# The Earliest English Translations of Bürger's Lenore: a Study in English and German Romanticism/Chapter 6

VI. Scott's Version and Its History.
The fifth translator to publish an English version of Bürger's Lenore in 1796 is the best known of all, Sir Walter Scott as he became long after this youthful effort. His edition, too, called William and Helen, is still the most commonly read, as it has been the most readily accessible. The general circumstances of writing this version have also been frequently told, thrice by Scott himself, once by Lockhart in his Life of Scott, once by Capt. Basil Hall in his Schloss Hainfeld, and often by others since these earlier attempts. The only excuse for another relation of the story is that the sources of information have not been critically examined, the various accounts differing considerably in detail, and sometimes conflicting. Besides, something may now be added on the origin of the influence of Bürger upon Scott.
We may best begin with Scott's own statement, given in the prefatory note to his translation:
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.
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. 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,
The last link in the story of the making and publication of Scott's Bürger translation is found in Capt. Basil Hall's Schloss Hainfeld. In this romantic work occurs an account of a visit to the Countess Purgstall, the Jane Cranstoun of Scott's young manhood and a most helpful friend. The Countess related the following incident:
About the year 1793 Bürger's extraordinary poem of Leonora found its way to Scotland, and it happened that a translation of it was read at Dugald Stewart's, I think by Mrs. Barbauld. Miss Cranstoun described this strange work to her friend [Scott]; the young poet, whose imagination was set on fire by the strange crowd of wild images and novel situations in this singular production, never rested till, by the help of grammar and dictionary, he contrived to study it in the original; and she, as usual, encouraged him to persevere: and at the end of a few weeks' application to the German language, he had made out the sense, and had himself written a poetical translation of the poem.
One morning at half-past six, Miss Cranstoun was roused by her maid who said Mr. Scott was in the dining-room, and wished to speak to her immediately. She dressed in a great hurry and hastened down stairs, wondering what he could have to say to her at that early hour. He met her at the door, and holding up his manuscript eagerly begged her to listen to his poem! Of course she gave it all attention, and having duly praised it sent him away quite happy, after begging permission to retain the poem for a day or two, in order to look it over more carefully. He said she might keep it till he returned from the country, where he was about to proceed on a visit to the house where the lady to whom he was attached was residing.
His friendly critic was duly aware of this intended visit, and an idea having suggested itself to her during his animated perusal of the poem, she lost no time in putting it into execution. As soon as he was gone she sent for their common friend, Mr. William Erskine, afterwards Lord Kinnedder, and confided her scheme to him, of ​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.
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.
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. It is unnecessary to account more fully for Mrs. Barbauld's knowledge of Taylor's translation, after what ​has been said of her teaching the young Taylor, his appreciation of her influence, and the intimate relations of Taylor and her brother, Dr. Aikin. Doubtless Taylor communicated his new German studies to her soon after they had begun. At any rate that Dr. Aikin knew of his version of the Lenore in 1791 is reasonable evidence that Mrs. Barbauld saw it about the same time. Her visit to Edinburgh is definitely dated from a letter of October 1794, to her friend Mrs. Beecroft. In this she speaks of her enjoyment of her visit to Scotland, and of being twice in Edinburgh.
It was probably in August or early September, 1794, that Mrs. Barbauld read Taylor's translation at the evening assembly in the home of Dugald Stewart. Doubtless soon after, Cranstoun or his sister repeated what could be remembered of the lines to Scott. Yet the latter did not at once pursue the matter. He had, it is true, some knowledge of German, for he had begun the study of that language in the winter of 1792-93 and continued it the next year. Yet he did not obtain an edition of Bürger's poems until late in 1795 or early in 1796, for they were obtained for him by Lady Scott of Harden who was not married until the autumn of 1795. She was the daughter of Count Brühl, and took great interest in Scott's German studies after her acquaintance with him had begun. It was, then, in the winter of 1795-96, or the early spring of the latter year that Scott was again carrying on his German reading.
In fact Scott has himself assigned a second exciting cause for his interest in ballad making, and this also must belong to the latter part of 1795. In the summer of that year "Monk" Lewis, as he ​soon came to be known, printed his Ambrosio or The Monk, and at once attained considerable fame. Scott mentions especially, however, the ballads "with which Mr. Lewis had interspersed his prose narrative." Reading these had now revived a boyish interest in making verses, as he tells us in the following words:
"In short, . . . I had not for ten years indulged the wish to couple so much as love and dove when, finding Lewis in possession of so much reputation and conceiving that, if I fell behind him in poetical powers, I considerably exceeded him in general information, I suddenly took it into my head to attempt the style of poetry by which he had raised himself to fame."
