/f07 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY 
 
 HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 4480.C5 1907 
 
 Christabel. 
 
 3 1924 012 964 049 .im,...) 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924012964049 
 
PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE 
 ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE 
 
 CHRISTABEL 
 
OXFORD 
 HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY 
 
O X ^y ■ ijo/cridtte 
 
 tU/ 2(, 
 
CHRISTABEL 
 
 BY 
 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY 
 
 A FACSIMILE OF THE MANUSCRIPT 
 
 AND BY TEXTUAL AND OTHER NOTES 
 
 BY 
 ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE 
 
 Hon. F.R.S.L. 
 
 LONDON: HENRY FROWDE 
 
 MDMVII 
 
 S^ 
 
^.'i\Cflias 
 
THIS • EDITION 
 
 OF • THE CHRISTABEL 
 
 IS • DEDICATED 
 
 TO • THE • POET'S • GRANDDAUGHTERS 
 
 EDITH • COLERIDGE 
 
 AND 
 
 CHRISTABEL • ROSE • COLERIDGE 
 
 MOM VII 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The final cause of this edition of a great poem is to 
 place in the hands of the Fellows of the Royal Society 
 of Literature, and of others who may care to possess 
 it, a facsimile of an autograph manuscript of Coleridge's 
 Christabel. "Rare things," says another poet^ are 
 wont "to vanish", and the fate of the peritura charta 
 is proverbially uncertain. If Coleridge's friend and 
 "munificent co-patron", Tom Wedgwood, was the dis- 
 coverer, or a co-discoverer, of photography, he helped 
 to "fix for ever" one rare and perishable fragment of 
 a poet's handiwork. I have taken the opportunity of 
 this reproduction and reduplication of the manuscript 
 to give some account of the sources and history of the 
 Poem, and to collate the text as published in 1834 with 
 this and other manuscripts and with more than one 
 transcription. Selections from contemporary reviews, 
 and a bibliographical index of the authoritative editions 
 of Christabel, will be found in the Appendices. Some 
 portion of this illustrative material may be of service 
 to future editors, students, and critics of the Poem, 
 
 Nothing that can be said or left unsaid can make or 
 mar the Poem itself. The most elaborate scholarship, 
 
viii CHRISTABEL 
 
 the most penetrating and illuminative criticism are as 
 dust in the balance, compared with the humblest and 
 poorest reprint of the actual text. None the less it is 
 by taking thought that we inherit the kingdom of genius. 
 The greater the poem, the greater it becomes the more 
 closely and attentively it is studied. He who runs 
 may read, but he who stays to read over and over 
 again will not only "recapture the first fine careless 
 rapture", but as his knowledge grows so will his 
 reverence and his love. Poetry may be studied in the 
 wrong way, but it cannot be studied too much. Its 
 beauty is renewed from age to age. There is no end 
 to its significance. 
 
 My grateful acknowledgements are due, in the first 
 instance, to the Council of the Royal Society of Litera- 
 ture, who have undertaken the publication of this work 
 as a tribute to the memory of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 
 who was a Fellow and Associate of the Society. 
 
 I desire on behalf of the Council to thank my cousin, 
 Miss Edith Coleridge, for permitting her manuscript of 
 Christabel, a treasured heirloom, to be reproduced for 
 the benefit of the Fellows of the Society. 
 
 I have also, in their name, to thank Miss Ward, of 
 Over Stowey, for permitting a photogravure of a pastel 
 drawing of S. T. Coleridge, now in her possession, to 
 form the frontispiece of this volume. 
 
 My cordial thanks are due to Mr. John Murray, who 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 lent me, for purposes of collation, the Hinves copy of 
 the First Edition of Christahel; to Mr. A. H. Hallam 
 Murray, who permitted me to make use of the Transcript 
 in the handwriting of Miss Sarah Hutchinson; and to 
 Mr, Gordon Wordsworth, who placed in my hands 
 a manuscript of Christahel which had belonged to his 
 grandfather the poet. 
 
 I am indebted to the Earl of Carlisle for valuable 
 information with regard to the site of Triermain Castle 
 and the topography of the neighbourhood, and also 
 for presenting me with a photograph of the tomb of 
 Sir Roland de Vaux in Lanercost Priory. 
 
 I beg to offer my thanks to Mr. F. H. Baynes of Weston- 
 super-Mare, to my friends Mr. Thomas Hutchinson and 
 Mr. R. A. Potts, to Dr. Furnivall, and to Dr. Aldis 
 Wright, of Trinity College, Cambridge, for supplying me 
 with references to the original source of the story of 
 the "poison-fed maiden" {pide pp. 29-31), and for other 
 assistance. My thanks are also due to Mr. W. Hale 
 White and to Mr. T. Norton Longman for permission 
 to print extracts from letters published in A Description 
 of the Wordsworth and Coleridge Manuscripts, etc. (Long- 
 mans, Green & Co., 1897). 
 
 Most of all I wish to thank my wife for her devotion to 
 the task of reading the proofs of the text, and noting 
 the variants in the several MSS. The editorial work 
 owes much to her labour and her care. 
 
 ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE, 
 b 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface vii 
 
 History of the Poem 
 
 Part I r 
 
 Part II 35 
 
 Facsimile of the Autograph Manuscript 
 
 Note on the Manuscripts of Christabel .... 54 
 
 Abbreviations 56 
 
 Preface to Christabel 57 
 
 Christabel. Part the First 61 
 
 „ Conclusion to Part the First ... 80 
 
 „ Part the Second 82 
 
 „ Conclusion to Part the Second ... 96 
 
 Appendix I. Reviews and Notices of Christabel . . 99 
 
 „ II. Parodies and Continuations of Christabel . 103 
 
 „ III. Christobell. a Gothic Tale. [Reprinted from 
 
 the European Magazine, April 1815.] , . 104 
 
 „ IV. Bibliographical Index m 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 (i) S. T. Coleridge. From a pastel drawing taken in Germany 
 in 1799. In the possession of Miss Ward of Over 
 Stowey . Frontispiece 
 
 (ii) The Tomb of Sir Roland de Vaux in Lanercost Priory. 
 From a photograph in the possession of the Earl of 
 Carlisle To face p. 25 
 
 (iii) Facsimile of the autograph manuscript of Chrt'stabel, in the 
 
 possession of Miss Edith Coleridge . To follow p. 52 
 
 (iv) The Arms of De Vaux of Triermain p. 60 
 
CHRISTABEL 
 
 HISTORY OF THE POEM 
 
 PART I 
 
 Christabel and the Ancient Manner would never have V 
 been written if chance or some diviner providence had not 
 decreed that for one short year (June 1797 — June 1798) 
 WiUiam and Dorothy Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor 
 Coleridge should be neighbours and almost daily com- 
 panions. Wordsworth and his sister lived at Alfoxden, a 
 small country seat or place some three miles distant from 
 Coleridge's cottage at Nether Stowey, a market village 
 which lies at the foot of the Quantocks, and the three 
 friends were oftener together than apart. It is not too 
 much to say that those two great poems, which are, 
 perhaps, the most original poems in the English language, 
 owed their very existence to this intimate companion- 
 ship. They were the response of genius to genius — the 
 first fruits of the enabling grace of sympathy. 
 
 Christabel is not only a fragment, it is a sequence of 
 fragments composed at different times and in different 
 places. 
 
 It is impossible to assign an exact date to the composi- 
 tion of the First Part. In the Preface to the pamphlet 
 entitled Christabel: Kubla Khan, A Vision, &c., which 
 was published in 1816, Coleridge writes : — " The first part 
 
 B 
 
2 CHRISTABEL 
 
 of the following poem was written in the year one thousand 
 seven hundred and ninety-seven, at Stowey, in the County 
 of Somerset." It is almost certain that his memory was 
 at fault, and that he should have written " in the year 
 one thousand seven hundred and ninety-eight". Apart 
 from the fact that the spring, summer, and autumn of 1797 
 were devoted to the composition of the play, first named 
 Osorio, and, afterwards, recast as Remorse, there is a 
 well-known passage in Wordsworth's Prelude (Book XIV) 
 which implies the later rather than the earlier date : — 
 
 Beloved Friend ! 
 When, looking back, thou seest, in clearer view 
 Than any liveliest sight of yesterday, 
 That summer, under whose indulgent skies, 
 Upon smooth Quantock's airy ridge we roved 
 Unchecked, or loitered 'mid her sylvan combs, 
 Thou in bewitching words, with happy heart, 
 Didst chaunt the vision of that Ancient Man, 
 The bright-eyed Mariner, and rueful woes 
 Didst utter of the Lady Christabel. 
 
 Now we know that in the summer of 1797 the Ancient 
 Mariner was not begun, and it is impossible to believe that 
 that summer, that summer of summers, when the Ancient 
 Mariner was completed, and Coleridge was preparing, 
 among other poems. The Dark Ladie and Christabel 
 (JBiographia Literaria, cap, xiv), was not the summer of 
 1798. Wordsworth writing, at latest, in 1805, is a safer 
 authority as to dates than Coleridge at work on an 
 'apologetic preface' in 1816, and, putting this and that 
 together, it may be taken for granted that it was in the 
 summer of 1798 that the 'Ancient Man' and the 'Lady 
 Christabel' began their immortal rivalry, their insepar- 
 able companionship. Moreover, in the early spring 
 (Jan. 20— May 16) of 1798, whilst she was living at 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 3 
 
 Alfoxden, Dorothy Wordsworth kept a journal, and under 
 date January 27, 31, February 17, March 7, 24, &c., there 
 are certain entries, records of minute observations of 
 natural objects and scenic effects, which are not quotations 
 from, or illustrations of, Christabel, but were evidently 
 jotted down by Dorothy, and, then or afterwards, found 
 their way into Coleridge's verse. 
 
 We know that Coleridge spent the latter half of 
 January 1798 at Shrewsbury, and that he returned to 
 Stowey either on the last day of January or a day or 
 two later. He went with the intention of accepting a 
 Unitarian pastorate which had fallen vacant, and he re- 
 turned because the offer of an annuity of ;^i5o a year left 
 him free to complete his education and devote the whole of 
 his time to literature. Dorothy Wordsworth walked over 
 to Stowey in the evening of January 31, and on her way 
 thither she noticed that the moon " was immensely large, 
 the sky scattered over with clouds. These soon closed 
 in, contracting the dimensions of the moon without con- 
 cealing her." ' Here was one of those moon-scapes which 
 the poet should depict in verse — an 'effect' which must 
 not be allowed to pass beyond recall. The first ' state ' 
 of the finished etching {Christabel, Part I, hues 16-19) is 
 preserved in one of Coleridge's notebooks, part of which 
 certainly belongs to the spring of 1798 : — 
 
 Behind the thin 
 Grey cloud that covered but not hid the sky 
 The round full moon looked small. 
 
 It is obvious that Dorothy's note and Coleridge's 
 metrification of the note are both anterior to their in- 
 
 ' ^or the use of this image of the veiled moon compare Wordsworth's 'Night- 
 piece', lines 1-7, which was written in 1798 "on the road between Nether 
 Stowey and Alfoxden, extempore ". Vide post, p. 6g. 
 
4 CHRISTABEL 
 
 elusion in the actual poem. When these were scribbled 
 down Christabel was inchoate. 
 
 Again, five weeks later, on March 7 Dorothy writes : — 
 "William and I drank tea at Coleridge's. Observed 
 nothing particularly interesting. One only leaf upon the 
 top of a tree — the sole remaining leaf — danced round and 
 round like a rag blown by the wind." Here again, un- 
 doubtedly, Dorothy ' gave eyes ' to her brother's friend, 
 as, before and after, to her brother. For this was the 
 matrix of the gem : — 
 
 The one red leaf, the last of its clan, 
 '' Which dances as often as dance it can. 
 
 Finally, on March 24, she notes a succession of images 
 which Coleridge reproduced in verse, (i) 'The spring 
 continues to advance very slowly ' — the original of the 
 oft-quoted "The spring comes slowly up this way"; (2) 
 ' nothing green but the brambles ', which took shape as 
 "And nought was green upon the oak"; and (3) 'The 
 old oak tree ', which was transplanted and grew again 
 in the poem. 
 
 Now the day before these entries were made in the 
 journal, on March 23, Coleridge had brought his ballad 
 (i. e. the Ancient Mariner) 'finished ' ; and it may be sur- 
 mised that then, and not till then, did he begin in earnest 
 to prepare his second ballad, Christabel. It is unlikely 
 that he would begin one tune before he had left off 
 another. Doubtless, a surmise it must remain, but such 
 evidence as there is, external or internal, points to the 
 conclusion that Christabel was begun in the spring of 
 1798, it may be in "the month before the month of May". 
 Even so, e caelo descendit Christabel. Apart from 
 Dorothy's journal there is no record of its inception or 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 5 
 
 composition. No one was present at the birth, no one 
 ' kenned her taking wing '. Coleridge is silent, Words- 
 worth is silent, Dorothy says never a word. Was the poem 
 written in the little parlour of the Stowey cottage, when 
 all the household was at rest, or in Tom Poole's peaceful 
 book-room, or in Holford Wood, in the holly grove, or ' on 
 Quantock's airy ridge'? Perhaps it is as well that we 
 cannot run the 'lovely Lady' to the dust and earth of date 
 and spot, but the surmise or conjecture which places the 
 poem in the midst of the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth's 
 and Coleridge's — after their great commencement in the 
 Ancient Manner, and before their great conclusion in 
 Lines written at Tintern Abbey — is not without point and 
 meaning — is something more than the exercise of an 
 elaborate and idle pedantry. 
 
 We know that Wordsworth and Coleridge determined 
 of set purpose to awaken the slumbering Muse of Poetry, 
 or, in those great words which Dykes Campbell was the 
 first to quote ad hoc, " to put a new song in her mouth ". 
 Once they were neighbours they were for ever talking 
 about poetry, and, as time went on, it was agreed between 
 them that Wordsworth should exercise his imagination on 
 "subjects of ordinary life — characters and incidents . . . 
 such as are to be found in every village and its 
 vicinity ", suffusing them with the sudden light of genius, 
 and so giving them the charm of novelty, and that 
 yColeridge should turn his attention to that spiritual world 
 which is peopled by ' the shadows of imagination ', and 
 by a discernment of the natural within the supernatural, 
 should clothe them with substance and reality. It 
 was not that Wordsworth was less imaginative than 
 Coleridge, not only that Coleridge was dreamier and 
 
6 CHRISTABEL 
 
 more fantastical than Wordsworth, but that, as a rule, 
 the things which were seen inspired Wordsworth, while 
 Coleridge was roused to passion by the 'goings-on' of 
 those Naturae invisibiles seen only by the 'inner eye', 
 which were the guests and playmates of his soul. 
 
