him in the Early Married Life of Lady Stanley breaks off in 1792 with the remark: "His letters during the next three years show that he was actively engaged in helping the French refugees, in military duties, and in literary work."[1] What this literary work was we are not told. Nor have we any hint of any external influence leading Mr. Stanley toward German poetry. Possibly the publication of William Taylor's translation of Goethe's Iphigenia in 1793 may have turned him again to his earlier studies. The death of Bürger in 1794 may have directed him to this one of the German writers he had known. It certainly seems doubtful whether the publication of Taylor's translation of Wieland's Dialogues of the Gods in 1795 could have had any marked effect.
A single sentence of the Preface to Stanley's first edition of his Leonora may have an interpretation bearing upon the subject. He says: "The success of some late publications has proved that the wild and eccentric writings of the Germans are perused with pleasure by the English reader." If this is a reference to a particular book, and I am inclined to think it may be, it must be to the one which created the greatest sensation of the year 1795. That was the Ambrosio or the Monk of M. G. Lewis. This famous example of the terror school of fiction appeared in the summer, and was soon the talk of London. Now The Monk, as it came to be more commonly called, contained an unusual number of poems of the ballad sort, some of them of German origin. Besides, Lewis had introduced more than one horror or supernatural element from German legend, as the story of the bleeding nun. We know also from his Essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad, that Scott was much attracted by these ballads, as well as by the other German tales in Lewis's extravagant fiction. It is not impossible that Mr. Stanley was also turned again to German balladry by this book. If so we may place his translation with even more confidence in the last half of 1795.[2]
Not impossibly, too, Stanley's translation of Lenore was associated with the composition of the only original poem known to have been written by him. While commanding the militia he composed a song for the men of his regiment, presumably while in Sussex, since the published edition was illustrated by views of Pevensey Bay and
- ↑ Early Married Life, p. 101.
- ↑ Mrs. Radcliffe had also drawn upon romantic verse for her novels, as in the Mysteries of Udolpho published in 1794. But in Lewis's Monk the German element was strong and unmistakable.