This passage is immediately followed by the account of the Lenore translation, the occasion for putting into action his new idea.
As to the incident which the Countess Purgstall related with such vividness to Captain Hall, it occurred; says Lockhart, with absolute definiteness, "in the beginning of April, 1796." This date, although at variance with what Scott himself says, fits in with every other detail we know. Lockhart also confirms the Countess Purgstall by adding, "A few days afterwards, Scott went to pay a visit at a country house where he expected to meet 'the lady of his love'." If the account by the Countess of printing Scott's William and Helen without his knowledge is to be trusted, and there seems no reason to doubt it, the first copies of the poem were struck off in the spring of 1796, perhaps before Mr. Spencer's edition had been issued. So far as I know no copy of this print is now in existence. It was clearly printed very privately, and probably only a few copies were made.
​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. 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." 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."
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.
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 ​can be no question of his adopting that measure, instead of some other form as Stanley, Spencer and Pye had done, because of Taylor's use of it. Again, Scott follows Taylor in changing the time of the action, and in much the same manner. Taylor had placed the event in the time of the first crusade under Richard Lionheart of England. Scott follows the crusade idea, but makes the leader Frederick, presumably Barbarossa of the third crusade. Still further, Scott agrees exactly with Taylor's first version in the number of stanzas of his translation. Bürger had employed thirty-two stanzas of eight lines each. These would naturally have become sixty-four stanzas of four lines in English. Taylor expanded them into sixty-six, and Scott has exactly the same number. Perhaps this is mere coincidence, but it suggests imitation.
Apart from these and the acknowledged plagiary, the similarities of expression are few. The first line of Scott's fourteenth and twentieth stanzas,
O mother, mother, what is bliss?
is the same as the corresponding line of Taylor's twentieth. So the first line of Scott's stanza twenty-three agrees but for one word with the same line of Taylor's twenty-third quatrain. Taylor has,
She bet her breaste, and wrung her hands,
while Scott's line is
She beat her breast, she wrung her hands.
In stanza twenty-eight the first line has "so late by night" in Scott, using the exact equivalents of Bürger however, while Taylor makes a little better English by translating "so late at night." The last line of stanza thirty-seven, repeated in stanzas forty-seven and fifty-three, is in Scott
The flashing pebbles flee.
In Taylor's stanza thirty-eight, repeated in forty-seven and fifty-three, this line reads,
The sparkling pebbles fly.
Yet even such verbal similarities may perhaps be accounted for by a close adherence to the German, and the influence upon both Taylor and Scott of the ballad literature.
The significant similarity, acknowledged by Scott as we have seen, is in the first couplet of his forty-ninth stanza, repeated in stanzas fifty-three and fifty-seven. Scott has,
Taylor's form of the couplet is,
This he also uses three times, in his fortieth, forty-ninth, and fifty-fifth stanzas, as Bürger had used the original a similar number of times.
On the other hand, Scott's originality is shown in one or two special instances. Except for a reference to "a perjured lover's fleeting heart" in stanza nine, he omits the cruel intimation of Leonora's mother, which makes Taylor's fourteenth stanza as follows:
In stanza fifty, too, Scott adds effectively to the horror of the situation. Completing Bürger's allusion to the gibbet, Scott puts in the "murderer in his chain," and then adds a new stanza, calling on the felon to follow.
In the corresponding passage Taylor omits all reference to the gibbet, and even changes Bürger's "lustiges gesindel" to "an airy crew":
The alteration by Scott is so effective that it was quoted by the Critical Review in its notice, with the following somewhat misleading comment:
The following image of the corpse coming down from the gibbet and joining the procession, which will be considered by some as striking, by others as ludicrous, has been left out, we think, by the other translators:
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.
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. 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 ​— heard; bone—skeleton; heaven—forgiven. The homonyms fare—fair are once used, the identical rime thee—thee, and the eye rimes come—home. These faulty rimes were probably the principal reason why M. G. Lewis did not wish to use, for his Tales of Wonder, Scott's William and Helen, although he had desired to have it when it was read to him in London by William Erskine, Scott's friend.
The reception of Scott's William and Helen in his immediate circle was in the highest degree satisfactory, as was to be expected. Dugald Stewart, John Ramsey, William Erskine and Miss Jane Cranstoun, to take those whose letters are preserved in Lockhart, were enthusiastic. Miss Cranstoun, with something of future insight, wrote to a friend: "Upon my word Walter Scott is going to turn out a poet,—something of a cross I think between Burns and Gray." She even went so far as to dispraise Taylor in favor of her friend: "William Taylor's translation of your ballad is published, and so inferior that I wonder we could tolerate it." She adds, "I have seen another edition too, but it is below contempt. So many copies make the ballad famous, so that every day adds to your renown."
