The Earliest English Translations of Bürger's Lenore: a Study in English and German Romanticism/Chapter 7

by Oliver Farrar Emerson

VII. Summary and Influence.

We are now in a position to understand in detail the reason why the German tributary to English romanticism, as Professor Beers calls it, overflowed in five translations and seven versions of Bürger's Lenore during the single year 1796. The interest in Bürger, at least on the part of several, was clearly earlier than that year. William Taylor and Mr. J. T. Stanley had come to appreciate German literature from residence in Germany as early as 1781.^[1] It is possible that the attention of the poet Pye had been turned toward Germany as early. As we have seen, William Taylor had made his translation of Bürger's famous poem as early as 1790, and another had been made but not published by some unknown writer even earlier.^[2] The influence of Taylor's version, while still in manuscript, had produced at least one imitation in the Arthur and Matilda of Dr. Aikin as early as 1791. Matthew G. Lewis had doubtless become acquainted with Bürger in one of his school vacations in Germany before 1794. At least when in that year he was writing his Ambrosio or the Monk, he certainly knew Bürger, for he imitated Lenore in his ballad Alonzo the Brave. The hearing of a couplet of Taylor's version, as it had been read in Edinburgh by Mrs. Barbauld in 1794, together with his later interest in the ballads published by Lewis in the Monk, led Scott to seek and read Bürger's poems. From the Lenore he made his own translation, called William and Helen, about the time when the London publishers were active with at least three other versions of this much translated poem.

But it is to Mr. J. T. Stanley that we owe the special activity, in publication at least, of this remarkable year. His translation, probably made as early as 1795, led Mr. W. R. Spencer to begin one to "improve" it, as it had led Lady Diana Beauclerk to prepare designs illustrating the poem. The hasty publication of Stanley's first version early in February brought the almost simultaneous publication of Taylor's translation, now known to have been written six years before, and Pye's version which may possibly have been prepared some years earlier. The former appeared in the Monthly Magazine for March, which was not printed until the last days of the month. The latter seems to have been issued on or near April first. Mr. Stanley's more deliberate issue, April 15, of his second version in handsome form with plates by William Blake was followed, probably in July, by Spencer's, embellished with the designs of Lady Diana Beauclerk. Meanwhile a few copies of Scott's William and Helen, prepared as early as April but independently of the English versions except Taylor's, had been put into print through his friends Miss Cranstoun and William Erskine, probably a little before the issue of Spencer's translation. It was published by Scott himself, with a translation of Bürger's Der Wilde Jäger called by Scott The Chase, in what is ordinarily known as the first edition during October. Finally Taylor printed, for the first time in separate form, a revised version of his translation in November or December. This, like Stanley's second version, was altered in some details, notably in a change of one stanza, suggested by the translation of Mr. Spencer. Thus are the seven versions of the five earliest English translations of Bürger's famous poem interwoven and interlinked with one another.

It is not easy to estimate the influence in England of these Bürger translations of the year 1796, at least as distinct from other German works of romantic cast which were then known. Yet the numerous references to the Lenore translations in Reviews, in biographies, and in letters, show that this bit of German verse had probably given more English people their first taste of German literature than all the translations that had preceded. Besides, his translation of Lenore was clearly of immense importance in the case of Scott, leading him into his first poetic period, that of ballad translation and imitation during 1796 to 1803. Indirectly, too, as has been often shown, Scott's first poetic effort was due to the yet unpublished version of Lenore by William Taylor. The reprinting of Scott's William and Helen in his collected works, after his fame as a poet had been established by the Lay of the Last Minstrel and its poetic successors, has made this version of Bürger more easily accessible and more generally known than any of the others.

That Stanley's version must have been read to a considerable extent is clear from the three editions which appeared so near together in the early months of the year. Mr. Spencer's edition also continued to be called for, partly no doubt because of the drawings of Lady Beauclerk, and it was issued in 1799, and again in 1809. Especially did it have its influence in stimulating Spencer to continue to write poetry, and thus to take at least a minor place among the poets of the early nineteenth century.

