which he fully approved. The confederates then sallied forth to put their plan in train, and having repaired to Mr. Robert Miller the bookseller, they soon arranged with him to print a few copies of the new translation of "Leonoré," one of which was to be thrown off on the finest paper, and bound in the most elegant style.[1]
The countess goes on to say that, to further Scott's suit, she and William Erskine, after arranging for the printing, sent a copy, beautifully bound, to Scott himself who was thus able to read it to the lady whom he hoped to make his wife. Of that somewhat later. Here we may turn to a final account of these incidents, given by Scott himself in his Essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad. In this, written in 1830, after reciting the circumstances of Mrs. Barbauld's reading and its reaching him, he says:
A lady of noble German descent, whose friendship I have enjoyed for many years, found means . . . to procure me a copy of Bürger's works from Hamburg . . . At length, when the book had been a few hours in my possession, I found myself giving an animated account of the poem to a friend, and rashly added a promise to furnish a copy in English ballad verse.
I well recollect that I began my task after supper and finished it about daybreak the next morning, by which time the ideas which the task had a tendency to summon up were rather of an uncomfortable character. As my object was much more to make a good translation of the poem for those whom I wished to please, than to acquire any poetical fame for myself, I retained in my translation the two lines which Mr. Taylor had rendered with equal boldness and felicity.[2]
In these accounts we have the significant details regarding Scott's translation of Bürger's Lenore. It remains to consider times and seasons, especially as mistakes have frequently been made respecting some of them.[3] It is unnecessary to account more fully for Mrs. Barbauld's knowledge of Taylor's translation, after what
- ↑ Schloss Hainfeld, p. 330. As we shall see the countess was in error regarding the date of Mrs. Barbauld's visit, and Scott says it was her brother, rather than herself, who told him of Mrs. Barbauld's reading.
- ↑ Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, ed. by Henderson, IV, 39. A brief account of the translation may be found in Scott's Poetical Works, ed. by Dennis, V. 91. This also was written by Scott about 1827.
- ↑ Scott himself says he made the translation' "in 1795," a date which is given in the Cambridge edition of Scott's Poems, ed. by Rolfe. Mrs. Barbauld's visit to Edinburgh has been variously assigned to 1793, as by Capt. Hall, the "summer of 1793 or 1794" by Scott himself in the Essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad, to 1796 by the Dict. of Nat. Biog., article Mrs. Barbauld.
The assignment of his translation to the year 1795 is made by Scott in a prefatory note to a collected edition of his works probably of 1820. He says: "The author had resolved to omit the following version of a well-known poem in any collection which he might make of his poetical trifles. But the publishers having pleaded for its admission, the author has consented, though not unaware of the disadvantage at which this youthful essay (for it was written in 1795) must appear with those which have been executed by much more able hands, in particular that of Mr. Taylor of Norwich, and that of Mr. Spencer." I take the note from an American edition of 1833.