 Entrusted with this function or mission, he would spare 
 no pains to procure material for his verse. He had been 
 from a child a devourer of old folios, a dipper into odd 
 volumes, an amateur of the marvellous in physic and 
 metaphysic, in natural and supernatural history. We 
 know that he read, and afterwards turned to poetical 
 account, such books of ti^avel as Leemius de Lapponibus 
 (1767), Shelvocke's Voyage {\']'2^), Captain Thomas James's 
 Strange and Dangerous Voyage (1633), Purchas, his Pil- 
 grimage (1626), William Bartram's Travels in North and 
 South Carolina (1794), and that by chance, or in search of 
 the curious, he had gathered facts or fancies from such 
 recondite sources as the Epistolae of Paulinus of Nola 
 (circ. A.D. 400), from the dialogues of Michael Psellus 
 (1018-1079), and from Thomas Burnet's Telluris Theoria 
 Sacra (1689). He was now in quest of the supernatural, 
 a chartered voyager in unknown seas, and it is past belief 
 that in order to write, and before he wrote, the First 
 Part of Christahel, he had not made some study of 
 occult literature, the 'black' science of demons, and 
 witches and magic. He must have read widely and 
 deeply, and taken infinite pains to acquaint himself with 
 the niceties of wizardry and fascination, before he could 
 spread his net of glamour, and procure a " willing suspen- 
 sion of disbelief in the supernatural ". 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 
 
 THE SOURCES OF THE FIRST PART OF 
 CHRISTABEL 
 
 In the First Part of Christabel there are but two 
 characters, a maiden, 'the lovely lady Christabel,' or 
 ' sweet Christabel ', and her ghostly enemy the ' strange 
 lady', the 'lofty lady', the 'bright dame', the 'damsel 
 bright ', ' fair ' Geraldine. 
 
 Christabel's lover is far away, and her father Sir Leoline 
 is asleep. The phantom of Christabel's mother appears 
 to Geraldine, but not to Christabel. Of the maiden 
 Christabel we are told nothing, save that she is ' lovely ', 
 and that her soul is troubled for others, for her absent lover, 
 for her father, "who seldom sleepeth well," for the forlorn 
 and weary outcast whom she finds in the wood at midnight, 
 and shelters " in love and in charity ". She has no charac- 
 teris^cs but beau ty, kindnesSj^ gentleness, and, so we 
 di vine, the white innocence oLniaidfiiihQQui- 
 
 Of Geraldine we are toLd a great deal. She is of lofty 
 statureT She is richly3clad"in a robe of white silk. Her 
 hair glitters with gems. She has fair large eyes, a stately 
 neck, and "Hue- veined feet. Christabel is the image of the 
 ' maid"we~woo ', the ' inexpressive she ', but we possess 
 the counterfeit presentment of Geraldine> a likeness to 
 swear by. There is, indeed, nothing in her aspect or 
 behaviour to put Christabel, who knows no guile, on her 
 guard, but, without being told in so many words that she 
 is a witch or possessed of a devil, we who arenotguileless 
 are made to feel that she comes in a questionable shape, 
 that she is uncanny. We have gone back, it must be 
 
8 CHRISTABEL 
 
 remembered, to the ages of faith and faith's shadow, 
 credulity. Our powers of disbelief are suspended. We 
 believe and tremble. ' We cannot choose but ' submit our 
 reason to the yoke of the poet's imagination. He tells us 
 that Geraldine's voice was ''faint and sweet", that gems 
 were entangled in her hair, that she stumbled and fell on 
 crossing the threshold of the gate, that she could not or 
 would not join in praising the " Virgin all divine ", that she 
 vexes the sleep of the mastiff bitch, that as she passed 
 the hearth the dying embers shot out a tongue of flame, 
 that when Christabel trimmed the lamp she sank down 
 in woful plight, that she stared with unsettled eye as 
 though she saw the dead, and that when the dead saw her 
 she muttered an imprecation "with hollow voice". We 
 know that mischief is afoot, but Christabel, guileless and 
 compassionate, consoles and tends, and alas ! obeys her 
 mysterious guest. At length her eyes are opened, and 
 she perceives with whom she has to do, a spirit of evil 
 made manifest. But it is too late. The spell has begun 
 to work, and Christabel is spellbound. Once again the 
 demon is half quelled by the light, and shudders even as 
 she triumphs. But her hour is come, and she will leave 
 with the innocent the mark of guilt and shame with which 
 some higher spirit of evil has signed and sealed her 
 bosom and half her side. It is the sacrament of Hell, the 
 unholy communion of the mystery of sin. 
 
 We know from one of the marginal glosses ^ of the 
 Ancient Mariner that he derived his conception of the 
 ' spirit that plague d ' the vessel, and of those other spirits 
 
 ' I am wholly indebted for this suggestion to a valuable and interesting 
 note by Mr. Lane Cooper, of Cornell University, published in Modem 
 Language Notes for April, 1905, vol. xx, no. 4, pp. 107, 108. 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 9 
 
 of earth and air which sped on or hindered its course, 
 from the writings of the 'Platonic Constantinopolitan, 
 Michael Psellus ' {vide Psellus De Daemonibus, pp. 347-8 
 \IambUchus, &c., 1607, pp. 334-61.] — S. T. C.'s copy, 
 bought by Thelwall, November, 1796), and it is probable 
 that the poesy of Chnstabel may, here and there, be 
 assigned to the same original. A word, a phrase, 
 a heightened mode of expression, may startle the ex- 
 pectant seer into clearer vision. The least of all seeds 
 will wax into a great tree, so that the birds may lodge 
 and sing in the branches. Psellus speaks by the card 
 in the matter of demons. There are spirits of fire 
 and of earth, spirits of air and of water, spirits that are 
 under the earth, and last but not least the " light loathing 
 demons which are baleful and^ malignant in the last 
 degree". The parallel may be far-fetched, but, of a 
 surety, Geraldine^—who— was- ^^, -bird, of -jughty^quaHed 
 and shawed-jdistress, when JChxistakel ±rimnLe(J„ her .lamp 
 which was "fastened to an angel's feet". Again, at the 
 close of his dialogue Psellus reports, apparently at first 
 hand, a strange case of a woman who suffered from 
 puerperal mania and was hypnotized by an Armenian, 
 a very old bald-headed man, with a wrinkled skin, and 
 sunburnt to a very dark hue. When she came to herself, 
 Psellus asked her "what she had undergone and if she 
 could call to mind anything that had occurred". "I 
 beheld," she said, "the spectre of an evil spirit of shadowy 
 form. It was like unto a woman, and her locks were 
 shaken by the wind, and methought I saw her coming 
 upon me. In my terror I fell backward on the bed, and 
 after that nought else I saw or knew." It is a weird tale, 
 and it is not impossible that Coleridge felt rather than 
 
 c 
 
lo CHRISTABEL 
 
 deliberately recalled the association, when he makes us 
 understand that Geraldine leapt upon the bed, and with 
 sudden vehemence enfolded Christabel in her arms : — 
 
 She took two paces and a stride, 
 
 And lay down by the maiden's side, 
 
 And in her arms the maid she took, [MSS.] 
 
 It is idle to multiply such guesses, but we are tempted 
 to believe that he was acquainted with the Dialogues de 
 Thomas Erastus ^ who is precise on witch-marks ; that 
 he had read a treatise of J. G. Godelmannus, De Lamiis 
 (Francofurti, 1591, p. 54, sect. 19), who repeats in Latin 
 some monstrous yarns which Jean Wiet had already 
 spun in French, and that he had dipped into Hieronymus 
 Cardanus, De Rerum Varietate, who devotes a whole 
 book (lib. xvi) to the unn2A.\ir3\ history of demons, in 
 which he translates part of Psellus' dialogues, and adds 
 a story of his own about a boy and a ' FoUet ' (we are 
 reminded of Tasso's Folletto), and testifies to the exceed- 
 ing coldness of a demon's touch : " Palam autem est ex 
 hoc quod alias dixi hos daemonas esse frigidissimos." 
 No one who touched or had been touched by a demon 
 was able to forget the unearthly chill. Was it not the 
 joyous look in Geraldine's face that brought back the 
 horror of the night — "Again she felt that bosom cold"! 
 (Part II, 1. 458). 
 
 Whether he had read any or all of these ' books of 
 magic ' we can only surmise, but it is certain that from 
 their voluminous pedantry or from some simpler sources, 
 
 * Histoires, Disputes et Discours des Illusions et Impostures des diables, etc., 
 par Jean Wiet, Medecin du due de Cleves. Second dialogue, de Thomas 
 Erastus, Professeur de Medecine a Heidelburg touchant le pouvoir des 
 sorciferes, et de la punition qu'elles meritent. 1579, p. 817, 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM ii 
 
 some faery tale familiar to his childhood, he had qualified 
 in wizardry. By whatever means he had fed his fancy, or 
 from whatever source he acquired his witch-lore, he left 
 on one side as ' something to his purpose nothing ' those 
 darker subtleties and unclean imaginings which the old 
 writers, protesting 'they would ne'er repeat', invariably 
 repeated. His chaster muse 
 
 had lived 
 
 In this bad world, as in a place of tombs, 
 And touched not the pollutions of the dead. 
 
 Whatever may be indicated, or symbolized, or adum- 
 brated in Christabel, there is no rending of the veil 
 of the senses. The passion is psychical, and by no 
 means sensual. There is no veil to rend. 
 
 But the critics thought otherwise. It was not only hinted 
 but expressly stated that the key to the poem was that 
 Geraldine was a man in disguise and that Christabel was his 
 victim. Rossetti told Mr, Hall Caine that a report had been 
 conveyed to him by P. G. Patmore (father of the poet) 
 that it was believed ' by contemporary circles ' that Cole- 
 ridge's 'real intention' was that Geraldine was 'to turn out 
 to be a man '. It is quite possible that Ha^F^who was 
 "tnttffiatewKElPatmore) had been told by Coleridge himself 
 that it was part of the original design that Geraldine 
 should vanish and return in the character of Christabel's 
 absent lover, and that this future incident was perverted into 
 an explanation of the mysterious night-scene in the First 
 Part of the poem, Rossetti's suggestion that it was owing 
 to this " infamous accusation, so remote from all fact, so 
 smooth and homogeneous in its untruth" {Statesman's 
 Manual, 1816, App. p. xxi), that Coleridge changed the 
 
12 CHRISTABEL 
 
 line "And she is to sleep by Christabel" into "Oh shield 
 her, shield sweet Christabel ", may be accepted without 
 demur. {Recollections of Rossetti, by T. Hall Caine, 1882, 
 
 pp. 154-6.) 
 
 Here in England, when the eighteenth century was 
 at its close, the Romantic or Gothic revival, as it was 
 sometimes called, was stirring and quickenijig' the 
 popular fancy in more than one direction. There was the 
 antiquarian spirit which prompted the collection and the 
 re-writing, sometimes the forging, of ballads and legends. 
 There was a growing tendency to disregard classical 
 models, to break away from the formality of the French 
 school — an overture to, an eager desire to imitate and 
 acclimatise, the drama and the lyric of the Germans. 
 When Coleridge began to shape his thoughts in verse 
 he was still under the dominion of the examples and 
 ideals of the former generation, but as his powers matured 
 he was led by the spirit of the times and of his own 
 choice to a closer following of the Elizabethan poets 
 and their forerunners. When he wrote his 'Ode to 
 the Departing Year* (December 31, 1796) he was in- 
 spired by Gray and Collins, by Young and Dryden, 
 at his highest by Milton, but before the New Year was 
 far advanced he had steeped himself in ballad literature, 
 in Shakespeare's lyrics, in the Faery Queene, in Surrey 
 and Wyatt, in The Romaunt of the Rose. The ballad 
 of 'Sir Cauline' gave Christabel her name^, Spenser's 
 
 ' Bishop Percy took the name Christabel from the ancient ballad 'How 
 Eglamore loved Christabell and undertook those deeds of arms to win her 
 back', and bestowed it upon the unnamed heroine of the ballad of 'Sir 
 Cauline '. The Christabel stanzas in ' Sir Cauline ' (see Reliques of Ancient 
 English Poetry, 1775, i, 41-59) were all made out of the Bishop's brain. The 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 13 
 
 Una her virginal innocence and purity. Goraldine^ was^ 
 GaUe4 afteF-Swaa^ji&.disdam£uL lady-loyC;^ and Jifee^ JDu§s?a 
 she is of fair„cpuntenance, but of another ' hue ' when her 
 robe drops down and her true form appears. Again, in 
 the ^Marriage of Sir Gawain ' the hero discovers a ladye 
 seated between 'an oke and a hollen', who had been 
 witched and lured into 'thegreene foreste* by the jealousy 
 of a young stepmother. Here, it may be, as Professor 
 Brandl maintains, was a seed of Chrtstabel, but I doubt 
 if Coleridge 'conveyed* anything worth mentioning 
 from such contemporary works as Burger's ' Lenore ' or 
 Mrs. Radcliffe's Romance of the Forest, or Monk Lewis's 
 l^allad of ' Alonzo and the Fair Imogene '. It is true that 
 he was not the first to kindle the dead ashes of romance, 
 but it was not till he passed those dying brands "there 
 came A tongue of light, a fit of flame ". 
 
 There is, however, one other 'source' which should 
 be noted for what it is worth. Whilst he was ' preparing ' 
 Chrtstabel he read and minutely studied Lewis's Castle 
 Spectre. His copy, which he must have bought at Shrews- 
 authentic ' Christabell ' first took shape in the ' Eglamof e ' ballad of which 
 Coleridge had read never a word :— 
 
 "The Erie had no child but one, 
 
 A maiden as white as whalles bone, 
 That his right heyre shold bee ; 
 
 Christabell was the Ladyes name; 
 
 A ffairer maid than shee was ane 
 Was none in Christentye, 
 
 Christabell soe well her bore, 
 
 The Erie loved nothing more 
 Then his daughter free; 
 
 Soe did that gentle knight 
 
 That was soe full of might ; 
 It was the more pittye." 
 
 See Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript Ballads and Romances. Edited by John 
 W. Hales and F. J. Fumivall, 1868, ii. 338-89- 
 
14 CHRISTABEL 
 
 bury, is dated January 20, 1798, and a few days later 
 (Tuesday [January 23I 1798) he forwarded a detailed 
 criticism of the play to Wordsworth, in which he com- 
 pared his own genius with that of a writer whom he 
 duly appreciated but by no means rated in accordance 
 with the general. "The play", he writes, "is a mere 
 patchwork of plagiarisms; but they are well worked 
 up, and for stage effect make an excellent whole. There 
 is a pretty little ballad-song introduced ['Sleep you, or 
 wake you. Lady bright?' Act II, Sc. iii], and Lewis, 
 I think, has great and peculiar excellence in these com- 
 positions. The simplicity and naturalness is his own, 
 and not imitated ; for it is made to subsist in congruity 
 with a language perfectly modern, the language of his 
 own times, in the same way that the language of the 
 writer of ' Sir Cauline ' was the language of his times. 
 This, I think, a rare merit : at least, I find, / cannot attain 
 this innocent nakedness, except by assumption. I re- 
 semble the Duchess of Kingston, who masqueraded in the 
 character of ' Eve before the Fall' in flesh-coloured silk." ^ 
 The mention of "the writer of 'Sir Cauline'" is a 
 proof that his own ballads, the half- written Ancient 
 Mariner and his projected Christabel, were being passed 
 in review, and whether he is right or wrong about him- 
 self he incidentally traverses and disposes of the conten- 
 tion of an able but unfriendly critic ^ that his greater work 
 was " an abnormal product of an abnormal nature, under 
 abnormal conditions". 'Assumption' is not the char- 
 
 ' Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge, 
 1895, i. 237. The letter was still unpublished when Professor Brandl's acute 
 and illuminative work on Coleridge was translated into English. 
 
