in which the poem differs from the German, by circumstances and pictures that increase the sublime horrors of the story. He knew how high Spencer's Leonora stood in my estimation; but he also knew my predilection for that species of translation which scruples not to throw in new matter, congenial to the subject and style, and capable of heightening their interest or their imagery. On perusing those extracts I agreed with my friend, that the new features in this equestrian ghost are more grandly horrid than any in the original. Thus will it almost invariably be when poets, not versifiers, translate.[1]
The Letters further show that Mr. Saville had visited Llangollen Vale and its celebrated ladies in the summer of 1796, so that Scott's version of the Lenore, in one of its manuscript reproductions, had reached this part of England before its publication in Scotland.
Outside of his own country Scott's translation naturally made less impression, although it was favorably received by the reviewers. The Monthly Review of May, 1797, after referring to Taylor's translation as that with which it was most pleased, says:
We have now before us another translation on the same plan [the ballad form], but more modern in its appearance; and we think that, even after so many respectable attempts, it may claim a very considerable share of comparative applause. So generally resembling, indeed, is it to the last mentioned version, that the author's positive assurance of its composition before that came further to his knowledge than by the repetition from memory of a single couplet, were necessary to efface the idea of imitation; and surely, besides that often repeated couplet, there are several lines almost exactly the same with corresponding lines in the other, only somewhat different in the spelling. Yet we do not mean to represent it as not an entirely new composition; and it has poetical beauties of its own, which sufficiently display the writer's superiority to any idea of servile or mechanical imitation.[2]
We have already noted the Critical Review's suggestion of likeness in this translation to Taylor's. Yet it adds of the version as a whole,
Nor is the present translation, which as well as that printed at Norwich is without a name, unworthy to rank with its predecessors in the force and effect with which it gives the sense of the original.[3]
This seems a fair judgment, without precluding the feeling that
- ↑ Letters V, 197. Mr. Saville, the friend above, was of course right that the poem was as yet unpublished, since Scott's translations from Bürger were not printed until October. It is my purpose to treat, in another place, the hitherto unnoticed translation from Bürger called the Triumph of Constancy, as well as some other references to Scott's early poetry in the Letters of Anna Seward.
- ↑ Monthly Review, N. S. XXIII, 34.
- ↑ Critical Review, N. S. XX, 422. See p. 22.
