XXXIV: Benjamin Beresford, Literary Ambassador

Abstract

Protégé of the Duke of Bedford, tutor of the Queen of Prussia, minister of the Gospel in Moscow, and professor of English in Berlin—such are the more striking phases of the varied career ascribed to the Reverend Benjamin Beresford by his commentators, for whom the full measure of the man has remained obscured. Even recent recognition of his sterling service as pioneer literary intermediary between Germany and England has been vitiated by insufficient knowledge not only of the man himself but also of the publications by which he initiated and sustained for a quarter of a century English acquaintance with German lyric poetry. His translations of popular German songs accompanied by their original melodies have long since become rarities. Even during his lifetime the compiler of a musical lexicon expressed regret that he did not have Beresford's first collection at hand so that he might inform a future generation precisely which of various current compositions had been selected for the songs. As a matter of fact, this particular publication seems to have reached posterity in a unique copy. Succeeding publications suffered similar fortunes, many of them surviving in extremely scarce if not actually single copies.