Yet of all these versions the most influential in its time was that of William Taylor. Not only was it to produce the imitation of Dr. Aikin before its publication, but it was to thrill the Edinburgh assembly of cultivated people when read by Mrs. Barbauld, and thus be carried by one of them to the young Scott. This was the version about which Lamb became so enthusiastic in his letter to Coleridge, already noted. This was known to Wordsworth, doubtless through Lamb or Coleridge, and a portion of it praised above the original.^[3] While Taylor's first version was underrated by Southey, his translation of another of Bürger's poems was extravagantly praised. Taylor's later version of Lenore was highly regarded by Southey, and was thought of by him for Lewis's Tales of Wonder, possibly mentioned to Lewis himself.^[4] At least the two versions of Taylor led to correspondence, and the eventual meeting of Southey and the Norwich translator.

Neither Southey nor Wordsworth was to be directly influenced in his poetry by the Bürger translations. Southey was perhaps already too full of his own plans. Yet he was to pay tribute to Sayers, the friend of Taylor, for his meter of Thalaba, and he visited the two at Norwich in 1798. On the other hand, Wordsworth was too much of a realist, and too much occupied with his own theories of poetry, to be likely to follow Bürger in his gruesome use of the supernatural. Such subjects were wholly at variance with his conceptions of the poetic realm.

Not so with Coleridge, however. We do not know the latter's response to Lamb's enthusiastic letter. But his keen appreciation of Taylor's Lenora is evident from his letters to the translator while he and the Wordsworths were in Germany.^[5] In these years, too, Coleridge was particularly susceptible to external influences. Reading Bowles as a schoolboy had made him a poet and a sonneteer. He had imitated Ossian in prose and verse. The influence of Southey and Lamb and Wordsworth and Godwin is clear from his early poems. Now he was to be more profoundly affected by Taylor's translation than has yet been pointed out.

Professor Brandl, in first referring to this influence,^[6] called attention to several matters in Coleridge's poems of 1797 to 1799. He notes the line of Kubla Khan.

By woman wailing for her demon lover;

the sinking of the ship in the Ancient Mariner, like the disappearance of the horse under Lenore at the grave of William; the general likeness of Christabel, and the breaking off of the Dark Ladie from its perceived resemblance, he thinks, to the ballad of Bürger. In his later Life of Coleridge,^[7] Brandl has also connected parts of the Ode on the Departing Year with the Bürger influence, and assodates the poem of the Three Graves with the others of this period. To these it now seems reasonable to add some other significant details.

Lamb's letter concerning the Bürger translations had been sent to Coleridge in the latter part of July.^[8] The chances are, however, that Coleridge could not have seen Taylor's Lenora until some months later. His poem in the Monthly Magazine of September had been sent for the Morning Chronicle, and Lamb was responsible for its insertion in the former periodical. Moreover Coleridge was troubled about many matters in these months,—the birth of his first child in September, the change of residence to Stowey, the second edition of his poems, depression of spirits in general, and the neuralgia which brought the first use of opium. Apart from his drama Osorio, he was not again writing verse of importance until the inspiration attendant upon the friendly intercourse with Wordsworth. Then follows his period of balladry, perhaps partly inspired by Wordsworth, and the marked influence of Taylor's Lenora. This period includes four poems, the Three Graves, the Ancient Mariner, Christabel, and the Dark Ladie.

The order in which the poems of the year 1797 were written is not certain, but in the Three Graves and the Ancient Mariner the ballad measure was first used with the seriousness with which it had first been employed by Taylor. The first of these, which Dykes Campbell places first in composition, is a "sexton's tale" of a mother, daughter, and her lover, of a curse and its tragic consequences. Many years later when parts of the poem were printed in the Friend (Sept. 21, 1809), the following sentence shows the time and feeling under which the fragment was written:

I was not led to choose this story from any partiality to tragic, much less to monstrous events (though at the time I composed the verses, somewhat more than twelve years ago, I was less averse to such subjects), but from finding in it a striking proof of the possible effect on the imagination from an idea violently and suddenly impressed upon it.