Beyond his immediate circle the first praise came from William Taylor, in acknowledgment of Scott's letter and a copy of his translation:
I need not tell you, Sir, with how much eagerness I opened your volume—with how much glow I followed the Chase—or with how much alarm I came to William and Helen. Of the latter I will say nothing; praise might seem hypocrisy—criticism envy. The ghost nowhere makes his appearance so well as with you, or his exit so well as with Mr. Spenser. I like very much the recurrence of
About the same time, too, we get another English glimpse of the poem. We have seen how enthusiastic Anna Seward became over Mr. Spencer's translation of Lenore. In a letter to Lady Eleanor Butler (Feb. 7, 1797), she refers to what she could not then have known was the edition of one who was to be a frequent ​correspondent and later the editor of her poetical works. She is describing the "poetical readings" which formed "part of our amusements" on a visit to Nottingham:
Mr. Saville, who reads finely as you well know, gave us the extracts with which the Scottish ladies of your neighborhood favoured him, from that sublime paraphrase of Bürger's Leonora, the yet unpublished work of their friend. It is not near so close as the four rival translations which I have seen of that wild and violent poem; amongst which Mr. Spencer's, with its happy engravings, is so very prominent in poetic merit.
Many ideas and images are in the extracts Mr. Saville had obtained, which cannot be found in Bürger's poem; but they vie, and in some places transcend those of the original in well-imagined horror. Chilling, grand, and horrific is the shrouded corpse rising from the bier, and the half-perished body of the murderer swinging and creaking in the winds and rain, descending from the gibbet at the call of the equestrian spectre, and joining the ghastly train on that impetuous journey.
Two years later, when her enthusiasm for Mr. Spencer's translation had somewhat cooled, Miss Seward received from Mr. Colin Mackenzie of Edinburgh a copy of Scott's William and Helen as published in 1796, and in manuscript The Triumph of Constancy, an otherwise unknown translation from Bürger, as well as Scott's own ballad imitation Glenfinlas. These facts Miss Seward added as a note to a copy of her letter to Mr. Mackenzie. That letter is otherwise interesting as showing how Mr. Saville obtained the extracts from Scott's poem and Miss Seward's later views respecting it:
Two years since a friend of mine met with the William and Helen at the cottage of the celebrated recluses of Llangollen Vale. He reads finely, and he was desired to read it in their circle. It was in manuscript, and he understood unpublished; but that was a mistake. Thus he considered as an indulgence that he obtained permission to make extracts from William and Helen, of those parts ​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.
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.
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.
This seems a fair judgment, without precluding the feeling that ​Taylor has in some respects surpassed Scott, and made what is on the whole the best version.
The next evidence that Scott's version of the Bürger ballad was highly esteemed is connected with the publication of Lewis's Tales of Terror and Wonder. As already noted Scott himself mentions the inspiration of Lewis's work in the Monk. In the spring of 1798 Scott's friend Erskine met Lewis in London, with the result that Scott was asked to assist him in his proposed compilation. In answer to Scott's offer of anything that he had, Lewis wrote a letter of thanks and later invited the author of William and Helen to dine with him in Edinburgh. Indeed, Lewis must have expected at this time to use Scott's poem, as shown by a letter in which he says: "In order that I may bring it nearer the original title, pray introduce in the first stanza the name Ellenora, instead of Ellen".
Why Lewis did not finally use Scott's poem is not clear, but a reasonable conjecture may be offered. Lewis was unusually free with his criticisms of Scott's verses, and caused the Scotch attorney to revise his Glenfinlas before it was accepted. It is to be inferred also from Lewis's letter that Scott had objected to making all the changes suggested. Lewis writes:
Thank you for your revised "Glenfinlas." I grumble, but say no more on this subject, although I hope you will not be so inflexible on that of your other Ballads; for I do not despair of convincing you in time that a bad rhyme is, in fact, no rhyme at all. You desired me to point out my objections, leaving you at liberty to make use of them or not; and so have at "Frederick and Alice."
He then goes on to criticise Frederick and Alice, The Chase, and William and Helen. Scott made most of the changes suggested for the first two poems, but probably balked at making the more numerous ones in the last, after it had been once printed and so highly praised by his friends. At any rate William and Helen was not used by Lewis, and it remains today with all the faulty rimes and expressions Lewis pointed out. The latter, as we know, printed Taylor's first version in his Tales of Wonder, though without knowing the author.
