with no hint of the author. He gives the translation high praise, however, in his prefatory note:

This version of Bürger's well-known ballad was published in the Monthly Magazine, and I consider it as a masterpiece of translation. Indeed, as far as my opinion goes, the English ballad is, in point of merit, far superior both in spirit and harmony to the German, which is written in a stanza producing an effect very unsatisfactory to the ear.^[25]

In connection with Lewis's use of Taylor's first version should be mentioned another reprint of the poem, as showing the regard in which it was held. The Annual Register, which was accustomed to print a few poems in each number, in its volume for 1796 gave Taylor's translation "from the Monthly Magazine," with this note:

The following translation (made some years since) of a celebrated piece, of which other versions have appeared, possesses so much peculiar and intrinsic merit that we have given it the preference in this selection.

This is largely a reprint of the note preceding the poem in the original place of publication, but the last clause is altered to show the opinion of the new editor.

Before the close of the year 1796 Taylor again printed his translation of Lenore, this time with considerable alterations, but still without his name. This second version bore the title: "Ellenore, a Ballad, originally written in German by G. A. Bürger. Norwich, March; London, Johnson."^[26] It was perhaps the appearance of Scott's version in October that led Taylor to revise and print again. At least Scott had sent a copy of his William and Helen to Taylor, with a letter dated Nov. 25, and the latter seems not to have printed before December. This second version of Taylor differs from the first in three significant changes, in minor verbal alterations, and in giving up a large part of the archaic spelling. The more significant changes are the omission of stanza six of the first version, and considerable alterations of stanzas thirty-four and forty-six.^[27]

The change to which Taylor himself called special attention in his preface was that in the thirty-fourth stanza of the first version, the thirty-third of the second. Here, as he says, he made a change suggested by a line in Spencer's version. The last couplet of Taylor's first form read:

'Tis narrow, silent, chilly, dark,
Far hence I rest my head.

Spencer had rendered these lines:

Low lies the bed, still, cold, and small
Six dark boards, and one milk-white sheet.

The last line is closer to the original than Taylor's earlier version, and it suggested an advantageous change. With the other changes made necessary by this adoption the whole stanza was altered into:

"And where is then thy house and home,
And bridal bed so meet?"
"'Tis narrow, silent, chilly, low,
Six planks, one shrouding sheet"^[28]

Finally, Taylor's second version bore an altered title, as shown above. This the translator explains as follows in a note, when reprinting in the Historic Survey (II, 40): "The German title is Lenore, which is the vernacular form of Eleonora, a name here represented by Ellenore." This change was perhaps less fortunate than most of the others made in the second form of the translation.

Taylor's second version came out so near the end of the year 1796, that it was not noticed until the February number of the Monthly Review. Then, however, it was given high praise in the following terms:

This is the translation to which we some time ago alluded, as being the earliest, in point of time, of the various English versions of this fashionable ballad. We are persuaded, also, that it will be by no means deemed inferior to the rest in point of poetical merit, and on some accounts a more decided praise will be assigned to it. It is written in that ballad form which we ventured to suggest as the most suitable to the subject, and to the manner in which the original writer has treated it. . . . How far the imitation of the old English diction and spelling was an improvement might reasonably be doubted, if the author had not taken the liberty of transferring the scene from Germany to England, and the time, from the late wars to the period of Richard's crusade to the Holy Land:—an alteration that certainly improves the romantic character of the tale, and removes (as uncle Toby says) out of harm's way the supernatural machinery.^[29]

The Critical Review was no less strong in its commendation:

The version now under consideration, though it appeared last, was probably written before any of the others, since it had long circulated in manuscript, and was noticed in a volume of poems published by Dr. Aikin in 1791. It was at length given in the Monthly Magazine for March last [really March 1796], and appears now with some alterations from that copy. In one* instance, p. 7, the author says, 'He has availed himself of the highly finished translation of Mr. Spencer, which bears' (he adds) 'the same relation to the original as Pope's Homer to the Iliad.'

