Page:The Earliest English Translations of Bürger's Lenore - A Study in English and German Romanticism - Emerson (1915).djvu/37

 He had already noted, in his account of Bürger's poems, that the German poet had transferred to Germany the scene of all English poems he had used. Thus in his Lenore, which is based upon the English ballad of Sweet William's Ghost, Bürger had transferred the scene to the German wars of Frederick and the Queen of Austria. Taylor's modification merely returned the story to the country from which it had been originally taken.

The references to Taylor's translation in the reviews of the other versions are proof that it was appreciated. Other evidence is furnished by letters of literary people of the time. One of the earliest I have found is by Anna Seward, often called the Swan of Lichfield. In a letter of June 1, 1796, she asks:

Yet this literary judgment of the Swan of Lichfield was soon to be surprisingly transformed. In July she received from Lord Bagot a copy of Mr. Spencer's Leonora with the designs of Lady Beauclerk, and ever after she was a fervent admirer of that version of the German ballad. Yet she does occasionally have a lingering appreciation of the Taylor translation. In a letter of July 19, announcing the gift of Lord Bagot, she writes:

Before I received this superior version, another in a simpler