Remembering that this places the writing of the poem in the year of Kubla Khan, the Ancient Mariner and Christabel, we may probably paraphrase this sentence somewhat as follows: "I was led to choose this story from my partiality to tragic and monstrous events when it was composed some twelve years ago." There can be little doubt Coleridge was remembering, with the apologies of a later time, the period of intense interest in the German tale of wonder and horror, as it became known to him through the Taylor translations. Incidentally, too, the stanza structure of the Three Graves and the earliest form of the Ancient Mariner are the same, only two variations of the ballad measure occurring in each.^[9]

One may reasonably suggest another likeness between the Three Graves and Bürger's Lenore. Coleridge closes his introduction to the fragment when printed in the Friend by the following paragraph:

The tale is supposed to be narrated by an old sexton, in a country churchyard, to a traveller whose curiosity had been awakened by the appearance of three graves close by each other, to two only of which there were grave-stones. On the first of these was the name and dates, as usual; on the second no name, but only the date, and the words, "The Mercy of God is infinite."

There is thus a direct parallelism between the punishment for blasphemy in Lenore and in the Three Graves, together with the same emphasis of the divine mercy.

The line of Kubla Khan cited by Brandl may be a reminiscence of Bürger. Certainly the extravagance of the poem connects it closely with the other poems of this period. Yet the influence of Taylor's translation of Lenore is most marked upon the next poem which Coleridge wrote, the much greater Ancient Mariner. Here, too, it is important to remember that both poems were considerably altered in later versions, so that comparison must be made with the first forms of both. In this poem Brandl pointed only to the sinking of the ship, an alteration of the story of Paulinus in which the ship came into the harbor safely, as due to direct Lenore influence. The wedding-guest he thought taken from Lewis's Alonzo the Brave, and therefore only indirectly from Bürger.

Besides these, however, there are several important likenesses between Coleridge and Taylor. Not only is Coleridge's use of the ballad meter apparently due to Taylor's use of that form in so serious and effective a manner, but the archaic spelling of the first form of the Ancient Mariner is probably directly due to Taylor's similar use, far more pronounced in his earlier than his later version. It is true such use of archaic forms might be imitation of the Percy ballads or of Chatterton. Yet the fact that Coleridge had never before used such archaisms, and the nearness of the Mariner to Coleridge's enthusiasm for Taylor, would imply the special influence of the latter's poem.

Another significant feature of the Ancient Mariner is its considerable use of internal rime, that is double rime within the line. We know, too, from a later letter of Coleridge to Southey, that the former greatly liked this feature, while Taylor thought it of little importance.^[10] Yet Taylor had used internal rime in six of his stanzas,^[11] twice in one of them, and this had apparently drawn Coleridge's attention to it. It need scarcely be mentioned that internal rime is not a normal feature of ballad poetry, yet Coleridge made it very prominent in his poem. In almost one-third of the stanzas internal rime occurs, while it is twice found in at least eight. Taylor's use of this form was in direct imitation of Burger, who had employed it occasionally. Coleridge, attracted by Taylor's use, greatly increases it in his poem.

It is perhaps not so certain that Coleridge caught up Taylor's frequent use of repetition, a common fact in ballad poetry. Yet Taylor had employed such repetition with great effectiveness, and Coleridge had carried its use still further in his ballad. Nor must one be too positive about minor features. For example, Taylor once used the feminine ending in rime, stanza 60, and Coleridge has seven cases of such rime, while Scott, also following the ballad measure in his William and Helen, does not use it at all.

It would be easy to note similarities of phrasing or imagery in the two poems. The rapid movement of the ship past kirk and hill and light-house top reminds one of the swiftness with which the spectre William and Lenore pass various objects. Moreover, the description of such action is repeated a second time in each poem. Not only is the wedding guest most important in Coleridge's poem, but other wedding guests are seen through opened doors in the distance, as William tells his bride in Taylor's translation,

"The wedding guests thy coming waite,
The chamber dore is ope."

The beating of the breast by the wedding guest in his impatience is paralleled by the same action of Lenore in her grief for the lost William. The roaring of the on-coming wind as heard by the mariner is like the blasts that "athwart the hawthorne hiss" in the Taylor poem. Most of the action, especially the coming of the spectre ship and the dream of the two voices, takes place in the moonlight, which is seven times mentioned, as it is three times by Taylor. The black bones of the woman's "fleshless pheere," save "the rust

"Of mouldy damps and charnel crust,"

may be placed over against

"His armour black as cinder
Did moulder, moulder all awaye."