 ' New Essays towards a Critical Method. By John Mackinnon Robertson, 
 1897—' Coleridge,' p. 187. 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 15 
 
 acteristic of an opium dream. But to return to the 
 detection of 'sources'. The 'Castle' Spectre is the 
 spectre of a dead mother who watches over her child. 
 There is_ an orator y^ in the castle 'richly ornamented 
 with carving', which douBtless suggested Christabel's 
 chamber "carved so curiously", and lastly, the double 
 adjuration "Jesu, Maria ",i which Sir Walter Scott ad- 
 mitted that he borrowed from Christabel, had already 
 been 'lifted* by 'Monk' Lewis from some earlier 
 romanticist {vide Castle Spectre, Act HI, Sc. iii). 
 These are trifles light as air, but they are not uncon- 
 sidered trifles, and they afford convincing proof that 
 when the Castle Spectre was being read (and even the 
 lines counted), Christabel was still unwritten. 
 
 Of such sort were the 'sources' of Christabel, and 
 after making due allow ance for t he S pep segiai«''-'#rigia^ 
 of the allego^, the^tithesis of the beauty of innocence 
 to the beauty of sin, the conclusion of the whole matter 
 is that Coleridge^s Christabel is a new creation, as new 
 as Eve when ' first awaked ', and strange as yet to Adam 
 and to Paradise. 
 
 Perhaps the most wonderful quality or characteristic 
 of this First Part of Christabel is tbat-th€~a€t4©n~is-Jiot 
 
 thal,,of_^ajdtama,,^JxidLis-.,^^.4)^^6#^^ 
 .^Ofjact; — nor are we persuaded to reproduce it for ourselves 
 as by .A talg. that. is told, but we behold it, scene after 
 scene, episode by episode, as in a mirror, as the Lady 
 of Shalott saw the knights ride-by. If we stay to think 
 of Christabel "praying beneath the huge oak tree", or of 
 
 ^ Coleridge wrote 'Jesu Maria', not 'Jesu, Maria'. It may be noted tliat 
 one of the vessels in which Shelvocke sailed round the world was christened 
 the Jesu Maria. 
 
i6 CHRISTABEL 
 
 Geraldine and Christabel crossing the moat and passing 
 through the hall, and stealing theiLJvra^L^&oSL-itah:. to 
 stair, our minds make pictures, but we do not stay to 
 think or reflect on their fears or their rejoicmgs. We 
 •see, we see it all', and now in ghmmer and now in 
 gloom we 'live o'er again' that midnight hour. ^Jt^s 
 not a tale that is told, it is a personal jexpexience. The 
 mechanis m jwhich^hifts the scenes is worked. hy.na.ture 
 and not by art, _^ The necessity of their connexion is^ 
 not logical, but, in the strictest sense of the word, acci- 
 dental. It happened, and it was so. Was it then an/ 
 automatic effusion? Was it, like ^Kubla K/ian,_tiie 
 metrical record of a 'psychological curiosity ' ? Did he 
 fall into a trance having his eyes open, and being always 
 a poet and full of poetic images reproduce his dream so 
 far as it went, and did he write no more because the 
 vision faded and was past recall? He does not say so 
 himself (as in his Preface to Kubla Khan), and Words- 
 worth, who must have known the truth, does not say 
 it of him. He speaks at the time of an "assumption 
 of innocent nakedness", and long afterwards in the Bio- 
 graphia Literaria he tells us that his excursion into the 
 domain of the supernatural was^ the execution of a deli- 
 berate plan. Wordsworth, when he was questioned by Mr. 
 Justice Coleridge, bore singular and conclusive testimony 
 to the same effect. "He [Wordsworth] very much and re- 
 peatedly regretted that my uncle (S. T. C.) had written so 
 little verse . . . He attributed, in fact, his writing so little, to 
 the extreme care and labour which he applied in elaborat- 
 ing his metres. He said that when he was intent on a new 
 experiment in metre, the time and labour he bestowed 
 were inconceivable; that he was quite an epicure in 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 17 
 
 sound." ' Now Christ qbel was a JLjtiew experiment in 
 metre'. It was the product of intense thought, of a 
 deliberate design, and of unsparing' labour. But if 
 these had been the sole conditions of poetical activity, 
 the end might have been reached. In spite of natural 
 slothfulness, of grievous sickness, and disastrous habits, 
 the power of intense thought, the capacity of taking infinite 
 pains, were never wholly lost, were recoverable, and at 
 rare intervals recovered. 
 
 There was another cause or condition of poetical 
 activity which was present 'in: power' in 1798, and still 
 availed him when he strove to complete his poem in 1800 : 
 that inward and spiritual happiness, that equipoise of the 
 intellectual and emotional faculties, which he christened 
 'joy'. 'We in ourselves rejoice' — and so long as that 
 is possible the shaping spirit of Imagination seeks and 
 finds its proper function, A time came when bodily 
 disease and a closing of all doors of hope extinguished 
 'joy', the dynamic of self-realization in poetry, and 
 'left instead' a vain and profitless endeavour to attain^ 
 Nirvana in abstraction and ratiocination. ' Joy '.„anii«™.^ 
 not the juice of poppy or mandragora was the inspiration 
 of VErisiabeT^d. the Ancient Mariner. 
 
 - -ivwetKT^-i^r »»-^«,>nns«^?i«w?:*S«et-^-v (iiyaw^.* 
 
 THE CONCLUSION TO PART THE FIRST 
 
 There is nothing to show when these lines (279-331) 
 were written. It has been taken for granted (see, for 
 instance. Poetical Works of S. T. C, 1893, pp. 120, 606) 
 that they belong to the original draft of 1798, but there 
 
 > MS. Journal of Sir J. T. Coleridge, published in Memoirs of William 
 Wordsworth, 1851, ii. 304-6. 
 
 D 
 
i8 CHRISTABEL 
 
 are sound reasons for maintaining that they were written 
 at Greta Hall, in the autumn of 1800, after and not before the 
 Second Part had been brought to its present conclusion. 
 
 In the first place, this ' Conclusion' is of the nature of 
 an afterthought. It is a reflection on the beginning ainHher 
 end of the First Part. The poet seems to contemplate 
 his own work from a distance. Secondly, two Lake 
 Country words — ' tairn ' and ' fell ' — are used for the first 
 time. Thirdly (lines 317, 318), with the passing of her 
 trance Christabel " seems to smile As infants at a sudden 
 light". Now in a letter to Josiah Wedgwood, dated 
 November 12, 1800, Coleridge writes, " Pray do you ever 
 pay any particular attention to the first time of your little 
 ones smiling and laughing? Both I and Mrs. C. have 
 carefully watched our little one [Derwent Coleridge, bom 
 September 14, 1800], and noted down all the circum- 
 stances, &c., under which he smiled, and under which he 
 laughed, for the first six times," &c. ; and in a notebook, 
 under date, October 24, 1800, there is a pencilled entry, 
 " Derwent laughed for the first time at six weeks old." 
 
 The simile has been traced to an incident in Hartley's 
 babyhood recorded in The Nightingale (11. 101-3), but the 
 immediate allusion would seem to be to those psycho- 
 logical observations of the ' goings-on ' of infants in which 
 Coleridge, after an imperfect fashion, anticipated Charles 
 Darwin. 
 
 Lastly, Coleridge's somewhat mysterious admission or 
 explanation that Crashaw's "verses on St. Theresa (' Since 
 'tis not to be had at home, She'l travel to a martyrdome,' 
 &c.) were ever present to my mind whilst writing the 
 second part of Christabel— if, indeed, by some subtle 
 process of the mind they did not suggest the first thought 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 19 
 
 of the entire poem ", acquires some force and meaning if 
 lines 319-22, "For she doth smile, and she doth weep, 
 Like a youthful hermitess, Beauteous in a wilderness," &c., 
 may be assigned to the second division of the poem. 
 (See Allsop's Letters and Conversations, 1836, i. 195-6,) 
 
 Over and above these hints and inferences the MS. 
 reveals the existence of a note to the word 'Tairn ', which 
 is now printed for the first time : — " Tairn or Tarn (derived 
 by Lye from the Icelandic. Tiorn, stagnum, palus) is 
 rendered in our dictionaries as synonimous with Mere 
 or Lake, but it is properly a large Pool or Reservoir in 
 the mountains, commonly the Feeder of some Mere in the 
 Valleys. Tarn Watling and Blellum Tarn, though on lower 
 ground, are yet not exceptions, for both are on elevations, 
 and Blellum Tarn feeds the Wynander Mere." It is 
 evident that the note is contemporary with the text, 
 and was designed for the instruction of South Country 
 readers. Blelham Tarn he had visited with Wordsworth in 
 November 1799, but his knowledge of Tarn Watling, which 
 lies above High Hesket on the road from Penrith to 
 Carlisle, may have been derived from a map or guide-book 
 or, in the first instance, from Percy's Reliques (' Marriage 
 of Sir Gawaine,' part i, stanza 6). 
 
 The spelling, Blellum for Blelham, and Wynander 
 Mere, corresponds with entries in the journal of the tour 
 taken in November 1799. In the first edition Winder- 
 mere (line 344) is printed Wyn'dermere, evidently an 
 abbreviation of Wynander Mere. 
 
 Internal evidence seldom convinces those who are not 
 convinced already, but the note which in 1816 Coleridge 
 overlooked or omitted tells its own tale. Whether the 
 Conclusion to Part the First was written either before or, as 
 
20 CHRISTABEL 
 
 I conceive, after the Second Part, it was not the child of his 
 earlier muse. And yet, though the melody was trembling 
 to its close, the dying notes are strong and sweet. 
 
 But this she knows, in joys and woes, 
 That saints will aid if men will call: 
 For the blue sky bends over all! 
 
 THE SECOND PART OF CHRISTABEL 
 
 Coleridge began his residence at Greta Hall, Keswick, 
 July 24, 1800. On his way thither he halted at Grasmere, 
 and spent three weeks with Wordsworth and his sister at 
 Townend. A second edition, necessitating a second volume 
 of the Lyrical Ballads, was being got ready for the press, 
 and Coleridge promised to finish Chrtstabel, as his con- 
 tribution to the new and enlarged issue. Week after week 
 went by, and though he " tried and tried . . . nothing would 
 come of it". "The wind from the Skiddaw and Borrow^ 
 dale was often as loud as wind need be, and many a walk 
 in the clouds in the mountains I took : but all would not 
 do, till one day I dined out at the house of a neighbouring 
 clergyman, and somehow or other drank so much wine 
 that I found some effort and dexterity requisite to balance 
 myself on the hither edge of sobriety. The next day my 
 verse-making faculties returned to me." ^ The story, which 
 is intended for an apology, is ' like enough ', and derives 
 some corroboration from other sources. In a notebook, 
 dated August 28, 1800, Coleridge wrote the first draft of 
 a fragment which he afterwards published in a more 
 decorous version in the Gestes of Maxilian which appeared 
 
 ' Letter to Josiah Wedgwood, November lo, 1800. See the whole passage, 
 fost, pp. 41, 42. 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 21 
 
 in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, January, 1822. " It 
 is eleven o'clock at night. See that conical volcano of 
 coal, half-an-inch high, ejaculating its inverted cone of 
 smoke — the smoke in what a furious mood — this way, 
 that way, and what a noise ! 
 
 The poet's eye in his tipsy hour 
 
 Hath a magnifying power, 
 
 Or rather emancipates his eyes 
 
 Of the accidents of size. 
 
 In unctuous cone of kindling coal, 
 
 Or smoke from his pipe's bole, 
 
 His eye can see 
 
 Phantoms of sublimity." 
 
 Now these lines, which are in the metre of Chnstabel, 
 record or celebrate some more or less successful balancing 
 on the hither (or farther) edge of sobriety. Was Christabel 
 rediviva one of those ' Phantoms of sublimity ' ? 
 
 Again, there is another fragment in the metre of 
 Christabel, entitled 'A Thought suggested by a View of 
 Saddleback in Cumberland', which dates itself without 
 more ado. The first two lines, " On stern Blencartha's 
 perilous height The winds are tyrannous and strong," are 
 an adaptation of the first two lines of some stanzas (To 
 Mr. Head of Carlisle, a painter) composed by Isaac Ritson, 
 a Lake poet, who lived and sang 'ante Agamemnona ' : 
 "The winds upon Blenkarthur's head Are often loud and 
 strong." Coleridge found the lines in Hutchinson's History 
 of the County of Cumberland (1794, i. 336), one of the 
 County histories which slumbered on his landlord's shelves, 
 and prefixed them, a ' little altered ', to a versified reflection 
 which he composed ' at the foot of Saddleback Fell ', and 
 there can be little doubt that Ritson's lines which he had 
 
22 CHRISTABEL 
 
 turned into poetry were running in his head when he told 
 Josiah Wedgwood that "the winds from the Skiddaw and 
 Borrowdale were as loud as winds need be ". Wind and 
 cloud, mountain and torrent, were the primary ' sources ' 
 of the Second Part of ChristabeL 
 
 The Second Part (including the Conclusion to the First 
 Part) is a Lake Country poem. The scene changes from 
 the conventional mediaeval castle situated in or near 
 a wood (the wood being visualised as Holford Wood hard 
 by to Alfoxden in Somersetshire) to Langdale Hall, so 
 named, it may be, after Rydal Hall, or Coniston Hall, 
 ancient seats of the Le Flemings, or, possibly, the newly- 
 built and, then, wholly insignificant Greta Hall. Coleridge 
 had explored Great Langdale in July 1800, doubtless with 
 Wordsworth for his guide, and had there and then entered 
 in his notebook a pencilled description of the "Witch's 
 Lair And Dungeon Ghyll so foully rent " : " Stand to the 
 right hand close to the bellying rock, so as to see the top 
 of the waterfall, the highest of whose parallelograms is 
 faced with ferns ; daylight in the wet rock ; the arch right 
 above; the little imitation of the great waterfall (connections 
 in nature) ; between the arch and the great waterfall an 
 arch of trees — hollies, ash and birch : the stream widens 
 from a foot to a yard and a half— as it widens varying from 
 a vivid white to a black through all intermediate shades. 
 The second arch divided from the first by a huge natural 
 bridge, one vast boulder contignated to the two sides by 
 rocks small and pendulous. Plumy ferns on the side, and 
 over the second pool — on the left side the light umbrella of 
 a young ash." 
 
 Where Langdale Hall stood or was supposed to stand, 
 whether Coleridge invented or repeated the legend of 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 23 
 
 the " three sinful sextons ", and " their ropes of rock and 
 bells of air ", are problems still to be solved, but it may be 
 noted that the " answering peal from Borrowdale " recalls 
 the fugue or sequence of echoes in Wordsworth's poem 
 'To Joanna V which owes its birth, though not its beauty, 
 to a passage in Draytoji's^olyolkion. 
 
