Page:The Earliest English Translations of Bürger's Lenore - A Study in English and German Romanticism - Emerson (1915).djvu/48

 Frederick St. John, second Viscount Bolingbroke, from whom she was divorced by act of parliament in 1768. Two days later she was married to Topham Beauclerk, "the hero of the piece," as Walpole calls him, the friend of Johnson, and as such known to fame. Besides the drawings for Spencer's Leonora she made seven large designs for Horace Walpole's Mysterious Mother, and others for Spencer's edition of the Fables of Dryden (1797). She was an interesting as well as beautiful woman, though Johnson pronounced a very severe judgment upon her at her second marriage.

The Leonora of Spencer bore the following title-page:

Leonora/Translated from/the German/of/Gottfried Augustus Bürgher/by/W. R. Spencer, Esq./with/Designs/by/the Right Honourable/Lady Diana Beauclerc/London/Printed by T. Bensley/For J. Edwards, and E. and S. Harding, Pall Mall/1796.

Spencer's edition also included the German of Bürger, printed on pages opposite those of the English version, as was also done later in the collected edition of Spencer's Poems. Like Pye he seems to have striven to make the impression of a closer translation than that of Stanley. According to Mrs. Erskine, Mr. Spencer's wife, the beautiful Countess Spreti, had posed for Lady Diana's Leonora.

There is no reference in Spencer's Preface to the occasion of his translating Bürger, or Burgher as he regularly spells the name, nor to the previous version of Mr. Stanley, unless perhaps in a single sentence which may convey a slight:

The allusion to Pye's version of Lenore is more direct, although Spencer's words "long entered the field" are probably not to be taken too seriously:

Between the completion of this poem and its publication, which has been unavoidably delayed, as much time was required by the artists to do justice to those exquisite designs which are its brightest