The peculiar merit of this translation is, that it renders the ideas of Bürger, without any diminution of their strength, in a style so idiomatic as to have the force and beauty, and the very air of our original. . . . If the translation before us had been published when it was written, no reader of taste would have wished for a second attempt. We can but express our earnest wishes that the translator of Iphigenia and Bürger's Ellenore would oblige the public with more specimens of his uncommon powers of versification."^[30]

In his reprint of his second version in the Historic Survey, Taylor adds some significant notes. He thus explains his alteration of the historical setting in the second stanza:

In the original the emperor and empress have made peace, which places the scene in southern Germany; and the army is returning home triumphant. By shifting the same to England, and making William a soldier of Richard Lionheart, it became necessary that the ghost of Ellenore, whom Death in the form of her lover conveys to William's grave, should cross the sea. Hence the splash! splash! of the xxxix and other stanzas, of which there is no trace in the original; of the tramp! tramp! there is. I could not prevail on myself to efface these words, which have been gotten by heart, and which are quoted even in Don Juan.^[31] But I am aware that the translation is in some respects too free for a history of poetry; and it is too trailing (schleppend) said one of my German correspondents, for the rapid character of the prototype.^[32]

On the twenty-third stanza he adds this comparative note:

Here begins a marked resemblance to an obscure English ballad called the Suffolk miracle, which it may be curious to exhibit in comparison. A Collection of Old Ballads, corrected from the best and most ancient copies extant (the third edition), London, 1727, published by J. Roberts, Warrick-lane; 287 pages—is quoted more than once in Percy's Reliques. It contains 44 poems: among them occurs, p. 226, the following tale, which, it is thought, bears a considerable resemblance to Lenore, and must have suggested the first hint of the fable.

He then gives the whole, as it may be found with two or three slight variations in Child's Ballads, volume nine.

Apart from these more important notes he explains bride in the fifth stanza as following the German use for a betrothed woman, and "twirled at the pin" of stanza twenty-four as from Percy's Ballads, not Bürger. He adds that he could not render Bürger's phrase satisfactorily.

 

1. This was printed in three volumes, one a year, from 1828 to 1830.
2. Robberds, Life of William Taylor, I, p. 8. The quotation as to Mrs. Barbauld is from Taylor's Memoir of Sayers, p. xii, prefixed to his edition of Sayers's Works. In that place also (p. xviii) he tells us how Mrs. Barbauld taught English to the young boys of the school. In this age of striving after new methods it is worth repeating: "Among the instructions bestowed at Palgrave, Dr. Sayers has repeatedly observed to me, that he most valued the lessons in English composition superintended by Mrs. Barbauld. On Wednesdays and Saturdays the boys were called in separate classes to her apartment; she read a fable, a short story, or a moral essay, to them aloud, and then sent them back into the school-room to write it out on the slates in their own words. Each exercise was separately overlooked by her; the faults in grammar were obliterated, the vulgarisms were chastised, the idle epithets were cancelled, and a distinct reason was always assigned for every correction; so that the arts of inditing and criticising were in some degree learnt together."
   In her Autobiography (I, 298) Harriet Martineau says of the same: "Mrs. Barbauld . . . helped him [her husband] in his great school at Palgrave in Suffolk, by taking charge of the very little boys. William Taylor and my father had stood at her knee with their slates."
3. A month later the young Stanley was at Brunswick; see p. 12. Taylor's third visit to the continent, in which we are less interested, was begun in May, 1790. On the ninth of that month he shows his revolutionary sentiments by writing in a letter: "At length I have kissed the earth on the land of liberty." Stanley was also a sympathizer with the Revolution. In his Praeterita he writes: "In 1789, only six years afterwards, I was in Paris, and found workmen demolishing the last few towers [of the Bastille]. . . . I could not resist the temptation of having a share in the work of demolition; I borrowed a pickaxe and brought down a few fragments of what remained, which I put into my pocket and which I still have."—Early Married Life, p. 32.
4. See footnote to p. 12.
5. Poems by J. Aikin M. D., Ld., 1791, p. 41. The last statement is hardly as exact as it should be. See the later discussion. The writer of the notice of Stanley and Pve in the Monthly Review N. S. XX, 322 (July, 1796), who may have been Taylor himself, has this sentence: "We recollect that Dr. Aikin, in his poems published h 1791, has taken a hint from this very piece [Bürger's Lenore], which he mentions to have come to his knowledge by reason of the translation of a friend."
6. Robberds, Life of Taylor, I, 105. The criticism is sent in a letter of Nov. 19, 1791.
7. George Herzfeld notes (William Taylor von Norwich, p. 21), from an allusion in the Goett. gel. Anz. of 1796, that Bürger himself also had knowledge of Taylor's translation of his poem, perhaps through Benzler, whom he mentions in his letters.
8. In thus making the whole a vision, Dr. Aikin is not really following Bürger or Taylor, but does anticipate the conclusion which Stanley gave to his final edition of Lenore. It may be noted also that the preceding piece in Aikins's volume may owe something of its origin to Bürger's poem. It is called Susanna's Vigil, and tells how the heroine wakes at midnight on the anniversary of her William's death, to go forth and kneel "in speechless moan" upon his grave. At length she begs him to appear, if "thou hover'st round these cold remains", and as she rises she hears
   'Sweet music trilling in her ears,
   And sees her William's glittering form."
   
