Page:The Earliest English Translations of Bürger's Lenore - A Study in English and German Romanticism - Emerson (1915).djvu/21

 Beachy Head on the south coast. This also would lead us to 1794 or 1795 as the year of the composition of his translation.

We are more fortunate in being able to explain the relation of Mr. Stanley to the Spencers, and the probable occasion for his lending his manuscript poem to Lady Diana Beauclerk. Mr. Stanley and Lord Henry Spencer, second son of the fourth duke of Marlborough, entered parliament in the same year (1790), and were associated as members of the diplomatic staff of Lord Auckland at the Hague in 1792. Lord Henry Spencer, like Mr. William R. Spencer, was a nephew of Lady Diana, so that the acquaintance of Lady Diana and Mr. Stanley may be fully accounted for. Besides, Lord Henry Spencer died in July, 1795, and this is doubtless another reason why Mr. Stanley saw more of Lady Diana in that year. In any case parliament was in session from Oct. 29, 1795, to May 19, 1796, and doubtless Mr. Stanley was in attendance. We may reasonably assume, therefore, that Mr. Stanley's loan of his translation to Lady Diana Beauclerk, of which mention is made by Maria Josepha Holroyd, took place in the last part of 1795.

For the publication of Mr. Stanley's translation in February, 1796, we have Maria Josepha's spicy explanation. He did not intend to print but, on finding his poem was to be made the basis of a new edition by Mr. Spencer and Lady Beauclerk, he "printed in hot haste" as Maria Josepha says, though without his name. This first edition has never been described, as it is not in the British Museum, and has not been used by those who have dealt with the Lenore