The edition ordinarily known as Scott's first issue of his translation is one of the autumn of 1796. It then included a translation of Bürger's Der Wilde Jäger, under the title of The Chase, and the small quarto of 41 pages was called: The Chase and William and Helen, two Ballads from the German of Gottfried Augustus Bürger. The book was issued anonymously.[1] Later the title of the first poem was changed to The Wild Huntsman, a more direct rendering of Bürger's title. The latter poem, according to Lockhart, "appears to have been executed under Mrs. Scott's eye, during the month that preceded his first publication."[2] The month of publication was October, as we are also informed with great definiteness:
In that same October, 1796, he was "prevailed on," as he playfully expresses it, "by the request of friends, to indulge his own vanity by publishing the translation of Lenore with that of the Wild Huntsman, also from Bürger, in a thin quarto."[3]
Besides the single couplet which Scott acknowledged he took from Taylor's version, as it had been repeated to him by his friend, he disclaims any influence of other translations. Indeed he says, in his first letter to Taylor, Nov. 25, 1796:
As I had not at that time [when making his own version] seen your translation, I hope the circumstance will prove some apology for my bold attempt to bend the bow of Ulysses."
Yet the Critical Review, noticing his edition, makes the charge of further use of Taylor's translation:
The author has indeed availed himself of the translation first printed in the Monthly Magazine, from which he has confessedly borrowed, having heard it in manuscript, a stanza, and of which it is likewise evident he has availed himself, perhaps unconsciously, in many turns of expression, and in the general craft and moulding of the language.[4]
This charge, too, seems to have some reason when the two poems are examined. In the first place the stanza structure is the same in each, as it must have been if Scott was to use a couplet of Taylor's verse. To this simple ballad form Scott might have been led independently, since he was steeped in ballad poetry. Yet there
- ↑ The printing was by Manners and Miller of Edinburgh, and it was also sold by Cadell and Davies of London.
- ↑ Lockhart's Life, ch. VIII, (I, 215). The Mrs. Scott is of course Mrs. Scott of Harden.
- ↑ Lockhart's quotation (Life, ch. VIII, I, 213) is from Scott's Essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad, p. 40.
- ↑ Critical Review, Aug. 1797, N. S. XX, 422. See also Monthly Review quoted on p. 23.
