AMERICAN POEMS IMPUTED TO ENGLISH AUTHORS.
(Vol. viii., pp. 71. 183.)
The southern part of the U. S. seems to make as free with the reputations of English authors, as the northern with their copyright. The name of the South Carolina newspaper, which, with so much confirmatory evidence, ascribed The Calm to Shelley, is not given. If it was the Southern Literary Messenger, the editor has been at it again. The following began to appear in the English papers about Christmas last, and is still "going the round:"
"The Sorrows of Werther.—The Southern Literary Messenger (U. S.) for the present month contains, in 'The Editor's Table,' the following comic poem of Thackeray's; written, we are told, 'one morning last spring in the Messenger office,' during a call made by the author:—
'Werther had a love for Charlotte,
Such as words could never utter.
Would you know how first he met her?
She was cutting bread and butter.
'Charlotte was a married lady,
And a moral man was Werther;
And for all the wealth of Indies,
Would do nothing that might hurt her.
'So he sigh'd, and pined, and ogled,
And his passion boil'd and bubbled,
Till he blew his silly brains out,
And no more by them was troubled.
'Charlotte, having seen his body
Borne before her on a shutter,
Like a well-conducted person,
Went on cutting bread and butter.'"
I believe that Mr. Thackeray knows the value of his writings and his time too well to whittle at verses in the Messenger office, and leave his chips on the floor; and that he is too observant of the laws of fair wit to make a falsification and call it a burlesque. The Sorrows of Werther is not so popular as when known here chiefly by a wretched version of a wretched French version, and many who read these stanzas will be satisfied that the
last conveys, at worst, a distorted notion of the end of Göthe's story. To prevent this misapprehension, I quote from Mr. Boylan's translation all that is told of Charlotte after Werther's suicide:
"The servant ran for a surgeon, and then went to fetch Albert. Charlotte heard the ringing of the bell; a cold shudder seized her. She wakened her husband, and they both rose. The servant, bathed in tears, faltered forth the dreadful news. Charlotte fell senseless at Albert's feet.
. . . . . . .
"The steward and his sons followed the corpse to the grave. Albert was unable to accompany them. Charlotte's life was despaired of."
Perhaps "despaired of" is too strong a word for "man fürchtete für Lottens Leben;" but there is no peg on which to hang the poor joke of the last stanza.
H. B. C.
U. U. Club.