​Incidentally there should here be mentioned another edition of Scott's William and Helen, especially because of indirect consequences in Scott's life. In 1799, on a visit to Rosebank, James Ballantyne called upon Scott, and the latter suggested Ballantyne's printing of books along with his newspaper. Scott said:
"You had better try what you can do. You have been praising my little ballads; suppose you print off a dozen copies or so of as many as will make a pamphlet, sufficient to let my Edinburgh acquaintances judge of your skill for themselves." Ballantyne assented; and I believe exactly twelve copies of William and Ellen, The Fire-King, The Chase, and a few more of those pieces were thrown off accordingly, with the title (alluding to the long delay of Lewis's collection) of "Apology for Tales of Terror—1799."
This second printing of Scott's William and Helen is now one of the rarest of books. Yet it was to have an indirect effect upon Scott's whole after life, thus linking inextricably, though so disastrously, his earliest with his latest endeavors as a literary artist.
It is needless to say that Scott was the only one of these five translators of Bürger's Lenore to attain considerable fame as a poet, and even he withdrew from the poetic field as he began to succeed in prose fiction. Nor can it be said that this, his first poem to be printed, greatly encouraged him to give his life to writing verse. It was nine years before The Lay of the Last Minstrel delighted English readers. Yet the flattering reception of William and Helen by his friends, and the interviews with the popular author of The Monk, indirectly resulting from it, clearly had their influence on the shy Scotch advocate, the Sir Walter Scott who was to be.
* ↑ Prefatory note to edition of The Chase and William and Helen; Letter to William Taylor, Nov. 25, 1796; Essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.
* ↑ Chapters VII-VIII; Pollard's Edition I. 160-248.
* ↑ Page 330 f.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ Taylor at once explained that the English Goetz was actually ascribed to William Scott, advocate, on the title-page, while The Lay of the Last Minstrel bore Walter Scott's name. He naturally thought the first the baptismal name, but disclaimed any reflection on the use of a pseudonym. Scott replied that the printing of the Goetz had been arranged by "Monk" Lewis, and that he did not know his own name was given incorrectly. This mistake on the title-page is confirmed by a copy mentioned in Notes and Queries Fifth Ser., XII, 81.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ Lucy Aikin's Works of Anne Letitia Barbauld, II, 74. Lockhart's Life (ch. VII, vol. I, 204) puts Mrs. Barbauld's visit in the same autumn, but doubtfully: "It must, I think, have been while he was indulging his vagabond vein, during the autumn of 1794, that Miss Aikin (afterwards Mrs. Barbauld) paid her visit to Edinburgh." Lockhart is curiously inaccurate in speaking of Miss Aikin, as she had been Mrs. Barbauld for twenty years. Lockhart's error has been long lived. It is indeed, corrected by the omission of the words "Miss Aikin, afterwards" though without comment, in the last beautiful edition of the Life, by A. W. Pollard, but it probably led Mrs. Steuart Erskine in her book, Lady Diana Beauclerk and her Work, to speak in this connection of "Mrs. Barbauld, or Miss Aitkin (sic) as she was then."—p. 214. It also must have led Professor Beers, in his English Romanticism, to write: "In the autumn of 1794 Miss Aikin, afterwards Mrs. Barbauld, entertained a party at Dugald Stewart's, etc."—p. 391. To his correction of Scott's error regarding Mrs. Barbauld Mr. Pollard has added another, by altering the date 1794 to 1795, perhaps to square with a letter which immediately precedes. Earlier editions read 1794, and that this is the correct date I have shown by Mrs. Barbauld's Letters above.
* ↑ Lockhart says "some weeks"; Life, ch. VII, (Pollard) I, 204.
* ↑ Lockhart's Life, ch. VII, (I, 177). See also Scott's Essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad, p. 24, where the interest in German literature in Scotland is referred to a public address on the subject by Henry Mackenzie, author of the Man of Feeling, in April, 1788. Yet Scott admits that their interest waned when their teacher, instead of introducing them to Goethe and Schiller, prescribed Gessner's Der Tod Abels. It was in this year that Sayers gave up medicine for literature; see p. 26.
* ↑ Lockhart's Life, ch. VIII, (vol. I, 214).
* ↑ Essay on Imitations, etc., p. 33.