 There is further evidence that the creations of the poet's 
 fancy had travelled with him northwards to the haunt 
 and region of ' old romance '. Mention has been made of 
 Hntchinsov^s^ H4siQi:^^.^^umberland, with regard to one 
 source of the lines written at ' the foot of Saddleback Fell ', 
 and to the situation of ' Tarn Watling '. Coleridge read 
 the two volumes from end to end, and it was in a note 
 extracted from an unpublished MS. that in a happy 
 moment he discovered a ' local habitation and a name ' for 
 Geraldine's father, who is presumed to be ' noble ', but of 
 whom nothing more is told us in the First Part of the poem. 
 
 Here is Denton's gloss on 'Tryermain, orTreverman' 
 (vol. i. pp. 99, 100): — "Triermaine was at the conquest 
 a fee of Gilsland — one Gilandos was lord thereof; he 
 stood against the conqueror, and his son Gilamor got his 
 own peace with Ranulph Meschines, Earl of Cumberland, 
 and his brother William Meschines, and quietly enjoyed 
 it in Henry I's time, and builded the first chapel there of 
 wood. . . . After the death of Gilamor, lord of Triermaine 
 and Torerossock, Hubert Vaux gave Triermaine and 
 Torerossock to his second son Ranulph Vaux, which 
 Ranulph afterwards became heir to his elder brother 
 
 ' "Helvellyn far into the clear blue sky 
 
 Carried the Lady's voice, — old Skiddaw blew 
 His speaking-trumpet ;— back out of the clouds 
 Of Glaramara southward came the voice ; 
 And Kirkstone toss'd it from his misty head." 
 
24 CHRISTABEL 
 
 Robert, founder of Lanercost, who died without issue. 
 Ranulph, being lord of all Gilsland, gave Gilamor's land 
 to his own younger son named Roland, and let the 
 barony descend to his elder son Robert, son of Ranulph ; 
 Roland had issue Alexander, and he Ranulph, after whom 
 succeeded Robert, and then they were named Rolands 
 successively that were lords thereof until the reign of 
 Edward IV. That house gave for arms in a field vert ^, 
 a bend dexter chequy or and gules." We learn, more- 
 over, from the ' Inquisition of Queen Elizabeth ', that the 
 " scite of the said manner of Tradermayne was sometimes 
 a fair castle, called Tradermayne Castle, a house of great 
 strength and of good receipt : it stood and was built 
 opposite to the wasts of Scotland and Tyndell, and 
 about vi miles from Lydderesedell, and was a very con- 
 venient place, both for annoying of the enemie and 
 defending the country thereabouts; but now the said 
 castle is utterly decayed." 
 
 If Triermain or Tradermayne Castle was ' utterly de- 
 cayed ' in the sixteenth century. Time must have repented 
 before it was quite too late, and stayed his destroying hand. 
 A huge block of masonry, part of a wall, but shaped like a 
 castle-tower, still crowns the narrow plot of broken ground 
 which marks the ' scite ' of the castle and its moat. A 
 ' fair castle ' and of ' good strength ' it may have been, but 
 in its palmiest days it must have been but a 'castlet' 
 compared with Naworth, or even with its neighbours 
 Thirlwall and Bewcastle. In what sense it is opposite 
 to 'Scotland's waste' it is hard to understand, unless 
 'Spade Adam Waste' stretching up, to, and possibly 
 in those days beyond, the border was reckoned as part 
 
 ' Vide post, p. 71 note i. 
 
m ' 
 
 a o 
 
 o o 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 25 
 
 of Scotland. But 'opposite' the ruined tower there 
 rises a low green fell, and in the farther distance is the 
 long grim ridge of Tyndale Fell, which then as now 
 "in the month before the month of May" is pied and 
 barred with streaks of belated winter's snow. Here, 
 by the Mill beck, below Nanwick Hill, dwelt Sir Roland 
 de Vaux, Sir Roland of the Valley, ' on earth, a levand 
 man,' and in the fable, his daughter the 'false witch' 
 Geraldine.^ 
 
 It is open to doubt if Coleridge had any knowledge 
 of Triermain and the parts adjacent which he did not get 
 from Hutchinson. If he diverged so far north on his 
 
 1 Sir Roland de Vaux was buried in the transept of Lanercost Priory. A 
 few years ago fragments of a recumbent figure, with the arms carved on the 
 surcoat, were recovered and placed over the tomb. It was the Sir Roland 
 whose epitaph In Ecclesia Parochiali de Lanercost ran thus : — 
 
 " Sir Rowland de Vaux, that sometime was that Lord of Triermaine 
 Is dead, his body clad in lead, and ligs law under this stane; 
 Evin as we, evin so was he on earth a levand man, 
 Evin as he, evin so moun we— for all the craft we can." 
 
 — Milbourn's add. to Denton's MS. 
 
 " The former [of these fragments {vide Note i, 1. 2)] gives a portion of the 
 lower part of the body and of the left thigh. The latter shows the left foot 
 resting on a recumbent lion, from the mouth of which depends a scroll, . . . 
 The body is clothed in a hauberk of chain-mail, the lower edge of which 
 is visible beneath the jupon of some thick material fitting closely over the 
 mail shirt, and embroidered with the armorial bearings of Vaux of Triermain. 
 The thighs were protected by cuissarts of plate, the feet by pointed soUerets 
 of the same material. The straps of the spur are visible on the foot. The 
 sword-belt worn round the hips and buckler is very richly ornamented. 
 The detail of this and the carefully rendered links of mail show that the figure 
 when complete must have been an excellent specimen of the carver's art. 
 The costume would indicate the latter part of the fourteenth century." It 
 follows that the tomb might have been erected to the memory of the Sir Roland 
 de Vaux who lived ' temp. K. John ', the hero of Scott's Bridal of Triermain, 
 but, more probably, marks the resting-place of a later Sir Roland, one of his 
 descendants. Lanercost Priory, by H. Whitehead and G. Baldwin Brown, i8g6, 
 pp. 18 sq. 
 
26 CHRISTABEL 
 
 way from Barnard's Castle to Temple Sowerby, in 
 November 1799, or if he took "the valley road" from 
 Penrith to High Hesket and so made his way to Laner- 
 cost and Gilsland in August 1800, he has left no record 
 of so memorable an excursion. It is certain that the local 
 description of scenery which he gave to the journey of 
 Bracy the Bard (lines 493-7), and which, so he told the 
 author of an article in Eraser s Magazine (October 1834), 
 he intended to give at greater length and with minuter 
 details, was derived from the 'Inquisition of Queen 
 Elizabeth ' as to the Manerium de Tradermayne : — " Item, 
 there be divers and sundry groves and places of wood 
 within the said manner, viz. Willparke, Halegarth Wood, 
 Dundell Wood, etc. Item, there are divers commons of 
 heath and moor grounds belonging to the manner, viz. — - 
 Torthoy Dundell . . . Knorren Moor and others. . . . 
 Item, the bounder of the said manner beginneth at the 
 foot of Knorren, and up Knorren to the foot of Cragg 
 Burne . . . from thence to Irdinge, from Irdinge to Brude- 
 ssoUe . . . and from thence to the Stone Cross, and from 
 thence to the foot of Knorren, where this bounder first 
 began," {Hist of Cumberland, i. 100.) 
 
 Now Coleridge was a minute observer and an accu- 
 rate recorder of the insignificant as well as the striking 
 and picturesque features of the scenes which he visited, 
 but it is inconceivable that he would have noticed or 
 have heard tell of two of Bard Bracy's landmarks. The 
 torso of Triermain Castle is on the northern side of the 
 ' Irthing Flood ', some three miles west of Gilsland Spa, 
 and might have attracted his attention, but Halegarth 
 or Hallguards Wood, which is about half a mile to the 
 west of the Castle, and Knorren Moor or Fell, which is 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 27 
 
 two or three miles to the west, are place-names which none 
 but inquisitors or surveyors would have in remembrance. 
 They were discovered and appropriated by Coleridge, vel 
 metri vel euphoniae gratia. 
 
 There is one passage in the Second Part of Chnstabel 
 (lines 408-26), which even the Edinburgh Reviewer (Hazlitt 
 or his double) singled out for grudging commendation. 
 D, G. Rossetti {Recollections o/Rossetti, by T. Hall Caine, 
 1882, pp. 154-6) considered that they refer to the breach 
 between Coleridge and Charles Lamb which began and 
 ended in 1798, and maintained that they were written quite 
 separately, and then fitted into Christahel. "The two lines," 
 he adds, " about Roland and Sir Leoline are an intrusion 
 and an outrage." " Whispering tongues " might, indeed, 
 have been a poetical rendering of what Lamb afterwards 
 described as [Charles] 'Lloyd's tattle', but there is nothing 
 to show that they are not an integral part of the poem. 
 I have little doubt that " his heart's best brother " meant 
 Southey, and that the reference is to the quarrel about 
 Pantisocracy begun in 1795, and never finally healed till 
 the autumn of 1799. In September 1800, Coleridge was 
 at Keswick, Southey in Portugal, and the thought of all 
 that had come and gone between the two, the recollection 
 of the ' void in his bosom ' (as Southey once put it), which 
 that prolonged alienation had left unfilled, was the imme- 
 diate inspiration of this locus classicus on sundered friend- 
 ship, which Coleridge himself described as the " best and 
 sweetest lines he had ever written ". But, of course, they 
 are inclusive and by no means of private interpretation. 
 In 1813 Coleridge re-inscribes them to Tom Poole, con in- 
 tenzione, and in 1820 Lamb tells Coleridge that "the dreary 
 5ea " which once flowed between them was filled up. 
 
28 CHRISTABEL 
 
 It is a commonplace of criticism that the Second 
 Part of Christabel is less original, less a thing of itself, 
 than the First. It is true that the link is broken, that 
 the two parts are separate poems. Ifr the JEirst_£ait-Jw:e 
 are spectators of the action, in the Second we ^ are liste n- 
 ing to a narrative. Injhe First_Part we_ are Jborne_along 
 as in a dream, independently of volition^ or experience, 
 in the Second we can recognizfi the art aadihej^o/^/ of 
 the narrative. The chief speakers in the Second Part are 
 the Baron, and a new character, Bard Bracy. By what 
 choice or accident Coleridge so happily named him can 
 only be surmised. The Bracys were a family of knightly 
 rank who preceded the Lygons in the possession of the 
 manor of Madresfield. According to Thomas Nash, 
 author of the History of Worcestershire (1782), a work 
 which Coleridge obtained from the Bristol Library, 
 "William Bracy (7 Henry VI) was returned into the 
 exchequer as an esquire to attend the king into France," 
 and it is possible that the sentence lingered in his memory. 
 Be that as it may, the name took hold of his fancy, for 
 on September 14, 1800, when a third son was born to 
 him, he scribbled in his notebook, 'A boy. ? Bracy,* 
 a somewhat premature christening which has helped 
 to date the composition of the Second Part of Christabel. 
 As the poem goes on the story itself makes but little 
 progress. Apart from a prolonged conversation between 
 the Baron and his Bard, the origin or commencement of 
 the much-vaunted 'swelling' of the poem into thirteen 
 or fourteen hundred lines, the sole event_or circum- 
 stance is the 'o'ermastering.',4;he-^©s*«5iQ2Lx£Chri^^ 
 and" the fascination and perversion of the Baron by 
 the mysterious stranger^"" the disturber t)f the-peaee of 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 29 
 
 Langdale Hall. But the Geraldine who paced into 
 the Baron's presence-room is not the Geraldine ^who 
 held the sluihSering maiden in her arms, and -sealed 
 her with'the seal of her own bewitchment. As Coleridge 
 himself might have put it, the' Geraldine of the First 
 Part is a supernatural, of the Second Part a trans-natural 
 bemg^™ The half-mjthicai;- iiaif-pathblogical conceptfon 
 of the witch Geraldine as a human snake denotes a 
 ' transition to another kind ', a development of the idea. 
 What suggested or determined this departure from the 
 original ? 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes in his psychological novel, 
 Elsie Venner (ed. 1861, cap. xvi, p. 202), compares 
 Christabel with Keats's Lamia. " Geraldine," writes one 
 of the characters, " seems to be simply a malignant witch- 
 woman with the evil eye, but no absolute ophidian rela- 
 tionship. Lamia is a serpent transformed by magic into 
 a woman. The idea of both is mythological, and not 
 in any sense physiological." Th^Jdea-of-the-Geraldine 
 of the Second Part is, in my judgement, physiological 
 as well as mythological The story^fXamird! is -founded 
 on a passage in Philostratiis {De Vita Apollonii, lib. iv), 
 given at length in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy^, and 
 it is possible that another favourite author of Burton's, 
 Antoine Mizauld, or Mizaldus (see for the suggestion 
 Elsie Venner, p. 198), may be responsible for Geraldine's 
 ' serpent eye '. The story, which Dr. Holmes paraphrases, 
 is given at length in Mizaldus Redivivus. Freely trans- 
 lated it is to this effect:— "When Alexander the Great 
 
 • See, for an allusion to the story, Anatomy of Melancholy, pt i. sect. ii. 
 mem. ii, subs. iv. (1893 i. 266). Burton incorrectly gives 'Curtius' as his 
 authority. 
 
30 CHRISTABEL 
 
 was in the East the King of Inde presented him with 
 a damsel of singular beauty and comeliness. Fair 
 though she was she had been reared and nourished 
 on the poisonous wolf's bane, and mischief and treachery 
 lurked in the gift. Now it chanced that Aristotle when 
 he looked at the maiden perceived that one moment 
 her eyes blazed and sparked, and then blinked and 
 closed like the eyes of a snake. ' Have a care for 
 yourself, my Lord Alexander,' said he, 'the damsel 
 is steeped in venom. Destruction and death await 
 you in her embraces.' Nor was Aristotle out in his 
 rede, for as many as wooed the damsel were smitten 
 of her poison and died. I give the story on the authority 
 of Aristotle, of Averroes, of Galen and Avicenna, and 
 many others.' " ^ Coleridge may have found the story in 
 
 • ' Puella insigni pulchritudine decora, sed napelli veneno * educata, ab 
 Indorum rege doloso muneri Alexandre Magno data fuit. Cuius scintillantes 
 at serpentum more nictantes oculos cum Aristoteles vidisset, O Alexander, 
 inquit, cave tibi ab hac, nam virus pestilentissimum alit, unde tibi exitium 
 paratur. Nee iudicio defuit eventus, plerique enim proci puellae huius com- 
 mercio intoxicati perierunt. Auctores sunt Aristoteles, Averroes, Galenus, 
 Avic. at alii multi.' — Misaldus Redivivus sive Centutiae xii Memorabilium : 
 Memorabilium Arcanorum vi. No. 593. Noribergae, 1681, p. 262. 
 
 Dr. Holmes was not the first modern author to turn to account the fact or fable 
 of the envenomed and venomous maiden. He was anticipated by Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne in his story of " The Daughter of Rapaccini " which was first 
 published in the Democratic Review, and was afterwards included in Mosses of 
 the Manse. The heroine of the tale, which purports to be a translation from 
 the French (" La Belle Empoisonneuse ") of M. de I'Aubepine (i. e. Hawthorne), 
 is the daughter of a scientific herbalist, who by " the commixture and, as it 
 were, adultery of various vegetable species ", has produced a marvellous 
 shrub that bore a profusion of purple blooms. Her daily task is to tend this 
 shrub, which is endowed with the Upas-like property of impregnating all who. 
 approach or touch its leaves and flowers with a measure of its own deadliness. 
 