   
   She returns to her couch and to sleep, but her grief continues "and soon in one eternal rest" closes "the sorrowing lingering strife."
9. Critical Review, N. S. XVII, 303; July, 1796. As already noted, Taylor had published his translation of Goethe's Iphigenia in 1793.
10. Monthly Review, N. S. XX. 322; July, 1796.
11. Monthly Review, N. S. XXI, 186; February, 1797. This review, though of Taylor's second version, is attributed to himself in Robberds, Life, I, 168. Robberds makes no comment, but if this is true I suspect that the other Monthly Review articles on the Lenore translations were also by him. Other contributions to that periodical indicate his activity in connection with it after 1793. See the letter to Dr. Griffiths in Robberds, Life, I, 124, and compare Herzfeld, Taylor von Norwich, p. 26.
12. Robberds, Life. I, 155.
13. Robberds, Life (I, 394) says that Taylor was paid six shillings for the article. It was printed without his name. In this connection Robberds used a sentence which is at least misleading. He says of Taylor's translation: "In the six years during which it remained in manuscript, it became so extensively known, by passing successively from one friend to another, that besides Walter Scott's three other imitations of it appeared almost simultaneously in the year 1796, and more were afterwards added. The announcement of these caused it to be inserted in the Monthly Magazine, and afterwards reprinted as a separate publication." There is no authority, so far as I can find, for the implication that any of the other translators of this year had seen Taylor's version. Yet this error of Robberds led the writer of the article William Taylor, in the Dict. of Nat. Biog., to say: "The announcement of the almost simultaneous publication of Scott's version and three others had led Taylor to publish his in the 'Monthly Magazine' just founded by John Aikin."
    The latter statement may be one reason why the chronological relations of the various translations have been so frequently missed. Only Stanley's translation had appeared when Taylor printed. Spencer's had been announced, but Scott did not print until October.
14. In the following month (April) was printed Taylor's translation of Bürger's Des Pfarrers Tochter, called by the translator The Lass of Fair Wone. It has not been noticed, however, that the promise of a few of his shorter poems was also fulfilled in the May number by the publication of The Menagerie of the Gods and Pro Patria Mori, both "from the German of Bürger." They are reproduced, though without mention of previous publication, in the Historic Survey. None of these later translations was in archaic spelling.
15. Taylor made the first couplet of the second stanza read:
    He went abroade with Richard's host.
    The paynim foes to quell,
    
    
    where the original has:
    Er war mit König Friedrichs Macht
    Gezogen in die Pragerschlacht.
    