* ↑ Essay on Imitations, etc., p. 36. The Dict. of Nat. Biog. puts the first meeting of Lewis and Scott in 1798, and although Scott seems to imply an earlier date in the Essay on Imitations, the year 1798 is probably right.
* ↑ Prefatory note to edition of his works, see footnote to p. 49.
* ↑ Lockhart's Life, ch. VII. (I, 205).
* ↑ As is well known, this issue did not sufficiently further Scott's suit. The lady, Miss Stuart, married in January, 1797, William Forbes, son and heir of Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, and before the end of December Scott had himself found a bride. See further in Sir Walter Scott's First Love. Certain allusions in Scott's works have been connected with the incident of his early verses and his first love. The matter has been fully developed in the book mentioned in the preceding paragraph. Here we may note that Wilfred Wycliffe in Rokeby (1813) bears some resemblance to Scott, and stanza XXIV of canto I may be a reminiscence of the William and Helen being sent to him at Inverary when he was visiting Miss Stuart. Again in Rob Roy (1818) ch. XVI, Die Vernon, finding by chance some verses of Frank Osbaldistone, puts him to delightful confusion by "the sweetest sounds which mortal can drink in—those of a youthful poet's verses, namely, read by the lips which are dearest to him." The writer of the book above would also find suggestions of the lady in The Lay of the Last Minstrel, The Lady of the Lake, and especially in the Lady of the Green Mantle in Red Gauntlet (1824). In the latter, Alan Fairford is supposed to be Scott himself. There would seem to be added significance to the passage in Rob Roy because, at the beginning of the next chapter but one, Scott himself uses a stanza from his Bürger translation as a motto. On this and its accuracy, see a note by Walter Graham, in Modern Language Notes, XXX, 14.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ In his earliest version Taylor uses the eye-rimes come—home, prove—love, and gone—none. He has also the identical rime die—die, and the faulty stop—ope.
* ↑ Lockhart's Life, ch. IX, (I, 253).
* ↑ Lockhart's Life, ch. VII, (I, 209). The letter is without date, but was sent to Scott at Montrose, reaching him after his last interview with the lady of his early attachment.
* ↑ Lockhart's Life, ch. VIII. Mr. Spencer's name is often spelled with s by correspondents of this time.
* ↑ Letters of Anna Seward (Constable), IV, 314. The reference to the body of the murderer coming down from the gibbet to join the train, "at the call of the equestrian spectre," is conclusive proof that the version was Scott's William and Helen. In no other have we such a feature. The Scottish ladies who had first received it perhaps can not be identified. Lady Eleanor Butler was a personage of the time. With her friend, Sarah Ponsonby, and a maid-servant, she had sought seclusion in North Wales and lived a recluse at Plas Newydd, Llangollen, for fifty years or more until her death in 1829. Her home was a place of pilgrimage for many years from all parts of Britain, and from the continent. De Quincey visited them, as shown by his Confessions (Works, Masson, III, 321). Wordsworth was a guest and wrote a sonnet upon them and their home; see an interesting account of them in A Swan and Her Friends' by E. V. Lucas, ch. XIII. Anna Seward, a visitor and frequent correspondent, wrote her poem Llangollen Vale in their honor. Mr. Saville was the choir singer of Lichfield for whom Miss Seward indulged a platonic friendship of great vigor; see Mr. Lucas's work above, p. 174-9.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ See p. 50.
* ↑ Lockhart's Life, ch. IX (I, 254).
* ↑ Henderson's edition of Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, IV, 54. The name Ellen is also used by Lockhart (Life ch. IX, I, 275). In Pollard's edition the name of Scott's translation is William and Helen, but early editions read Ellen, and this is, I assume, what Lockhart wrote.
* ↑ Long afterwards (1825), Scott may have remembered this criticism when he wrote of Lewis: "He had the finest ear for rhythm I ever met with—finer than Byron's."—Lockhart's Life, ch. IX (I, 255). The men remained good friends. In 1799 Lewis arranged for the publication in London of Scott's translation of Goethe's Goetz von Berlichingen, and it appeared in February. Lewis, too, obtained for the translator twenty-five guineas for the work, on the ground that it was Scott's first publication. He had forgotten the Bürger translations of 1796, as he also forgot that Scott's name was Walter, not William. See p. 48.
* ↑ Lockhart's Life, ch. IX (I, 275). The imprint was Kelso. The similarity of title to that first proposed by Lewis for his Tales of Wonder, and the fact that most of the pieces were reprinted in that work in 1801, have given rise, I believe, to the long-accepted idea that Lewis printed Tales of Wonder at Kelso in 1799. I shall deal with that subject in another place.