 * Probably Acomtum ferox, or Nepaul Aconite— a root called Bisk or 
 Bikh in India. Other varieties are the Aconilum Napellus (as in the text) 
 and Aconilum Lycoctonum. 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 31 
 
 one of his landlord's medical journals, or in Mizaldus or 
 in some other ancient compiler of 'Tales of Wonder', 
 but there can be little doubt that this poison-bred 
 ' daughter of Raguel ' was a spiritual ancestress of the 
 snake-eyed Geraldine. 
 
 THE CONCLUSION TO PART THE SECOND 
 
 These lines (655-77) are not to be found in any of 
 the three MSS. of Christahel, nor in Sarah Hutchinson's 
 transcription. Coleridge sent them to Southey in a letter 
 (May 6, 1801), in which he expresses some anxiety with 
 regard to his son Hartley: then in his fifth year, "If 
 I were to lose him", he writes, "I am afraid it would 
 exceedingly deaden my affection for any other children 
 I may have. " Then follow the lines, with a brief note or 
 comment, "A very metaphysical account of fathers calling 
 their children rogues, rascals, and little varlets, &c." The 
 
 Not only is Beatrice herself envenomed, but her breath transmits the poison to 
 her lover Giovanni, whom she innocently permits to woo her. The source 
 of this weird imagining is revealed by an incidental allusion to a story " met 
 with in an old classic author ", the story of an Indian Prince and his gift of 
 a beautiful maiden, who has been nourished on poison, to Alexander the Great. 
 The story may be traced back through Mizaldus to the pseudo-Aristotelian 
 Secreta Secretorum, supposed to be the work of a Syriac Christian physician 
 of the eighth century. See a fifteenth-century edition : — Incipit liber qui dicit 
 secreta secretorum etc. ff". viii°. De conservatione contra aliqua pericula mortis. 
 Capitulum xiii. The passage is freely rendered in The Gouernance of Prynces. 
 Translated by James Y/smge in 1422. See Early English Text Society, Extra 
 Series, Ixxiv. 1898, p. 195. Allusions to the story are to be found in Albertus 
 Magnus. See Beati Alb. Magni, Operum, Tom. vi, Lugduni, 1651, p. 236. 
 De Animalibus. Tract 2. Cap. 8. See, too. Sir Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia 
 Epidemica, bk. vii. cap. 17, 1646, p. 378. See, too, Early English Text Society, 
 Extra Series Ixvi, 1894, p. ix. 
 
32 CHRISTABEL 
 
 description of "a little child, a limber elf" corresponds 
 with other word-pictures of Hartley's babyhood contained 
 in his father's letters, and may be compared with the 
 " breeze-like motion, and the self-bom carol " of Words- 
 worth's ' Lines to H. C. six years old '. There can be 
 no doubt that Hartley was the immediate inspirer of the 
 lines as they stand, but it has, I think, been too hastily 
 concluded that they have nothing to do with Christabel, 
 and were tacked on in 1816, merely to eke out the third 
 folio of the pamphlet. 
 
 The nexus between this so-called Conclusion and the 
 closing lines of the Second Part is to be found in the 
 implied comparison between Sir Leoline's wrath, the 
 excess of love transformed into the excess of bitterness 
 and the mock resentment of love playing at wrath, which 
 is none the less ' a fault and corruption ' of this world of sin. 
 It cannot be proved, but it is not unreasonable to suppose 
 that these apparently disconnected lines are one of the 
 disjecta membra of an attempted , Third Part, and in the 
 face of Gillman's circumstantial evidence to the contrary 
 (Life of Coleridge, p. 277) I am all but convinced that the 
 lines entitled 'The Knight's Tomb ' ("Where is the grave 
 of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn?"), which Scott quoted from 
 memory in Ivanhoe (cap. viii), were also composed, not as 
 'an experiment for a metre', but in the metre, and for 
 the continuation, of Christabel. They are of the time and 
 place; they breathe the mountain air; theyarejiartakers 
 of the poet's yojv. '" 
 
 And~'What-was the "whole plan entire from begin- 
 ning to end " which Coleridge avowed was ever present 
 to his own mind, and only awaited its realization in metre? 
 
 "The following relation," says Gillman, "was to have 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 33 
 
 occupied a third and fourth Canto, and to have closed the 
 tale. 
 
 "Over the mountains, the Bard, as directed by Sir 
 LeoUne, 'hastes' with his disciple; but in consequence 
 of one of those inundations supposed to be common to 
 this country, the spot only where the Castle once stood is 
 discovered — the edifice itself being washed away. He 
 determines to return. Geraldine being acquainted with 
 all that is passing, _ like th^ZMSSS^^Si^SS^^'^^^acBetk, 
 vanishes. Reappearing, however, she waits the return of 
 the. Bard, ^xerting in the meantime, by her wily arts, all 
 the_ anger she could rouse in the"BaEoa^-breast, as well 
 as that jealousy of which he is described to have^ been 
 susceptible. The old Bard" and the youth at length 
 arnve7and therefore she can no longer personate the 
 character of Geraldine, the daughter of Lord Roland de 
 Vaux, but changes her appearance to that of the accepted 
 though absent lover of Christabel. Next_£nsues a court- 
 ship most distressing to Christabel, who feels — she knows 
 not why— great disgust for her once favoured knight 
 Thisjgpldness is very painful to thj? Baron, who has no 
 more conception than herself of the supernatural trans- 
 formation. She at last yields to her father's entreaties, 
 and consents to approach the altar with this hated suitor. 
 The real lover, returning, enters at this moment, and pro- 
 duces the ring which she had once given him in sign of 
 her betrothment. Thus defeated, the supernatural being 
 Geraldine disappears. As predicted, the Castle bell tolls, 
 the mother's voice is heard, and to the exceeding great 
 joy of the parties, the rightful marriage takes place, after 
 which follows a reconciliation and explanation between 
 the father and daughter." {Life, pp. 301-2.) 
 
 F 
 
34 CHRISTABEL 
 
 Mr. Campbell was inclined to think that " this was mere 
 quizzing on the part of Coleridge, indulged in to relieve 
 the pressure of prosaic curiosity ", tossed up, in short, to 
 pacify Gillman. On the other hand, Rossetti believed that 
 "the conclusion as given by Gillman from Coleridge's 
 account to him was correct enough, only not picturesquely 
 worded " ; and, as the late Dr. Garnett was the first to point 
 out {Poetry of S. T. Coleridge, 1898, p. 288), that Geraldine's 
 personation of Christabel's lover may be illustrated by 
 a stanza in Love, which turns on the personation of an 
 absent lover by a malignant spirit : — 
 
 There came and looked him in the face 
 An angel beautiful and bright ; 
 And that he knew it was a Fiend, 
 This miserable Knight ! 
 
 The truth is that the plot is neither here nor there, 
 and that any denouement of the story reduced to prose 
 would sound prosaic and commonplace. Whether the 
 story as begun was susceptible of a poetical treatment to 
 the close may be questioned, but it is certain that if his 
 'verse-making faculties' had again returned to him he 
 would have found a way to escape. It was not the 
 difficulty of the subject, but want of heart to suffer 
 the inspiration, which "left the work unfinished when 
 he died " \ 
 
 ' Wordsworth's Michael, 1. 472. 
 
CHRISTABEL 
 
 HISTORY OF THE POEM 
 
 PART n 
 
 The story of the tale which Coleridge left ' half-told ', 
 so far as it may be gathered from his own remarks and 
 those of his friends and correspondents, has been already 
 given to the world by Mr. Dykes Campbell in his 
 adnfifiritSife note on Christabel (Poetical Works, 1893, pp. 
 W5i-7)y/l can only expand and supplement that note. An 
 intcr^t attaches to any and every allusion to this curiosity 
 of literature, but when all is said and done we are not 
 much the wiser. We have been hunting for the end of the 
 rainbow — "that gracious thing made up of tears and light", 
 but it is still in the distance "inviolably bright" !^ 
 
 Putting aside the extremely doubtful allusion to 'a 
 Ballad of 340 lines' in a letter to Cottle (which Cottle 
 dates February 18, 1798), the first intimation of the exist- 
 ence of Christabel \% in Dr. Clement Carlyon's record of 
 an excursion to the Harz Mountains, which he took in 
 company with Coleridge, John Chester, and the brothers 
 Charles and Frederick Parry, towards the end of May 
 1799: — "Coleridge was in good spirits, very amusing, 
 and as talkative as ever during this little excursion. He 
 frequently recited his own poetry, and not unfrequently 
 led us rather farther into the labyrinth of his metaphysical 
 elucidations, either of particular passages, or of the original 
 
 > See Coleridge's Two Founts, 1. 18, and variant to 1. 20. See Poetical Works, 
 1893, pp. 197, 642. 
 
36 CHRISTABEL 
 
 conception of any of his productions, than we were able 
 
 to follow him. 
 
 'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, 
 And the owls have awakened the crowing cock; 
 Tu whit ! — Tu whoo ! 
 
 At the conclusion of . . . the first stanza of Christabel, 
 he would perhaps comment at full length upon such 
 a line as — 
 
 Tu whit! — Tu whool 
 that we might not fall into the mistake of supposing 
 originality to be its sole merit. In fact, he very seldom 
 went right on to the end of any piece of poetry — to 
 pause and analyse was his delight. What he told his 
 fellow travellers respecting Christabel, he has since re- 
 peated in print, in words which, if not the very same, are 
 equally Coleridgian." {Early Years and Late Recollections, 
 1856, i. 138, 139.) By print Carlyon refers to the Preface 
 to Christabel published in 1816, and more loosely to 
 passages in the Table Talk, and in Allsop's Letters, Con- 
 versations, &c., published after the writer's death. If 
 Coleridge discoursed on the inwardness of ' Tu whit ! — 
 Tu whoo ! ' we may be sure that he ' chaunted ' the line 
 as it was first written down — 'Tu-u-whit! Tu-u-whoo!' 
 Carlyon does not tell us much, but he helps us to "live 
 o'er again that happy hour ". 
 
 A few months later we hear of Christabel again, and 
 this time with reference to its publication. In August, 
 1799, there was a second and final reconciliation between 
 Coleridge and Southey. The literary partnership begun 
 in Bristol and dissolved in the dissolution of Pantiso- 
 cracy was revived and put on a different footing. Southey 
 was engaged in compiling the Annual Anthology ior 1800, 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 37 
 
 and Coleridge, whose verses had been conspicuous by 
 their absence in 1799, promised to contribute a number of 
 unpubhshed poems. Southey, who had, no doubt, been 
 introduced to Christabel, pleaded for its completion and 
 inclusion in his new volume, but at this Coleridge was 
 inclined to reluct. " I will set about Christabel," he writes, 
 October 15, 1799, "but I do not think it a fit opening 
 poem." Again, a month later, November 10, " In my last 
 letter I said I would give you my reasons for thinking 
 Christabel, were it finished, and finished as spiritedly as it 
 commences, yet still an improper opening poem. My 
 reason is, it cannot be expected to please all. Those who 
 dislike it will deem it extravagant ravings, and go on 
 through the rest of the collection with the feeling of dis- 
 gust, and it is not impossible that, were it liked by any, 
 it would still not harmonize with the real life poems that 
 follow. It ought, I think, to be the last." And finally, 
 December 9, 1799, " I am afraid that I have scarce poetic 
 enthusiasm enough to finish On'5/afe/, but the poem With 
 which Davy was so much delighted, I perhaps may finish 
 tiflie-enougtr." tToleridge printed (or re-printed) fifteen 
 poems and ten epigrams in the Anthology, but concerning 
 Christabel there was silence. March and April 1800 were 
 devoted to the translation of Schiller's Wallenstein, and 
 when that was all but finished he fled northwards to 
 Grasmere and Wordsworth. Whilst he was paying his 
 first visit to the Cottage at Townend, Lamb wrote to him 
 (April 16 or 17) : " Coleridge, I find loose among your 
 papers [left in Lamb's charge at Pentonville] a copy of 
 Christabel. It wants about thirty lines ; you will oblige 
 me by sending me the beginning as far as that line — 
 And the spring comes slowly up that way; 
 
38 CHRISTABEL 
 
 and the intermediate lines between^- 
 
 The lady leaps up suddenly, 
 The lovely lady Christabel, 
 
 and the lines — 
 
 She folded her arms beneath her cloak, 
 And stole to the other side of the oak. 
 
 The trouble to you will be small, and the benefit to us 
 very great — a pretty antithesis ! a figure in speech I much 
 applaud." But there was no sound or answer made, and 
 in August or September Lamb writes again : " I wish you 
 would advert to a letter I sent you at Grassmere about 
 Christabel, and comply with my request contained 
 therein." 
 
 The foregoing excerpts refer to the First Part of 
 Christabel, lines 1-278. (The Second Part was begun at 
 Greta Hall, most probably in the last week of August, 
 and was certainly finished before October 4, 1800. I have 
 already endeavoured to show that the Conclusion to the 
 First Part was written certainly at Keswick in the autumn 
 of 1800, possibly between the 4th and 22nd of October, 
 when "Coleridge read Christabel" to Wordsworth for 
 the third or fourth time.) The first intimation of the 
 existence of a Second Part is to be found in Dorothy 
 Wordsworth's Journal for August 31: "At 11 o'clock 
 Coleridge came. . . He came over Helvellyn. . . We sate 
 and chatted till half-past three — Coleridge reading a part 
 of Christabel" — that is, as I take it, the commencement 
 of the Second Part. A fortnight later he makes the 
 following entry in his own journal : " Sunday night \ past 
 10 a boy [Derwent Coleridge] born. ? Bracy." ' Bard 
 Bracy' is introduced at line 4iBo, and the inference is that by 
 this time the Second Part was approaching completion. 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 39 
 
 On September 15 the following letter was dispatched 
 to Cottle's partner, N. Biggs, who had begun to print for 
 Longman a new and enlarged edition of The Lyrical 
 Ballads. (See Wordsworth and Coleridge MSS. Edited 
 by W. Hale White, 1893, p. 14.) 
 
 Dear Sir,— It is my particular request that, if no part of the poem 
 of Christabel is already printed off, the poems which I now send should 
 be inserted before Christabel. This I wish to be done even if the 
 press for Christabel be composed. I had no notion that the printing 
 of Christabel would be begun till you received further intelligence 
 from Mr. Coleridge. . . . 
 
 I am, dear Sir, 
 
 Your most obedient servant, 
 
 W. Wordsworth. 
 Grasmere, i^th September. 
 
 How and when the 'copy' of any portion of 
 Christabel was transmitted to the printers is somewhat 
 of a mystery. It is evident that when Wordsworth 
 wrote to Biggs (September 15, and, again, October 10, 
 1800) he was under the impression that part had been 
 already 'printed off'; and in a letter to Davy dated 
 December 2, 1800, Coleridge asks that "all that is 
 printed of Christabel" may be sent to him by post. It is 
 possible that Coleridge had placed in Davy's hands the 
 MS. of the First Part of Christabel before he left Bristol 
 {circ. June 20, 1800), but if such proof or proofs ever 
 reached Greta Hall they were mislaid or destroyed. 
 
