The first two lines of the forty-seventh stanza, descriptive of the speed of the lovers, may perhaps bring to the recollection of many a passage extremely similar in a translation of "Leonora" which first appeared in the "Monthly Magazine." In justice to himself, the translator thinks it his duty to acknowledge that his curiosity was first attracted to this truly romantic story by a gentleman, who having heard "Leonora" once read in manuscript, could only recollect the general outlines and a part of a couplet which, from the singularity of its structure and frequent occurrence, had remained impressed upon his memory. If, from despair of rendering the passage so happily, the property of another has been invaded, the translator makes the only atonement now in his power by restoring it thus publicly to the rightful owner.
This statement may be supplemented by a part of Scott's letter to William Taylor, Nov. 25, 1796, in sending a copy of William and Helen. After apologizing for his "plagiary," he continues:
My friend Mr. Cranstoun, brother-in-law to Professor Stuart, who heard your translation read by a lady in manuscript, is the gentleman alluded to in the preface to my Ballads, to whose recollection I am indebted for the lines which I took the liberty to borrow, as a happy assistance in my own attempt. As I had not at that time seen your translation, I hope the circumstance will prove some apology for my bold attempt to bend the bow of Ulysses.[1]
The "lady in manuscript" of Scott's oddly arranged sentence he himself named in a later letter to Taylor. When the latter published his Historic Survey of German Poetry, in commenting on Goethe's Goetz von Berlichingen, he referred to the English version as one "admirably translated . . . in 1799 at Edinburgh by William Scott, advocate; no doubt the same person who, under the poetical but assumed name of Walter, has since become the most extensively popular of the British writers." Scott was naturally not pleased with this reference, and dictated a letter to Taylor, dated Abbotsford, Apr. 23, 1831.[2] After explaining that he had never used an assumed name, he writes:
I must not forget, Sir, that I am addressing a person to whom I owe a literary favour of some consequence. I think it is from you, and by your obliging permission, that I borrowed, with my acknowledgment, the lines in your translation of Lenore,
Splash, splash across the sea,
- ↑ Robberds, Life of Taylor, I. 94. The Mr. Cranstoun was George Cranstoun, afterwards Lord Corehouse. The Professor Stuart is the well-known Professor Dugald Stewart of Edinburgh.
- ↑ In Robberds, Life of Taylor (II, 533) it is given 1832, but that must be a mistake, as Scott was at that time on his Mediterranean cruise. Taylor's last volume appeared in 1830.
