translation for her designs, was William Robert Spencer, son of Charles Spencer, second son of the third Duke of Marlborough. Educated at Harrow and Oxford he lived without taking part in public life, or distinguishing himself in any way except as a social favorite. As such he was the friend of statesmen like Pitt and Fox and Sheridan, as he was later to be the friend of Byron and Moore and the London representatives of the new literature. Beginning with his translation of Bürger, too, he was to be something of a minor poet, as well as a wit and popular member of society. His "occasional verse" was to be warmly praised by Scott, Byron, and Christopher North. Hogg, quoted by Christopher North in Blackwood's, said of his Beth Gelert or the Grave of a Greyhound: "That chiel's a poet; those verses hae muckle o the auld ballart pathos and simplicity.[1]
It was this Spencer who, about a decade later, lent Moore his pistols for the duel with Jeffrey.[2] Spencer's friendship with Byron was also intimate. Byron, Moore, and he were the only literary men admitted to Watier's Club, which was anything but literary. Yet long before this hobnobbing with the later generation of poets, Spencer had ceased to admire German romanticism, for in 1802 he burlesqued the German ghost literature in a play called Urania, which was performed at Drury Lane theatre. He published volumes of poems in 1804 and 1811, while a collected edition appeared in 1835, a year after his death.[3]
Lady Diana Beauclerk, who had become interested in Mr. Stanley's translation because it furnished subjects for her pencil, was the eldest daughter of Charles Spencer, third Duke of Marlborough,[4] and was thus Mr. W. R. Spencer's aunt. She married first
- ↑ Noctes Ambrosianae, Blackwood's Magazine, XXXIII, 487 (April 1827). The name of the poem is sometimes given Bed Gellert.
- ↑ Byron's Letters and Journals, ed. by Prothero, II, 61. "Little's leadless pistol" of Byron's English Bards was naturally felt to be a slander by Moore, who had bought enough powder and ball in Bond St. for twenty duels. His inexperience, however, was quite properly satirized, as he had only once before discharged a pistol and then nearly blew his thumb off.
- ↑ Byron said Spencer's verse, like his conversation, was "perfectly aristocratic," and he placed him with Moore, Campbell, and Rogers as a poet.
Lamb narrates an amusing incident. Talking at the India House with a young clerk who said he loved poetry, Lamb mentioned Spenser. "Poor fellow," said the clerk, and to Lamb's astonished "Why," answered, "He has lost his wife." "Said I, 'Who are you talking of?' 'Why, Spencer,' said he; 'I've read the Monody he wrote on the occasion, and a very pretty thing it is.'" This led to the explanation that the clerk meant, "the Honorable William Spencer who has translated some things from the German very prettily, which are published with Lady Di. Beauclerk's Designs."—Lamb in letter to Wordsworth, Feb. 1, 1806, Works, ed. by Lucas, VI, 234. - ↑ Not the second Duke, as the Dict. of Nat. Biog. and Hill's Boswell have it. The mistake is a natural one, since there was no second duke. After the death of the first duchess, who retained the title in her own right until 1744, the title passed to the father of Lady Diana, who had married a daughter of the first duke.
