To bridal bed we ride;
And thou shalt prance a fetter dance
Before me and my bride."
The wasted form descends;
And fleet as wind through hazel-bush
The wild career attends.
The reviewer had evidently not compared Scott with Bürger, or he would have seen that the young Scotch advocate had merely extended an allusion of the original.[1]
In another respect Scott did not follow the practice of Taylor. That is in the use of archaic diction and spelling, both especially common in Taylor's first version, though considerably lessened in the second. If Scott did not see the Taylor version before publishing, his failure to use archaic diction and spelling would be easily understood.[2] The repetition of a few lines of the poem by his friend would give no indication of Taylor's method of suggesting antiquity in his poem. On the other hand, Scott may have intentionally rejected this artificiality.
Scott's version, again, shows the same use of internal rime as Taylor's. In each case it may be due to the few examples of Burger's use of the same device. Yet Scott quite outdoes Taylor in the use of this form of rime. While there are in the latter's translation only a half-dozen examples, half of which are not quite perfect, Scott uses this device eighteen times, though five of these are not perfect rimes. As compared with this poem, he has not a single example in the Wild Huntsman.
Scott's earliest poem to appear in print is especially faulty in its rimes. Some of these, it is true, are correct enough as Scotticisms, but as his poem is otherwise English this is no excuse. Thus crusade and made rime with sped and shed'; bed rimes with steed, made, and ride, with the latter of which dead is also coupled, while head rimes with hid. The rimes grace—bliss, bale—hell, and course—horse are each twice repeated, the latter not unusual in British verse. Other faulty rimes are joy—victory; o'er—star; noise—voice; seat thee—await thee; arose—pursues; door—tower; scared
- ↑ Critical Review, N. S. XX, 422.
- ↑ His own statement is that he did not see Taylor's before making his own translation. Yet a letter to Scott from Miss Cranstoun (Lockhart's Life, ch. VII, I, 208) shows that Taylor's version had reached Scotland before Scott published his version, and he may have seen it before printing.