 By the third week of September doubts had arisen 
 in Coleridge's own mind with regard to the completion 
 of the poem. He writes (possibly to Davy) : " From 
 the commencement of November next I give myself 
 exclusively to the life of Lessing. . . The delay in copy 
 has been owing to me as the writer of Christobel {sic). 
 
40 CHRISTABEL 
 
 Every line has been produced by me with labor pangs. 
 I abandon poetry altogether. . . My wife was safely and 
 speedily delivered of a very fine boy on last Sunday 
 night." (From an extract printed in Catalogue of 
 H. Frederickson's Library, sold May, 1897.) 
 
 At the end of the month (not, I think, on the 14th, as 
 the entry in Dorothy's Journal has been taken to imply) 
 Coleridge went over to Grasmere, and whilst he was 
 there (the postmark of the packet is Sept. 30, 1800) took 
 some part in correcting a Preface which Wordsworth had 
 prepared for the press. One sentence, to which a note 
 was attached, runs thus : " For the sake of variety and 
 from a consciousness of my own weakness I have again 
 requested the assistance of a Friend who contributed 
 largely to the first volume,^ and who has now furnished 
 me with the long and beautiful Poem of Christabel, 
 without which I should not yet have ventured to present 
 a second volume to the public : — 
 
 Note. ' The Poems furnish e d supplied by my Friend are the Ancient 
 Mariner, the Foster-Mother's Tale, the Nightingale, the Dungeon, and the Poem 
 entitled Love." 
 
 " The note," says Mr. Hale White, -' is by Coleridge, 
 and the corrections both in the paragraph and in the 
 note are most likely his." As late, then, as September 30, 
 Coleridge is at work on Christabel, and Wordsworth 
 intends that it should be printed in a second volume of 
 Lyrical Ballads. On October 4, Coleridge again came 
 over, and Dorothy says that she (or they) were " exceed- 
 ingly delighted with the second part of Christabel ". That 
 was on Saturday night, and on Sunday morning, October 5, 
 Coleridge read Christabel a second time ; "we had 
 increasing pleasure ; a delicious morning " ; but on 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 41 
 
 Monday, October 6, 'a rainy day': a black Monday 
 indeed, the guillotine fell, and it was " determined not to 
 print Christahel with the L. B" On Tuesday Coleridge 
 went back to Keswick. What the Wordsworths thought 
 we do not know from their own lips, but the record 
 remains of what Coleridge said and of what they did. 
 
 On October 9, Coleridge wrote to Humphry Davy, 
 who had undertaken to correct the proof-sheets of the 
 new edition of the Lyrical Ballads, and would expect to 
 receive proofs of Om^a^^/ : "The Christahel yNd& running 
 up to 1,300 lines, and was so much admired by 
 Wordsworth, that he thought it indelicate to print 
 two volumes with his name, in which so much of 
 another man's was included; and, which was of more 
 consequence, the poem was in direct opposition to 
 the very purpose for which the Lyrical Ballads 
 were published, viz. an experiment to see how far 
 those passions which alone give any value to extra- 
 ordinary incidents were capable of interesting, in and 
 for themselves, in the incidents of common life. We 
 mean to publish the Christahel, therefore, with a long 
 blank- verse poem of Wordsworth's entitled The Pedlar" 
 Five days later (October 14) he writes to Tom Poole : 
 "For the last fortnight, my dear Poole, I have been 
 about to write to you, but jolts and ruts and flings 
 have constantly unhinged my resolves. The truth is the 
 endeavour to finish Christahel (which has swelled into, 
 a poem of 1,400 lines) for the second volume of the 
 Lyrical Ballads threw my business terribly back, and 
 now I am sweating for it." 
 
 His final apology was proffered to his patron Josiah 
 Wedgwood, in a letter dated November i, 1800 : 
 
42 CHRISTABEL 
 
 " Immediately on my arrival in this country I undertook 
 to finish a poem which I had begun, entitled Christabel, 
 for a second volume of the Lyrical Ballads. I tried to 
 perform my promise; but the deep unutterable disgust 
 which I had suffered in the translation of the accursed 
 Wallenstetn seemed to have stricken me with barrenness ; 
 for I tried and tried, and nothing would come of it. I 
 desisted with a deeper dejection than I am willing to 
 remember. The wind from Skiddaw and Borrowdale 
 was often as loud as wind need be, and many a walk 
 in the clouds on the mountains did I take ; but all would 
 not do, till one day I dined out at the house of a 
 neighbouring clergyman, and somehow or other drank 
 so much wine, that I found some effort and dexterity 
 requisite to balance myself on the hither side of sobriety. 
 The next day my verse-making faculties returned to me, 
 and I proceeded successfully, till my poem grew so long, 
 and in Wordsworth's opinion so impressive, that we 
 rejected it from his volume as disproportionate both in 
 size and merit, and as discordant in character." Three 
 weeks earlier, on October lo, or perhaps a few days 
 before, Wordsworth had definitely excluded Christabel 
 from his second volume. He directs the printers to 
 cancel the first page of the Preface, which announced the 
 inclusion of Christabel, and goes on to say : " It is my wish 
 and determination that (whatever the expense may be, 
 which I hereby take upon myself) such pages of 
 Christabel as have been printed (if any such there be) 
 be cancelled." So sank into her 'vacant interlunar 
 cave' the moon-like Christabel. 
 
 It is difficult to explain Coleridge's statements with 
 regard to the length of his poem. The excuses and 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 43 
 
 apologies which he offers to his correspondents were, 
 no doubt, echoes of his conversations with the Words- 
 worths when it was "determined not to print Christahel 
 in the L. B." They had 'greatly admired' the Second 
 Part when it was read to them, but when Coleridge 
 pointed out that the poem was ' running up ' to 1,300 or 
 1,400 lines, that the scale was expanded, and that 
 when completed it would be twice its existing size, 
 partly because they knew their man and feared further 
 delay, and partly for other reasons, they agreed to throw 
 it overboard. The peremptory tone of Wordsworth's 
 letter to the printers suggests that Coleridge, and 
 perhaps Dorothy, had pleaded that the poem should be 
 printed as a fragment, or that time should be allowed 
 for its completion, and that he put his foot to the ground, 
 and shut out all compromise. A 'long and .beautiful 
 ChristabeV he would have welcomed, but a Christahel 
 of 1,400 lines would have been too long a poem for 
 the title and the scheme of the Lyrical Ballads. But to 
 Poole, if not to Davy, Coleridge seems to imply that he had 
 actually written 1,400 lines ; and though there are traces 
 of detached fragments in the metre of Christahel, though 
 it by no means follows that, because the MS. is not forth- 
 coming, no such MS. ever existed, it must be admitted that 
 the substance of this visionary 'swelling' is still to seek.^ 
 
 ' In an unpublished letter to Lord Byron, dated October 22, 1815, 
 Coleridge says that " the first book and half of the second were finished [in 
 1797], and it was not till after my return from Germany, in 1800, that I 
 resumed it and finished the second and a part of the third book". I can 
 only say with Geraldine, "As sure as Heaven shall rescue me, I have no 
 thought which hooks they be." It is possible that, in the autumn of 1800, 
 while the oestrum was upon him, he composed a number of lines which were 
 never even transcribed, and which he felt were unworthy to be emended or 
 preserved. 
 
44 CHRISTABEL 
 
 Whatever was done or remained to do, the publication 
 of Christahel was on Coleridge's mind, and, so he believed, 
 within his reach. In December 1800 he tells Davy : 
 "I propose to have Christabel published by itself— 
 this I publish with confidence"; and on January 6, 
 1801, he makes the same announcement to Poole. On 
 March 16 he writes : " I shall, . . as I said, immediately 
 publish my Christabel with two essays annexed to it 
 — on the 'Preternatural', and on 'Metre'"; and in 
 a postscript to a letter to Poole dated April 9, 1801, 
 Wordsworth adds : " Christabel is to be printed at the 
 Bulmerian press, with vignettes, &c., &c. I long to have 
 the book in my hand, it will be such a beauty." It is, 
 . perhaps, to this new proposal, which Wordsworth seemed 
 to regard as un fait accompli, that we may attribute the 
 composition of those lines ('A little child, a limber elf) 
 which were printed as Conclusion to Part II {vide 
 ante, pp. 31, 32). 
 
 The next episode in the life-story of Christabel was 
 enacted at the cottage at Lasswade, on the Esk, about 
 six miles from Edinburgh. The actors were Dr. John 
 (afterwards Sir John) Stoddart and Walter Scott, and 
 the possible date October 1802. Stoddart, who was a 
 friend of Coleridge's old schoolfellow Robert Allen, had 
 been entrusted with a MS. of Christabel (he was staying 
 at the Cottage at Townend, Grasmere, in October 1800), 
 and whilst he was Scott's guest 'recited' Christabel to his 
 host (see Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott, 1837, 
 ii. 23). Of this 'casual recitation', as Lockhart calls 
 it, with all its far-reaching influences and effluences, we 
 hear nothing at the time, but shortly after the publica- 
 tion of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, Southey, in a letter 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 45 
 
 to C. W. Wynne, dated March 5, 1805, alludes to it 
 as a fact within his knowledge : " The beginning of the 
 story is too like Coleridge's Christobell, which he had 
 seen ; the very line ' Jesu Maria, shield her well ' is 
 caught from it. When you see the Christobell you will 
 not doubt that Scott has imitated it; I do not think 
 designedly, but the echo was in his ear, not for emula- 
 tion, but propter amorem " ; and to Jeffrey, before 1810, 
 and, long afterwards, in the Preface to the 1830 edition 
 of his poems, Scott admitted, or, rather, openly an- 
 nounced, that the metre of Christabel suggested and 
 determined the metre of the Lay, and that he was 
 " bound to make the acknowledgment due from the pupil 
 to his master". Scott owed something more than the 
 choice of a metre, a 'mescolanza of measures', to borrow 
 his own phrase, to his appreciation of Christabel; but 
 none the less, as Coleridge was the first to plead, "no 
 insect was ever more like in the colour of its skin and 
 juices to the leaf it fed on than Scott's muse to Scott 
 himself" Scott's great achievement was all his own. 
 
 To return to the history of the ' Fragment '. Two 
 years after the Bulmerian scheme had come to nothing, 
 pressure was put upon Coleridge to publish Christabel. 
 In a letter to his wife (April 4, 1803) he writes : 
 " To-day I dine again with Sotheby. He had informed 
 me that the gentlemen who have met me at his house 
 desired him to solicit me to finish the Christabel, and 
 to permit them to publish it for me ; and they engaged 
 that it should be in paper, printing, and decorations the 
 most magnificent thing that had appeared. Of course, 
 I declined it. The lovely lady shan't come to this pass ! 
 Many times rather would I have it printed at Soulby's 
 
46 CHRISTABEL 
 
 on the true Ballad paper." In 1803, save for those "wild 
 and wondrous" lines, The Pains of Sleep, his poetical 
 powers were in a state of suspended animation, and in 
 vain was the net spread. Thenceforth, save in a letter 
 to Southey (Dec. 14, 1807), in which Coleridge confesses 
 that " he did not overhugely admire the Lay of the Last 
 Minstrel, but saw no likeness whatever to the Christabel, 
 much less any improper resemblance " ; in a letter to 
 Wordsworth (1810), in which he hints that Scott took 
 his Allan-bane in the Lady of the Lake from Bard 
 Bracy, and in a draft of a letter written in November 
 181 1 "to a man who offered to review W. Scott's poem 
 to his injury", in which he rebuts the charge of plagiarism, 
 but admits a resemblance between " a phrase here and a 
 phrase there, a likeness of the metre, the movement, 
 the ways of relating an event", for ten long years 
 there is silence. Then in a letter to Poole (February 13, 
 1813) following and blotting out some 'unkindness' on 
 the part of his friend, he quotes "the best and sweetest 
 lines he ever wrote " ( " Alas ! they had been friends 
 in youth," &c.). The success of Remorse, which was 
 being played at Drury Lane, turned back his thoughts 
 to the triumph which he had foregone — the completion 
 and successful reception of Christabel. But the 'lovely 
 lady', like the Princess in the Fable, still slept on. At 
 last, in the first week of June, 1815, in " Mr. Murray's 
 drawing-room in Albemarle Street", Sir Walter Scott 
 recited Christabel to Lord Byron. Coleridge had 
 appealed to Byron to assist him in the publication of his 
 works, and it is possible that Byron in turn had consulted 
 Scott with regard to Coleridge's attainments and chances 
 of success. Perhaps, too, Byron had read the singular 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 47 
 
 and striking parody, or imitation, entitled Christohell. 
 A Gothic Tale {Tjtdepost, Appendix, pp. 104-110), which had 
 been published in the European Magazine in the preceding 
 April, and was curious concerning the original. Be 
 that as it may, by this second recitation Scott repaid 
 a large measure of the value which he had received 
 from the recitation at Lasswade in 1802; for in reply 
 to Coleridge's appeal for assistance Byron lavished such 
 praise on Chrisfabel that a copy of the MS. was forwarded 
 for his perusal and consideration. In November, 1815, 
 Byron suggested to Murray that he should publish 
 Christabel as a fragment. Publisher and author must 
 soon have come to terms, for, as his friend and host 
 James Gillman has recorded, Coleridge came to Highgate 
 on Monday evening, April 15, 1816, "bringing in his 
 hand the proof-sheets of Christabel," which was now for the 
 second time in the press. On May 8, 1816, Murray agreed 
 to pay Coleridge seventy guineas for Christabel, retaining 
 the copyright until certain "other poems shall be com- 
 pleted", and ;^20 "for the right to include Kubla Khan 
 in the same pamphlet with Christabel". The Pains 
 of Sleep were thrown into hotch-pot. There were three 
 editions (or, rather, three issues with different title-pages) 
 of Christabel, and the net profit to the publisher was a 
 little over ;^ioo,^ Christabel; Kubla Khan, a Vision; 
 The Pains of Sleep, an octavo pamphlet of 64 pages, was 
 published May 25, 1816. 
 
 With one or two exceptions, ^ for instance the Critical 
 
 ^ It should be borne in mind that in another transaction with Coleridge 
 concerning Zapolya and ' some other play', Murray forewent the repayment of 
 ;^50 which he had advanced on June i6, i8i6. 
 