    
    The change in time and place also made possible Taylor's frequently recurring line "Splash, splash across the sea," for which there is nothing in the original.
16. Monthly Magazine, I, 117; see p. 30.
17. Letters of Anna Seward, IV, 211. She follows the passage quoted with a reference to the pathos of the English ballad, as compared with the German of Bürger.
18. Letters, IV, 230 f. The last line of the Taylor quatrain does not quite agree with that in the Monthly Magazine, and Miss Seward makes no attempt to reproduce the archaic spelling.
19. Lamb's Works, ed. by Lucas, VI, 38. The mutilations of Bürger's name in this period are minor evidences for the prevailing ignorance of German. Lamb also gives the name of Taylor's version incorrectly. The other "fine song" is Bürger's Des Pfarrers Tochter, called by Taylor in his translation The Lass of Fair Wone, but later in his Historic Survey, The Parson's Daughter; see Robberds, Life, I, 157.
    Possibly this was the first time Coleridge's attention had been called to the new Monthly Magazine. But he was soon a contributor, printing poems in the September (inserted by Lamb) and October numbers; see Letters of Coleridge, ed. by E. H. Coleridge, I, 179, footnote. Lamb also contributed, according to the Life by Lucas, I, 124.
20. See the Introduction by Dykes Campbell, in his ed. of Coleridge's Poet. and Dram. Works, 1893.
21. Robberds, Life, I, 319. In Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal for the year 1798, the record for Oct. 2 reads: "Bought Burgher's poems, the price 6 marks." Coleridge later quotes Wordsworth again: "As to Bürger, I am far from that admiration of him which he has excited in you; but I am slow to admire, and I am not yet sufficiently master of the language to understand him perfectly."
22. Life and Correspondence of Southey, I, 286.
23. Robberds, Life, I, 279 f. Lewis's "compilation of ballads" was of course the Tales of Wonder, printed in 1801.
24. Robberds, Life, I, 283.
25. In the light of this note it is difficult to explain Southey's language about Lewis having "hampered himself with a very inferior" translation of Lenore. There is a bare possibility that Southey had received Taylor's second version late in 1796, or early in 1797, and with this in mind thought Taylor's first version, which Lewis had, but the authorship of which he did not know, was by another. At least this would fit in with Southey's letter to Bedford (see p. 33), greatly underrating Taylor's translation when it first appeared in the Monthly Magazine.
    On the other hand, Southey may have referred to Scott's version since, as we shall see later, Lewis knew of Scott's work and apparently thought of using it.
26. See Monthly Review, Feb., 1797 (N. S. XXIII, 34). This review mentions only Johnson of London as the publisher, but the Monthly Mirror (II, 480), as noted by Mr. Colwell in Mod. Lang. Notes XXIV, 254, gives Norwich as well as London, after a common habit of provincial publishers who arranged to sell their books in London. This, as Mr. Colwell also points out, sets right the errors of Brandl and Greg regarding this issue. The Monthly Review shows that the poem was issued in quarto and folio forms at two and five shillings respectively. No copy of this edition is in the British Museum, and perhaps none exists.
27. Stanza six of the first version, omitted entirely in the second, reads:
    She askte of all the passing traine
      For him she wisht to see:
    But none of all the passing traine
      Could tell if lived hee.
    
    
    Stanza forty-six of the first version, forty-five of the second was entirely recast. It first read:
    They heede his calle and husht the sowne;
      The biere was seen no more;
    And followde him ore feeld and flood
      Yet faster than before.
    
    
28. Taylor's appreciation of this part of Spencer's version is shown by his comment in a letter to Scott Dec. 14, 1796 (Lockhart's Life, ch. VIII): "The ghost nowhere makes his appearance so well as with you, or his exit so well as with Mr. Spencer."
29. As already mentioned (see footnote to p. 29), this review is attributed to Taylor himself in Robberds, Life. If so he perhaps added as a blind the following criticism: "Ding-dong and hurry-skurry are phrases we should not have admitted; and sark (for a shirt or shift) is better known on the other side of the Tweed than in England; though probably first brought into the island by our Saxon ancestors."—Monthly Review, N. S., XXII, 186.
30. Critical Review, N. S., XX, 455 (July, 1797).
31. Don Juan, canto X, st. lxxi. The "quotation" is not very close or very flattering:
    On with the horses! Off to Canterbury!
    Tramp, tramp o'er pebble, and splash, splash through puddle;
    Hurrah! how swiftly speeds the post so merry!
    
    
32. The German correspondent was A. M. Benzler, already mentioned on p. 27; and see footnote there.