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:
Far hence I rest my head.
Spencer had rendered these lines:
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 bridal bed so meet?"
"'Tis narrow, silent, chilly, low,
Six planks, one shrouding sheet"[1]
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.[2]
- ↑ 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."
- ↑ 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.