 '^ Gillman, in his Life of Coleridge, pp. 304-7. published a long extract 
 from " an anonymous criticism published soon after the Christabel". The spirit 
 
48 CHRISTABEL 
 
 Review and the European Magazine (May and November 
 1816), the reviews were hostile and depreciatory. There 
 were contributory causes. The Lake School, to which 
 Coleridge was supposed to belong, was still on its trial. 
 Critics were prejudiced in its disfavour. Coleridge 
 himself had made enemies, partly by his disavowal of 
 Jacobinical or democratic sentiments, but also by his 
 strictures on such favourites of the public as Moore and 
 Campbell. Critics who were journalists knew that he 
 wrote for the Courier, and, probably, guessed that he 
 was the author of certain ' Letters to the Editor ', ridiculing 
 and condemning Maturin's Bertram, or the Castle of St. 
 Aldobrand. The poem had been talked about and puffed 
 in advance by a coterie of privileged hearers and readers, 
 and there was a general and natural inclination to criticize 
 it severely on its own merits. The mot d'ordre was no 
 favour and no quarter. Moreover, to recommend a doubt- 
 ful experiment to a doubting public, Murray affixed 
 to his advertisements in the Morning Chronicle a tribute 
 to Christabel extracted from one of Byron's Notes to 
 the Siege of Corinth (published Feb. 7, 1816) : — "That wild 
 and singularly original and beautiful poem." It may 
 be questioned if, at any time, Byron's imprimatur would 
 have made or increased Coleridge's reputation. Critics, 
 like voters, pay little heed to 'praise from Sir Hubert 
 Stanley '. But, as it changed,j^hen Christabel was pub- 
 lished Byron was in disgrace. The ^uBTicatioir-ef ---A 
 Sket<;h', _^afi4 -the scandal' of the separation jfrom his 
 wife, had raised a whirlwind of popular indignation, and 
 
 of the article is conveyed in the opening sentence: "The publication of 
 Christabel cannot be an indifferent circumstance to any true lover of poetry 
 — it is a monument of genius." 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 49 
 
 Coleridge, with his usual ill-luck, came in for the tail-end 
 of the storm. 
 
 The Examiner for June 2, and the Edinburgh Review 
 for September 1816, were loudest and bitterest in the 
 attack on the subject-matter and the diction of the poem. 
 Internal evidence points to Hazlitt as the writer of both 
 reviews.^ There were public and private reasons why 
 he should be willing to do Coleridge a bad turn, and 
 to judge from the review of the Biographia Literaria 
 {Edinburgh Review, August 181 7), which is known to 
 be his, there can be little doubt that Coleridge was right 
 in his surmise, that "the man who so grossly calum- 
 niated me in the Examiner and Edinburgh Review " was 
 William Hazlitt.^ "We look," so wrote the Edinburgh 
 reviewer, "upon this publication as one of the most 
 notable pieces of impertinence of which the press has 
 lately been guilty ; and one of the boldest experiments 
 that has yet been made on the patience or understanding 
 of the pubhc." But the experiment succeeded, and that 
 sooner rather than later. " I heard," wrote Byron, " that 
 the Edinburgh Review has cut up Coleridge's Christabel, 
 and declared against me for praising it. I praised it . . . 
 because I thought well of it." (Letter to Moore, Decem- 
 ber 24, 1816.) It was to Byron's honour that he spoke 
 out before and after the publication of Christabel, when 
 others who should have spoken were silent. But the 
 tide was soon to turn. "The sweet soft, still breath of 
 
 ' For an exhaustive summary of the reasons for supposing Hazlitt to be 
 the Edinburgh reviewer, see an admirable paper by Mr. T. Hutchinson in Notes 
 and Queries, Ninth Series, 1903, vol. xi. pp. 170-3. See, too, vol. x, 1902, pp. 388-9. 
 
 * The quotation of the missing line, " Hideous, deformed and pale of hue," in 
 the Examiner is almost conclusive proof that Hazlitt, who had access to the 
 MS. of Christabel, was the writer of the article. 
 
 H 
 
50 CHRISTABEL 
 
 praise . . . arose from many a secret place, and Coleridge, 
 amidst the simpers of the silly, and the laughter of the 
 light, and the scorn of the callous, and the abuse of 
 the brutal , . . received the laurel crown woven by the 
 hands of all the best of his brother bards^— and wore 
 it ever after cheerfully but without pride — round his 
 lofty forehead — and it was green as ever the day he 
 died." {Blackwood's Magazine, Oct. 1834, No. ccxxvii, 
 
 P- 563.) 
 
 In his Preface to Christahel (1816) Coleridge had held 
 out a hope that he would "embody in verse the three 
 parts yet to come in the course of the present year". 
 No such attempt was made, but after Christahel was 
 printed and published he made some alterations and 
 added several new lines. Most of these corrections 
 and additions, which remained unpublished till 1828, were 
 written in a copy of the first edition which Coleridge 
 presented in November 1816 to David Hinves, the con- 
 fidential servant of William Stewart Rose, who had 
 received Coleridge as a guest at his quaint little cottage 
 at Muddiford. In July, 181 7, Coleridge tells Poole that 
 "Mr. Frere had strenuously advised him to finish the 
 Christahel", and a month later, in a letter to his wife, he 
 talks of going to the seaside and finishing Christahel. A 
 few years later, perhaps in 1820 (Maginn's Continuation 
 of Christahel had appeared in Blackwood, July, 1819), 
 he confided his hopes or dreams to AUsop {Letters and 
 Conversations, &c., 1836, i. 94) : — 
 
 " If I should finish Christahel, I shall certainly extend 
 it and give new characters, and a greater number of inci- 
 dents. This the ' reading public ' require, and this is the 
 reason that Sir Walter Scott's poems, though so loosely 
 
HISTORY OF THE POEM 51 
 
 written, are pleasing and interest us by their picturesque- 
 ness. If a genial recurrence of the ray divine should 
 occur for a few weeks, I shall certainly attempt it. 
 I had the whole of the two cantos in my mind before 
 I began it; certainly the first canto is more perfect, 
 has more of the true wild weird spirit, than the last." 
 And, again to AUsop, January 1821 : " Of my 
 Poetic Works I would fain finish the Christabel" 
 {Ibid. i. 156.) 
 
 As long as he lived the completion of Christabel 
 was a possibility evermore frustrated by some cause 
 from without, ' the masker bold ' of the cause from within. 
 In the Table Talk for July 6, 1833, he tells his nephew 
 Henry Nelson Coleridge : " I could write as good verses 
 now as ever I did, if I were perfectly free from vexations, 
 and were in the ad libitum hearing of fine music, which 
 has a sensible effect in harmonizing my thoughts, and 
 in animating and, as it were, lubricating my inventive 
 faculty. The reason of my not finishing Christabel is 
 not that I don't know how to do it — for T havp^ ac; T 
 always had, the whole plan entire from^bggiijning to 
 end in rriy' rnmd ; but I fear I could not carry on with 
 equal success the execution of the idea, an extremely 
 subtle and difficult one/' In the TaS^i? Ta/^ we learn 
 for the first time of the difficulty of executing the idea. 
 It may be that he was making himself the mouthpiece 
 of others. Wordsworth told Mr. Justice Coleridge 
 {Memoirs, &c., 1851, ii. 307) that "he regretted that the 
 story had not been made to end the same night in which 
 it begun. There was difficulty and danger in bringing 
 such a personage as the witch to the daylight, and the 
 breakfast-table "—a difficulty, by the way, which had 
 
52 CHRISTABEL 
 
 been successfully overcome in the Second Part : or it 
 may be that the night was at hand, and that Coleridge 
 knew in his heart that neither he nor another would 
 'close the story '.^ In wonder it had begun — in wonder 
 it would end ; but " Admiration fills up the interspace " ! * 
 
 * In a note (p. xlii) to his ' Introductory Essay ' prefixed to The Poems of 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge (E. Moxon, Son & Company, [?] 1870), the editor, 
 Derwent Coleridge, writes : — "The sufferings of Christabel were to have been 
 represented as vicarious, endured for her 'lover far away'; and Geraldine, 
 no witch or goblin, or malignant being of any kind, but a spirit, executing her 
 appointed task with the best good will, as she herself says : — 
 
 All they, who live in the upper sky. 
 
 Do love you, holy Christabel, &c. (11. 227-32). 
 
 In form this is, of course, accommodated to ' a fond superstition ', in keeping 
 with the general tenour of the piece ; but that the holy and the innocent do 
 often suffer for the faults of those they love, and are thus made the instruments 
 to bring them back to the ways of peace, is a matter of fact, and in Coleridge's 
 hands might have been worked up into a tale of deep and delicate pathos." 
 The writer speaks with authority, and it is possible that this suggestion of 
 ' vicarious ' suffering on the part of Christabel was made by Coleridge himself. 
 It must be received with respect, but it does not add much to the interpreta- 
 tion of the poem as a whole. 
 
 ' Aids to Reflection, 1825, p. 228. 
 

 
 f/H^Z-i^ U-de^i^ ^/,t- 
 

 
 OiTV /"-^ J^l.,^c6/>/oi .r'/ ''it^.At ^ ^^ /'i-z/li. C'i'^^rA^ 
 
 jru. u Uf.Ao^f- yet. " - '^A-ro J 
 
 ^ ■> - _ y ^ 
 
 ^i-c-,, r^^ff^ aifO., , //iT-^it. ■^At.tte ^ -»- -^C^-/^^*-/ 
 
 '-r^L^ ^n^. ..y/i-<^'<^yt. <» ir^:'^,.^^ ~^^-z.'/C ^^ /Ti^y ^iy-f(^y. 
 
«^*>t^ ^^ ,./^CC'U^cM^ /l^-- £^i^ a^tn. ►'vt^-.^ 
 
 ^ /^ /^^ ^'-(^A ^ ^e^^^Te-/^- ^tip/ /^^^ y>-eC^ 
 
 :^r7 
 
 it... 
 
1^ J':^/itc.u.^t,.TA. ^-^---^^ ^"^'■^'- 
 
 ^<- ;^^ /^U*.^/^ dc^-i^a /^'X.^f^ /^y^^ c<^ a./^ 7Z,_ t^/^ . 
 
<fA.CtJ LAi/i//ei./^e< . n^ '.'' Lj/ii> ^//^ /ii,i^ 
 
 
 Ai'-(_ 
 
 CV^^y ^^ >.y ^^*^ j^fc^]^4^ej/^^ 
 
 
 iUlLi/ C'>C/^/4/C/', /^/^ r.L^'rA /X^^ y<^ 
 
 ^ <2_ 
 
 
t 
 
 r /t y/0*^ ft*./ryri. 
 
 -/y<, t'Wt^ ^e, /r, M^cct^ Ari^Ki^>t^; 
 
 ^'^ /C^^^ r.^^^f ^^- 
 
 -^ 
 

 i^r^A t^en^ 7^ 'K^'^/l^ 'Th.-uu^A ^Je^j^ i^/j-^M^ iit-,.ja^. 
 
V ^ >- 
 
 \ j^ A- 4^4- ^^ ^ ^ ^ -h- ^-h f--^-/^ 
 
 
^>«^ A^ A:-^ ^ayt^^^^^ Z-e/, ^>^^ ^^t^ 
 

 
 "7/' 
 
 ^rhi./W ^ec^ ,^^ ^J^^^ .^A^ 4^t^^ ; 
 

 
 A^'ii'^ ^t.:ytj "012^ Ar^ - ^^ /^-e^^:'^ ./ ^^-zy?i^^ 
 ^■ty' :^^t^' ^^ CtriyT^ Me-t--*^ -Aejz^/- /T^e^;;^ ^^/\, 
 
 Ji/k 
 
 'U lmd4s^ 'i^4uot( 
 
 
 (Y/ /v-^ ' / ' -^^ 
 
 
Jj J^^^e^!/ ^.^^^-^ e^^^i^' /^^^ 
 
 
 'i'U.&y. 
 
 
 ^-^Si-. 
 
/pyptje^ ruue-U^.^^ /t^/^K. ^uuy 4<t-<!yif^'^i^ >j ^^»V 
 iy^€aL^ /■ ,jI,c^ ^l-^ A^r^'y U^a^'^^^^cit^*^ . 
 
 /T" -"';r' 
 

 
 ^*~i>%^. 
 
 
 
 

 7' 
 
 

 
 
 ■ ^S,-v-C-- 
 
 

 ^'^ J^^^ty^^j ^ / /^ ^^ /^^ ^exd. 
 
 U'Vx,^ ^-t^yA, ^^t^w-fl- 2't^,^e^ CJV^J*-^ ^>r^'^ >C/^ ;^ 
 

 
iyf /4^ /LJI ^^/, a. /^ ^--^ ^y^e^. 
 
 Ju/^ -i^^e^-w /X^ ^t^^^^ iX^^^^ /^-t^^yf^. 
 
 7^ *^i'yU^ . 6z^y/ a/< 7l.<iJ~ /Tfiu^ it^^e^r^ .^2^. 
 /^3u,r U.^^ ^A£^ ^2-«-<. y^^^a.'*,,^' ^i-it-C^ f 
 
S^^ ,^^ ^U ^^; ^ "^^-^ ^^ *^^^ 
 
 Cferpe, d^ i£^ ^^^^/ '*^-^ ^a^-^ -^-uf //U^ — 
 
 


 
 '/any ^ _ //^r-7t- -^ /Zc^ y«/V t-y*.^ '^'^y 
 
 
 faJ;- 
 
^^-nxo^ Let T^u, i^'i'/yit^^ Qytt^c r^J'^*^ 
 
 
y^ / /<=wvc-^ j^^"^^^' '^l-^^ P^'^ Ptt^i^t^ y^t^c-t' 
 _J.^^ y>€**^ ^-U^';^/ ^^ OC^f^^.^^^ 
 

 '^i^ /^^ jz^ ^-^ a^^ '^j 
 
 
 
//Cc-^ ^'i-f^^^u. ^-e^A. a^t^t-^ iJ'A^ L^ -^i- yC'^'2^/- 
 
 D. 
 
 
 / 
 
 
 ^iyi^ifi' /:>C^^^«-*^^ ^»^^^ /-/^-^^-r >^/ -"=r^^<j-v->^ ^t,.jt^^ 
 
 i? 
 
 
 
f^-injt^ 4-^^^^ cA<-t>^ . /Cf!utttt^ ^<J>i^ >e*^ <!i**'/i.«,i_,<k^-*^. 
 
 €,^-X?^i 
 
 .^ Jta^jh ^ ^y^/^X^/ ^-^ '^'^^ ^^^. 
 
 ^/i-is-C-- 
 
 ^.i^ A^ ^^w ^ ^^^ '^p^^t^^ . 
 

 
 V>£. J>T*^/T,_^*y ^Vfc*-» /'— ^k-/- /^(fi^e. ^It^^ /uos^f^ 
 
'^^ .^^ ^^'' y^^P ^^^£sy^ A^t.,^ ^^A 
 
U\>^P fit^ /^«-w ey^t^^ a^i^i? <s»^^ ><je*' ^^^<^ 
 
 ^.^A Ai, 4.vC ^^- ^^ 4^^^.^^ 
 
 
 
/T^-/ 4^- Ai/X^^' ^//^,^ 
 
 yi/^t^ 
 
 "I / 
 
 ^^V 4^^ /,^^/ ^^^^ ^^.^1^, 
 
 '-^t) /££, /^ ^.^n^Tl , uJZ^H*- /X^^n^ ^^n^/- ^>->^ 
 
 
 (^n^? rea^^^£^ ^,r-^ y^^^/^ <£^^^^ <^^:^-pr-z) 
 
 

 'fkc^^ 6-1-^' >^Zw ^ru^^ /u?^e^ ' e-<.^r-i^^^ .^ // 
 ^aoct^c- a -7^^/^ r7 /as-^ /^i-<^ /Z-t^- ^cC- . 
 
 /' 
 
 II 
 
 u r/ 
 
 1^' *t-£. 
 
 / 
 
 '' 7Uf / ^^/^^^ '^ / '^^ "^y 
 
 - ^/*^ / c^'i^e.^^ /^e^-^ a-u-i^f '^ ^^-c-^ "f-^^/^ /'^^z^r>x. 
 