The "ghastly crew" of the ship, which the mariner saw, and the "ghostly crew" seen by Lenore in the air are not unlike. Finally, in addition to the sinking of the ship, which Brandl had first mentioned, it may be noted that this action seems to take place in the Mariner at or near the dawn, for this is implied by the mariner's clearer sight of the "wood which slopes down to the sea," the home of the hermit, and the action of rescuing the mariner after his many adventures.

Quite apart from similarities in form and phrasing, it will be remembered that in the composition of the Lyrical Ballads the development of the supernatural element was especially left to Coleridge. As he tells us in his Biographia Literaria,

It was agreed that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic. . . . With this view I wrote The Ancient Mariner, and was preparing among other poems the Dark Ladie, and the Christabel, in which I should have more nearly realized my ideal than I had done in my first attempt.^[12]

It could not be asserted that Coleridge had now for the first time conceived the idea of using the supernatural. He had already written the Songs of the Pixies. Yet no one can compare the supernatural of that poem with that of the Ancient Mariner without perceiving the new spirit pervading the latter. That spirit, it seems not unreasonable to refer mainly to the influence of German romanticism as exhibited in Taylor's Lenora, and the new stimulus to the imagination resulting from it. Something of the same spirit also belongs to all the poems of this brief period of Coleridge's development.

Beyond this the Ancient Mariner bears a close relation in essential character to Bürger's Lenore. A sin against the divine ruler, the one in blasphemy, the other in killing one of God's innocent creatures, the punishment attended by wondrous and supernatural circumstances, the moral and the suggestion of mercy from the divine judge,—these make up both poems. The main difference is that in the Mariner the suggestion of mercy is carried one step further, to penitence for sin, the saving of the sinner's life, and expiation in his wandering over the earth to tell his story and emphasize the moral—both notable additions to the Bürger theme. In this one may see the specific English modification of the Bürger conception, for it may be noted here again that Stanley carried out the same idea in his second version of Bürger's poem, even if in a much less artistic way.

The influence of the German ballad upon Coleridge was at once recognized at the time, especially by Southey. In the Critical Review article on the Lyrical Ballads in the October number of 1798, he says of the Ancient Mariner: "It is a Dutch attempt at German sublimity. Genius has here been employed in producing a poem of little merit." To this Lamb rightly expresses strong disapproval in a letter of Nov. 8, but it should be noted that Lamb makes no denial of German influence. His characterization of the poem as "an English attempt" "to dethrone German sublimity" implies that he recognized the German inspiration, while strongly deprecating anything like mere imitation. The letter is as follows:

If you wrote that review in the "Crit. Rev." I am sorry you are so sparing of praise to the "Ancient Mariner";—so far from calling it, as you do with some wit but more severity, "A Dutch attempt," etc., I call it a right English attempt, and a successful one to dethrone German sublimity. You have selected a passage fertile in unmeaning miracles, but have passed by fifty passages as miraculous in the miracles they celebrate. I never so deeply felt the pathetic as in that part.

A spring of love gush'd from my heart
And I bless'd them unaware.—

It stung me into high pleasure through sufferings. Lloyd does not like it; his head is too metaphysical, and your taste too correct; at least I must allege something against you both, to excuse my own dotage —

So lonely 'twas that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be! &c, &c.

But you allow some elaborate beauties—you should have extracted 'em. "The Ancient Mariner" plays more tricks with the mind than that last poem [Tintern Abbey], which is yet one of the finest written.^[13]

Is there, perhaps, one other evidence of the influence upon Coleridge of Taylor's introduction to the German ballad? There can be no doubt that the visit to Germany of Coleridge and the Wordsworths was proposed by the former. It is true Coleridge had been interested in German literature for some time. He had read a translation of Schiller's Robbers as early as 1794-95, and had written a sonnet to its author. Parts of Osorio (1797) were based upon Schiller's Ghostseer. In the autumn Coleridge had begun to learn German in order to read Wieland's Oberon.^[14] Yet none of the biographers make entirely clear when the idea of the visit to Germany first came to him. It seems to have been first proposed to the Wordsworths in May, 1798, when the arrangement for the publication of the Lyrical Ballads was made with Cottle.^[15] Probably it had been talked of before, as indicated by a letter of Wordsworth in March.^[16] Brandl connects it with Coleridge's beginning to learn German, which he places in the autumn of 1797, and this gives it priority to any mention of the plan by Wordsworth.^[17] May it not be that Coleridge's known interest in Taylor's translations of Bürger again turned his attention to German literature, and perhaps suggested the journey which he was soon to take.

