Page:The Earliest English Translations of Bürger's Lenore - A Study in English and German Romanticism - Emerson (1915).djvu/48

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WESTERN RESERVE STUDIES

Frederick St. John, second Viscount Bolingbroke, from whom she was divorced by act of parliament in 1768. Two days later she was married to Topham Beauclerk, "the hero of the piece," as Walpole calls him,^[1] the friend of Johnson, and as such known to fame. Besides the drawings for Spencer's Leonora she made seven large designs for Horace Walpole's Mysterious Mother, and others for Spencer's edition of the Fables of Dryden (1797). She was an interesting as well as beautiful woman, though Johnson pronounced a very severe judgment upon her at her second marriage.^[2]

The Leonora of Spencer bore the following title-page:

Leonora/Translated from/the German/of/Gottfried Augustus Bürgher/by/W. R. Spencer, Esq./with/Designs/by/the Right Honourable/Lady Diana Beauclerc/London/Printed by T. Bensley/For J. Edwards, and E. and S. Harding, Pall Mall/1796.

Spencer's edition also included the German of Bürger, printed on pages opposite those of the English version, as was also done later in the collected edition of Spencer's Poems. Like Pye he seems to have striven to make the impression of a closer translation than that of Stanley. According to Mrs. Erskine, Mr. Spencer's wife, the beautiful Countess Spreti, had posed for Lady Diana's Leonora.^[3]

There is no reference in Spencer's Preface to the occasion of his translating Bürger, or Burgher as he regularly spells the name, nor to the previous version of Mr. Stanley, unless perhaps in a single sentence which may convey a slight:

To this merit [simplicity] Mr. Burgher has an undoubted claim, a claim our countrymen would be the first to allow, could they enjoy his expressions in their original purity, or his ideas in a faithful translation.

The allusion to Pye's version of Lenore is more direct, although Spencer's words "long entered the field" are probably not to be taken too seriously:

Between the completion of this poem and its publication, which has been unavoidably delayed, as much time was required by the artists to do justice to those exquisite designs which are its brightest

↑ Letters, ed. by Cunningham, V, 74.
↑ Boswell's Life (Hill) II, 282. Boswell much admired Lady Diana's witty conversation. From her he won a wager that he dared not ask Johnson what he did with the Seville oranges when he put them in his pocket after squeezing out the juice; see Hill's Boswell II, 330. With Horace Walpole she was also a favorite, and references to her appear in every volume of his Letters.
It will be seen that Lady Diana really belonged to the preceding generation. She was sixty-two when she made the designs for Spencer's Leonora.
↑ Lady Diana Beauclerk and her Work by Mrs. Steuart Erskine, p. 220. The Countess Spreti was the daughter of Count Jenison-Walworth, chamberlain to the elector palatine, and she is said to have married Mr. Spencer under unusually romantic circumstances.

[1] Letters, ed. by Cunningham, V, 74.

[2] Boswell's Life (Hill) II, 282. Boswell much admired Lady Diana's witty conversation. From her he won a wager that he dared not ask Johnson what he did with the Seville oranges when he put them in his pocket after squeezing out the juice; see Hill's Boswell II, 330. With Horace Walpole she was also a favorite, and references to her appear in every volume of his Letters.
It will be seen that Lady Diana really belonged to the preceding generation. She was sixty-two when she made the designs for Spencer's Leonora.

[3] Lady Diana Beauclerk and her Work by Mrs. Steuart Erskine, p. 220. The Countess Spreti was the daughter of Count Jenison-Walworth, chamberlain to the elector palatine, and she is said to have married Mr. Spencer under unusually romantic circumstances.

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