It is clear from the letter of Mr. Stanley, found in the advertisement, that he was no child of the new romanticism. Although he seems to have enjoyed German poetry, he was still English to the core, attached to the established order of things, perhaps somewhat alarmed at the evident interest of his countrymen in what he thought German extravagance. This is even more fully confirmed by the new conclusion which he made for Bürger's poem. To offset the ghastly crew of spectres he introduces a second voice, which speaks "in milder tones" to the swooning Leonora. Transformed by the voice she is still able to express her resignation as she sinks into unconsciousness, and the spectres vanish discomfited. Then the dawn is made to appear, with "Love and his smiling train." William returns, calls to his Leonora to awake, tells her "Death has vainly aimed his dart," and clasps her in his arms as the poem closes. The whole makes an addition of eight stanzas, or seven besides the original stanza, now somewhat modified, which Mr. Stanley had first added to the Bürger material.
But these are by no means all the changes made in this new edition. Besides many verbal alterations in individual lines, of which a detailed account need not be given here, he added considerably in other ways. For instance, Bürger's poem consists of thirty-two stanzas. Mr. Stanley's first edition has thirty-four stanzas, the last of which was his own. The third, or new edition, has forty-four stanzas, ten more than his first version. Of these one new one is added after the twenty-first of the first edition, and another after the twenty-second. These, with the eight new stanzas at the end, account for the additions in this new edition.
The issue of three editions of Stanley's Leonora within a little more than two months is proof that it was not unfavorably received. Its reception by the reviewers attests the same fact. We have noted how the Monthly Mirror expressed the public's debt to the publisher "for this fantastic little work." It added, "The translator has lost little of the spirit of the original, though we think the metre he has adopted is by no means advantageous to the subject."[1] Both the Critical and Monthly Reviews noticed it, with Pye's translation, in July. The former says of the two:
- ↑ Monthly Mirror, March, 1796, the first volume of this periodical.
