Page:The Earliest English Translations of Bürger's Lenore - A Study in English and German Romanticism - Emerson (1915).djvu/32

 garded her instructions as the most valuable part of the discipline through which he had passed."

In 1779 Taylor made the first of three visits to the continent, this time through the Netherlands, France and Italy. In April, 1781, he again left for the continent, and about the middle of July settled at Detmold, Westphalia, for the study of German.

There he spent a year and a few days, becoming an enthusiastic student of the new culture, of which, not many years afterwards, he was to be an early exponent in his native country. As we are not now interested in his later work, it may be hastily summarized. It consisted of much reviewing of German literature, much criticism of more general character in various reviews, some further translations of high character, and finally in the later years of his life his Historic Survey of German Poetry.

Taylor's residence and study in Germany fully account for his later devotion to German literature. Yet it was not at once to bear fruit in translation or exposition of German poetry. This was partly owing to Taylor's association with his father in business from 1784 to 1788, and less actively until the business was given up in 1791. Yet Taylor's interest in literature continued during these years, and he was eager to devote his whole time to it. A further interest in German is perhaps associated with that of his friend Sayers. The latter had given up his medical studies at the University of Edinburgh in 1788 and, devoting himself to literature soon after, published his Dramatic Sketches of Northern Mythology in 1790. As already noted, Taylor visited Sayers at Edinburgh in the