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XV. Lessing's Set of Horses Identified

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

W. C. Decker
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Extract

In the article on the life of Henry Mackenzie in Lives of Eminent Scotchmen is contained the statement that he translated, together with two or three other dramatic pieces from the German, Lessing's Set of Horses. A search for these translations disclosed that they appeared anonymously in 1792 under the title Dramatic Pieces from the German. The little volume contains a translation of Goethe's Die Geschwister, Gesner's The Conversations of a Father with his Children, and Emdorff's Set of Horses. It is evident that the statement ascribing the Set of Horses to Lessing is inaccurate. A colleague, who has investigated Mackenzie's life and works, has assured me that Mackenzie frequently makes incorrect statements concerning his own writings so that it is very difficult to ascertain the actual facts concerning them.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , June 1924 , pp. 343 - 345
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1924

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References

1 Chambers, Robert; Lives of Eminent Scotchmen, London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, 1870, III, 55.

2 Dramatic Pieces from the German, Edinburgh,and London, 1792. Chambers gives the date of publication as 1791.

3 Thompson, Harold W.; Henry Mackenzie: His Life and His Works. Harvard diss. 1915.

4 Goedeke, Karl; Grundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung, Dresden, 1916. Band IV, 1ste Abteilung.

5 Morgan, B. Q.; Bibliography of German Literature in English Translation. Univ. of Wisconsin studies in language and literature. No. 16, 1922, p. 35 and p. 626.

6 Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. II, papers of the literary class, pp. 154-192. This society was organized in 1783; Benjamin Franklin was one of the nine original honorary foreign members.

Hauhart, W. F.; Reception of Goethe's Faust in England in the First Half of the 19th Century, New York, 1909, pp. 9-10.

Thompson, Harold W.; op. cit., pp. 90, ff.

7 Henderson, T. F.; Sir Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, London and New York, 1902, IV, 23, ff.

8 M. Friedel et Nicolas de Bonneville; Le Nouveau Theatre Allemande, 12 vols., Paris, 1782-1785.

9 None of the book lists or catalogs accessible to me gives any title by any such translators. It is probable that this is another case of carelessness on the part of Mackenzie.

10 Mr. Dawson did not give me the page in Friedel et de Bonneville from which this is quoted.

11 Goedeke; op. cit., p. 143.

12 Chambers, Robert; op. cit., p. 55.