Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/271

 S. I. APRIL 2, '98. ]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

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[, too, will give something to that ; for we cannot s ifficiently honour the memory of two such excel-

< nt men. You shall have for the Cassel collection t le letters which the Grimms wrote to my father v hen he sent them his English translation of the

Marchen,' which was the first published in Eng-

valuable edition of the translation. In order to spare you from unnecessarily trying your eyes I vill also have copied for you a letter of Walter
 * tnd, and also a copy of the first and now very

translation appeared ; and two letters of the Ger- rianist Benecke of Gottingen.' A few days later deeds ratified these kind words : I received the originals of three letters from the brothers Grimm to Edgar Taylor and the translation for the Cassel collection, and duplicates of ail for myself. On reaching home I wrote to my honoured, country- man Hermann Grimm asking him if he possessed
 * cott, which he addressed to my father when this

otters of Edgar Taylor to his father and uncle. After a few days he sent me through Dr. Steig the letters Edgar Taylor had written to the brothers Grimm when he sent his translation and thus opened the correspondence."

Dr. Hartwig tells us much that is of inter- est about Edgar Taylor's life and writings, which need here only be referred to in so far as bearing upon the subject in hand.

Edgar, born at Banham, in Norfolk, 28 Jan., 1793, was fifth son of Samuel Taylor, of New Buckenham, in the same county, who was a descendant of Dr. John Taylor, a well-known Presbyterian divine and writer of the last century. Educated by Dr. Lloyd at Palgrave School, in Suffolk, he entered in 1809 the office of his uncle Mr. Meadows Taylor, an attorney at Diss. On leaving his uncle he

Eractised as a solicitor at Norwich, employing is leisure in literary pursuits and the study of the German, Italian, and Spanish lan- guages. German literature was a specialty in the cultured society of Norwich in those days, when it was called the Athens of Eng- land. It was Miss Sarah Taylor, a first cousin of Edgar, and subsequently wife of the legist John Austin, who wrote that taste- ful version of Ranke's ' History of the Popes ' "in which," Lord Macaulay says in his famous New Zealand er essay, "the sense and spirit of the original are admirably preserved."

In 1814 Taylor repaired to London, and in 1817 was established in legal practice at King's Bench Walk as partner with William Roscoe, author of the lives of Lorenzo de' Medici and Leo X., who had recently failed as a banker in Liverpool. Taylor's pro- fessional"* engagements did not put a stop to his studies or literary activity. The first published of his works was Grimms' ' Popular Stories' in 1823 ; this was followed by the ' Lays of the Minnesinger ' in 1825 ; to this succeeded the 'Book of Eights,' a work on constitutional law, in 1834. In 1837 appeared Master Wace's Chronicle of the Norman Con-

quest from the Roman de Rou,' published by Pickering. His last work, ' Gammer Grethel/ from Grimm and others, was produced in 1839 ; and on 19 Aug. that same year he died, after an illness which had lasted twelve years, leaving a widow Anna, daughter of John Christie, of Hackney, who survived to an advanced age, dying in Florence a.t the house of her daughter Jessie, widow of Karl Hillebrand.

Before coming to Sir Walter's letter, one or two passages from the other letters re- lative to the great artist who contributed so much to the popularity of the Grimms' ' Stories ' may be quoted. Taylor thus writes of an unfulfilled scheme in which George Cruikshank was to have shared :

" I have a great desire to publish here (with the assistance of our engraver and designer Mr. Cruick- shank [sic], to whose talents such a work would be very suitable) a translation of ' Reineke Vos,' of which the English have no metrical version."

George Cruikshank is thus eulogized by J. and W. Grimm when acknowledging the receipt of the first volume of the 'Popular Stories':

" The accompanying plates are of special advan- tage to your book. They are gracefully and spiritedly executed and appropriate to the sub- ject. At this moment we do not know of an artist amongst us who possesses a like talent, although the late Chodowiecki* had it in an eminent degree."

Sir Walter Scott's letter is addressed to Edgar Taylor, Esq., was written at Edin- burgh, 16 Jan., 1823, and runs as follows :

SIR, I have to return my best thanks for the very acceptable present your goodness has made me in your interesting volume of German tales and traditions. I have often wished to see such a work undertaken by a gentleman of taste sufficient to adapt the simplicity of the German narrative to our own, which you have done so successfully. When my family were at the happy age of being auditors of fairy tales I have often endeavoured to translate to them in such an ex tempore manner as I could, and I was always gratified by the pleasure which the German fictions seemed to convey. In memory of which our old family cat still bears the foreign name of Hinze which so often occurs in these little narratives. In a great number of these tales I can perfectly remember the nursery stories of my child- hood, some of them very distinctly and others like the memory of a dream. Should you ever think of enlarging your very interesting notes I would with pleasure forward to you such of the tales as I can remember. The 'Prince Paddock' was, for instance, a legend well known to me, where a princess is sent to fetch water in a sieve from the Well of the World's End, and succeeds by the advice of the frog, who aids her on [her] promise to become his bride :

popular in the last century, was born at Danzig, 16 Oct., 1726, and died at Berlin 2 Feb. , 1801. Some of his etchings were reproduced a year or two since.
 * Daniel Chodowiecki, the artist and etcher, so