[Charles Godfrey Leland, American author.] Autograph poem titled 'Assyrian. (Jonah.) From the German of Scheffel.' With ebullient signed dedication ('Charles G. Leland') to a relation of Leonard Field, Bencher of the Inner Temple.

Author: 
Charles Godfrey Leland (1824-1903), American writer and folklorist, author of 'Hans Breitmann’s Ballads' (1871) [Leonard Field (1824-1903), Bencher of the Inner Temple; Josef Victor von Scheffel]
Publication details: 
The poem on letterhead 'Lea, | Leamington.' 'Written for Miss Field. Easter Sunday 1871'.
£250.00
SKU: 15434

In very good condition, on lightly-aged paper. The poem (24 lines in six stanzas) is written out on the letterhead 'Leam, | Leamington'. 1p., 12mo, with the blank second leaf of the bifolium tipped-in onto an 8vo leaf. An excellent translation of the well-known German drinking song, beginning: 'In the Black Whale of Ascalon |rank day by day, | Till straight as any broom handle | Upon the floor he lay.' The last stanza reads: 'In the Black Whale of Ascalon | No prophet hath renown, | And he who there would drink in peace | Must pay the money down.' Laid down above this item, on the same 8vo leaf, is the dedication, on a piece of 8 x 14 cm paper. With bright red initials in the style of a mediaeval manuscript it reads: 'Written for Miss Field | Easter Sunday | 1871 | Charles G. Leland.' 'Miss Field' was a relation (probably the niece) of Leland's college friend Leonard Field, for whom see Field's 'Memoirs': 'In April [1871] we went to Leamington to pay a visit to a Mr. Field, where we also met his brother, my old friend Leonard Field, whom I had known in Paris in 1848.' For more on Field, see his obituary in The Times, 25 April 1903. The present translation would appear in Leland's 'Gaudeamus!' (1872).