The general and particular likeness of Christabel and the Dark Ladie to Bürger's Lenore has been noted by Brandl. Especially does he call attention to Geraldine's story in the former of having "been carried away upon a wild horse and left in the wood half-dead with fright."^[18] He also thinks that the Ballad of the Dark Ladie was purposely left a fragment because of its close similarity to Lenore. Be this as it may, the likeness of both poems in the strange, weird, and supernatural show their intimate association with the poems of Bürger influence.

There still remains to note one further influence of Taylor's Bürger translation at this time. It has been noted that M. G. Lewis had earlier become acquainted with German, and that he had already written his ballad imitation Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene, after the manner of Lenore. This he printed in his extravagant romance The Monk in 1795, a novel that was an extravagant success in its time. The next work which he undertook was the Tales of Wonder which, though not issued until 1801, was begun some time earlier.^[19] The last example of a "wonder" tale in this book is Taylor's translation of Lenore from the Monthly Magazine.^[20] Now we know from the meeting of William Erskine, Scott's friend, with Lewis in the spring of 1798 that the latter was already at work upon his new volume.^[21] It seems in the highest degree probable, therefore, that a contributing influence toward Lewis's new venture was the success of the Lenore translations, especially Taylor's, in the year 1796. If so we have in this a further inspiration of the German poet in his English dress.

It is not to be assumed that the influence on Coleridge and perhaps Lewis was all the effect of the Lenore translations of 1796. The main purpose of the foregoing paragraphs is to suggest that the influence of Bürger has probably been underestimated in the past. If the effect on Coleridge was even nearly so considerable as that here noted, it may have also been more important on other writers than has been pointed out. Should this study prove the basis of some further investigation of Bürger influence, it will have served one important purpose.

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1. See pp. 12 and 28.
2. See p. 37-38.
3. See p. 32.
4. See p. 33.
5. See p. 32.
6. Schmidt's Characteristiken, I, 247.
7. Compare pp. 200-04, and 174, 215.
8. See p. 32.
9. These are the five-line stanza with the third and fourth lines riming as in Wordsworth's Peter Bell, and the six-line stanza with alternate rime. Compare the reprint of the first form of the Ancient Mariner, as in Appendix E of Dykes Campbell's Poetical Works of Coleridge, or the reprint of the Lyrical Ballads by Dowden. In the earlier version of the Ancient Mariner and in the Three Graves these variations are indented in the same way, while the later form of the Mariner has a greater number of stanza variations with no indentation to mark the varied rime.
10. Coleridge's letter, Feb. 28, 1800, is worth quoting: "William Taylor, from whom I have received a couple of letters full of thought and information, says what astounded me, that double rhymes in our language have always a ludicrous association. Mercy on the man! where are his ears and feelings? His taste can not be quite right, from this observation; but he is a famous fellow—that is not to be denied."—Letters of Coleridge, p. 332.
11. See stanzas 11, 24, 39, 41 (twice), 50, 59.
12. Chap. XIV, Coleridge's Works (Shedd) III, 365.
13. Letters of Charles Lamb (Lucas) p. 130.
14. Brandl's Life, pp. 124, 227.
15. See Dykes Campbell's Introduction to Coleridge's Poetical Works, p. xliii.
16. See letter of March 11, Knight's Life of Wordsworth, I, 147.
17. Life, p. 151: "Then it occurred to him, as he had just begun to learn German, to undertake at once a translation of all Schiller's works; to proceed with the fruits thereof to Jena, to study chemistry and anatomy, the theologians Semlar and Michaelis, and the great metaphysician Kant; and so enriched to return to England and set up a private academy for education."
18. Life of Coleridge, p. 211.
19. See Dict. of Nat. Biog. on Lewis for discussion of date.
20. See p. 33.
21. Lockhart's Life, chap. IX.