Page:The Earliest English Translations of Bürger's Lenore - A Study in English and German Romanticism - Emerson (1915).djvu/52

 seat of the Spencers, Blenheim, he compliments the English poet in the lines,

This reference is in the flattering biography of Spencer which appeared with his collected Poems in 1835, a year after his death. That biographer, Miss Louisa F. Poulter has this to say of his Leonora:

Who the budding author was, who thus ruthlessly destroyed another version of Bürger's much translated poem, we shall probably never know.

The fifth translator to publish an English version of Bürger's Lenore in 1796 is the best known of all, Sir Walter Scott as he became long after this youthful effort. His edition, too, called William and Helen, is still the most commonly read, as it has been the most readily accessible. The general circumstances of writing this version have also been frequently told, thrice by Scott himself, once by Lockhart in his Life of Scott, once by Capt. Basil Hall in his Schloss Hainfeld, and often by others since these earlier attempts. The only excuse for another relation of the story is that the sources of information have not been critically examined, the various accounts differing considerably in detail, and sometimes conflicting. Besides, something may now be added on the origin of the influence of Bürger upon Scott.

We may best begin with Scott's own statement, given in the prefatory note to his translation: