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."[1]
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.[2] 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.[3]
On the twenty-third stanza he adds this comparative note:
- ↑ Critical Review, N. S., XX, 455 (July, 1797).
- ↑ 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! - ↑ The German correspondent was A. M. Benzler, already mentioned on p. 27; and see footnote there.