 'I 
 
 1/ 
 
r ~" 
 
 ^**7 - ^ X^r^^J ,^^. ^^.^ ^^^_ 
 •^ , C-Ce^tz^ i^^^^^y^ >^.?-z^ ^^A-^-7^ y'Xo-^^ ^i^ 
 
 7 
 
 y^ ^ua^, ^r'^^^^t^ /!^^i^/^ !^-:>t^. 
 
/ 
 
 
 
 2^j~a-t^. . ~^ 
 
 ■/ C*^-**^ liVt's^^^ AjZM'^i/ , {pL^-p,^ C.^:^^-1^l ^^^i^C-'*^. 
 -Vt-^-y^ ^>^ ^r^'^^^ ^<je— - ,<^,i^-»^ QC^^i^ 7 ^-^/^-^_, 
 
 /^^^^ <^/ J'y^^^ ^ A-.^/^^ j-^-c£-^ -^4^^ 
 

 j'VT^^S!' 
 
 
 I 
 
 t-A^ /^t-A-^i.^^ -/^ C^l^'-I^ >>t^/ ^^^^y~ ^%^**_e. „^:fc..^ 
 
 -^/ ^:U^yi^ U^^^'^ L^^^ MeZ^. 
 
 
fpi/^ iZ^f-Ky^ hx^^^r>€. ^^Ar-e^^ /Lc^t-- /(fa^^ ,fi^^ •'.«««. 4 
 
^-01^ ^>^ -A^f-^^Z— «• -C-C-tSl^-^w ■'£^V>«-*^ f~tir-i^i^^, 
 
 ^- ^' c^ A.^L^,/xu: i.r^i <^ 
 
 '^ /.^T^^ ji0f /fc^/; ^^^ ^/^ 
 
 

 
 ^e-«^ 
 
 
 
 
 *A^i M,>^ ^^ V-tr^ <?^., '.^^ /^^^) 
 
^ci^ /ic^ it^^J /4ce^ a.-^ ^C^ A.^ ,s>-^^^£^^ 
 
 / 
 / 
 
 \ u^ V; ews-'''^t^'*>-«^ - 
 
 
 
 
 ''/U,yi^ ^CL ^a, ^;7 ,,,_^ ^^^ 
 
 
 ^i-t_^ 
 
 "-^ ^ 
 
7 
 
 
 7/^ ^p^ A/^^. ""^ y^\, ^ / 
 
CHRISTABEL 
 
THE MSS. OF CHRISTABEL 
 
 Three of these MSS. have passed through my hands. There are, 
 or were, at least five MSS. of Christabel. The earliest, virhich belonged 
 to Wordsworth, is partly in Coleridge's handwriting, and partly in that 
 of Mary Hutchinson (afterwards Mrs. Wordsworth). The conjectural 
 date of this MS., now in the possession of the poet's grandson, 
 Mr. Gordon Wordsworth, is April — October, 1800. Later in the same 
 year, or, perhaps, in 1801, Coleridge made a copy of the First Part 
 (or Book), the Conclusion to the First Book, and the Second Book, 
 and presented it to Mrs. Wordsworth's sister, Sarah Hutchinson. 
 A facsimile of this MS., now in the possession of Miss Edith Coleridge, 
 is included in this edition of Christabel. In 1801, or at some subsequent 
 period (possibly not till 1815), Miss Hutchinson transcribed Coleridge's 
 MS. The water-mark of the paper is 1801. Her transcription, now 
 in the possession of Mr. A. H. Hallam Murray, was sent to Lord 
 Byron in October, 1815. It is possible that this transcription was the 
 ' copy ' of the First Edition published in 1816 ; but, if so, Coleridge 
 altered the text whilst the poem was passing through the press. 
 
 The existence of two other MSS. rests on the authority of John 
 Payne Collier. (See Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton. By 
 S. T. Coleridge, 1856, pp. xxxix-xHii.) The first, which remained in his 
 possession for many years but was afterwards claimed by Hazlitt, was 
 a copy in the handwriting of Sarah Stoddart (afterwards Mrs. Hazlitt). 
 J. P. Collier notes certain differences in the text between this MS., 
 which he calls the ' Salisbury Copy ', and the text of the First Edition. 
 The same variants occur in the three MSS. which have come under 
 my notice, and it may be presumed that Miss Stoddart copied the MS. 
 given to Sarah Hutchinson, or an earlier draft of the same MS. 
 
 He goes on to say that before Christabel was published Coleridge 
 lent him an MS. in his own handwriting, and he gives two or three 
 readings from the second MS. which differ from the text of the 
 ' Salisbury Copy ' and from the text of those MSS. which have been 
 placed in my hands. 
 
THE MSS. OF CHRISTABEL 55 
 
 The copy of the First Edition of Christabel presented to David 
 Hinves, November ii, 1816, which Coleridge had already corrected 
 with a view to the completion and publication of his poems as a whole, 
 is now in the possession of Mr. John Murray. The emendations and 
 additions inscribed on the margin of the volume were included in the 
 collected edition of Coleridge's Poetical Works, published by William 
 Pickering in 1828. The editions of 1829 and 1834 closely followed 
 the edition of 1828, but in 1834 there was, in one particular instance 
 (Part 1, 11. 6-10), a reversion to the text of the First Edition. I have 
 chosen the text of 1834 as the standard text of Christabel in preference 
 to that of 1829, adopted by Mr. Dykes Campbell in his great edition 
 of the Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge issued in 1893, because, 
 although it is true that the edition of 1834 "was arranged mainly, 
 if not entirely, at the discretion of its earliest editor, H. N. Coleridge " 
 (Mrs. H. N. Coleridge, in Preface to the one-volume edition of 1852), 
 there is documentary proof that Coleridge did, in at least one instance 
 {The Destiny of Nations, 11. 1-5), alter the text of 1829, and it is probable 
 that he was consulted with regard to the text of so important a poem as 
 Christabel. The ' arrangement ' of the edition of 1834 was, no doubt, 
 the handiwork of H. N. Coleridge. 
 
ABBREVIATIONS 
 
 1. The Wordsworth MS., partly in Coleridge's, and partly in Mary 
 
 Hutchinson's handwriting = MS. W. 
 
 2. The Salisbury MS., copied by Sarah Stoddart = S. T. C. (a). 
 
 3. MS. lent by Coleridge to Payne Collier = S. T. C. (b). 
 
 4. Autograph MS. in possession of Miss Edith Coleridge, now 
 
 reproduced = S. T. C. (c). 
 
 5. Transcription made by Miss Sarah Hutchinson = S. H. 
 
 6. Corrections made by S. T. C. in copy presented to David 
 
 Hinves = H. 1816. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The first part of the following poem was written in 
 the year 1797,^ at Stowey, in the county of Somerset. 
 The second part, after my return from Germany, in the 
 year 1800," at Keswick, Cumberland."" It is probable 
 that if the poem had been finished at either of the former 
 periods, or if even the first and second part had been 
 pubHshed in the year 1800, the impression of its originality 
 would have been much greater than I dare at present 
 expect. But for this I have only my own indolence to 
 blame. The dates are mentioned for the exclusive purpose 
 of precluding charges of plagiarism or servile imitation 
 from myself For there is amongst us a set of critics, 
 who seem to hold, that every possible thought and image 
 is traditional; who have no notion that there are such 
 things as fountains in the world, small as well as great; and 
 who would therefore charitably derive every rill they be- 
 hold flowing, from a perforation made in some other man's 
 
 ' The year one thousand seven hundred and ninety seven. First Edition. 
 Editions 1828, 1829. 
 
 •* The year one thousand eight hundred. First Edition. Editions 1828, 1829. 
 
 '" Since the latter date, my poetic powers have been, till very lately, in a state of 
 suspended animation. But as, in my very first conception of the tale, I had the 
 whole present to my mind, with the wholeness, no less than the liveliness of a vision ; 
 I trust that I shall be able to embody in verse the three parts yet to come, in the course 
 of the present year. First Edition. Editions 1828, 1829 : omitted in 1834. 
 
 K 
 
58 CHRISTABEL 
 
 tank. I am confident, however, that as far as the present 
 
 poem is concerned, the celebrated poets ^ whose writings 
 
 I might be suspected of having imitated, either in particular 
 
 passages, or in the tone and the spirit of the whole, would 
 
 be among the first to vindicate me from the charge, and 
 
 who, on any striking coincidence, would permit me to 
 
 address them in this doggerel ' version of two monkish 
 
 Latin hexameters.'' 
 
 'Tis mine and it is likewise yours ; 
 But an if this will not do ; 
 Let it be mine, good friend ! for I 
 Am the poorer of the two. 
 
 I have only to add that the metre of ChristabeP is 
 
 doggrel. Editions 1816, 1828, 1829. 
 
 ' Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron. 
 
 ' The ' Latin hexameters ', " in the lame and limping metre of a barbarous 
 Latin poet ", ran thus : 
 
 "Est meum at est tuum, amice! at si amborum nequit esse, 
 Sit meum, amice, precor : quia certe sum magi' pauper." 
 
 It is interesting to note that Coleridge translated these lines in November 
 1801, before the Lay of the Last Minstrel had been begun, and twelve years 
 before Byron published the first of his ' Turkish Tales '- 
 
 ' Coleridge's assertion that the ' Metre of Christabel ' is founded on ' a new 
 principle' has greatly exercised his critics. The question is discussed by 
 Dr. Schipper in his Englische Metrik, and by Mr. H. D. Bateson in an able 
 monograph entitled An Introduction to the Study of English Rhythms, with 
 an Essay on the Metre of Coleridge's Christabel (Reprinted for Private 
 Circulation from the Manchester Quarterly) : " Dr. Schipper," writes Mr. Bate- 
 son, " in dealing with the verse of four accents, distinguishes the viertaktig 
 verse of four accents, framed after the model of the French Vers Octosyllabe, 
 where the number of unaccented syllables is limited to four, or at most to 
 five (as in Gower's Confessio Amantis and Byron's Giaour), from the vierhebig 
 verse, also of four accents, but where the number of unaccented syllables 
 is not limited to four as in ' Christabel ' ; and with regard" to Mr. Coleridge's 
 claims to have discovered a new principle, Dr. Schipper says (Part II, Book i, 
 p. 245), ' This is just the principle both of the freely constituted four-foot verse 
 {viertaktig) as used in old EngUsh poetry . . . and of the four accented {vierhebig) 
 iambic-anapaest or trochaic-dactylic new English long line, which is frequently 
 
PREFACE 
 
 59 
 
 not, properly speaking, irregular, though it ma^ seem so 
 from its being founded on a new principle : namelyrthat 
 of cbunting-in eachTme the accents," not th« syllables. 
 Though the latter may vary from seven to twelve, yet in 
 each line the accehts wiir be found to be Only four. 
 Nevertheless, this occasional variation in number of sylla- 
 bles is not introduced wantonly, or for the mere ends of 
 convenience, but in correspondence with some transition, 
 in the nature of the imagery or passion. 
 
 combined with it. . . . Burns' Tarn d'Shanter is a conspicuous instance. . . . 
 The claim raised by Coleridge to have discovered a new metrical principle, 
 if he did mean this, is, therefore, in every respect unfounded. But it is quite 
 conceivable that it came newly into vogue through him, and exercised a con- 
 siderable influence on his contemporaries, and on the later poets, such as 
 Byron, Scott, Moore, and others.' " 
 
 It is i mpossibl e to suppose that Coleridge b.eli£ ved-.QE Jniaaiaed.Ah«t~hi&..- 
 readers^ wojddbelleye, that trie alternation of iambic with trochaic or anapaestic 
 lines^ or that the occasion^ vanafion inthe MiiiBer bf"syliabTes"iri^Iike^'iSf 
 equal meMcat^accetituation iionstituted.?ra.ue,w. prinSplC!,9rSrger^l|e^ouid 
 not have been under the delusion that Milton's L' Allegro, or Shakespeare's 
 Songs, or Burns' Tarn dShanter, were out of the reach of the public to which 
 he appealed. His claim was that Christabel was the first poem in the English 
 language composed on a deliberate principle of so varying the length of the 
 Hme (and if need be, the number of syllables) as to make the tune of the words 
 a kind of running accompaniment to the sense, and to do this without exceeding 
 or falling short of four accents (or rather, suggestions of accentuation— a stronger 
 compensating for a weaker stress) to the line. It was a fact that Christabel vias 
 the first of its kind, that as a whole it was not modelled on any immediate 
 or remote predecessor, and it was a fact that it had already served as a model 
 to more than one immediate successor. It marked a new departure in the art 
 or science of metrification. 
 
 Mr. Bateson appends to his essay an elaborate and exhaustive analysis 
 of the metre of Christabel. He sums up his analysis in the following sen- 
 tences : — 
 
 "The normal rhythm is iambic, but an anapaest is admissible in any foot, 
 a dactyl in the first, and a trochee in the first or third . . ." 
 
 " The metre is tetrameter acatalectic, that is there are four feet, and the last 
 foot terminates the verse. There are only eleven instances of the dimeter 
 and trimeter, and only twenty instances of hypercatalectic verses out of 
 upwards of 670 lines.'' 
 
 " The ' ictus metricus ' principally falls on the second and fourth accents 
 in the line." 
 
THE ARMS OF DE VAUX OF TRIERMAIN 
 
CHRISTABEL 
 
 PART li 
 
 'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, 
 And the owls have awakened the crowing cock ; 
 
 Tu — whit ! Tu — whoo ! " \ 
 
 And hark, again ! the crowing cock, 
 How drowsily it crew. 
 
 Sir Leohne, the Baron rich,"* ^ 
 Hath a toothless mastiff bitch ; 
 
 ^ Book the First. MS.W ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. Part the First. 1828,1829. 
 " Tu-u-whoo.' Tu-u-whoo. MS.W.; S.T.C. (c); S.H. 
 "• Sir Leoline the Baron -bekt 
 
 Hath a toothless mastiff old. H. 1816. 
 
 • Compare Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, Act v, scene 2, song ; — 
 "Then nightly sings the staring owl, 
 
 To-who ; 
 Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note." 
 In an early poem, ' Devonshire Roads,' 1790, Coleridge celebrates the ' boding 
 songs ' of ' scritch-owls ', andj n the A ncient Mariner, 1. 536,_^^JbfeXMidet.whoiq)s 
 to the wolf below.'' 'Night-birds' haunted the road between Stowey and 
 Alfoxden. See Dorothy Wordsworth's 'Journal' for March 31, 1798. Com- 
 pare, too, Osorio, Act. v. sc. 1. 11. 43, 44 : — 
 
 "And the owl 
 (Strange! very strange!) the scritch-owl only wak'd." 
 ' According to Allsop {Letters, Conversations, &c., 1836, i. 206), Charles 
 Lamb "advised Coleridge to alter the lines in Christabel: — 
 'Sir Leoline, the Baron rich. 
 Had a toothless mastiff bitch ; • 
 into — ' Sir Leoline, the Baron round. 
 
 Had a toothless mastiff hound ; ' 
 but Coleridge, who has no alacrity in altering, changed this first termination to 
 ' which ', but still left in the other ' bitch '." It was true enough that for some 
 reason, good or bad, to preserve the ordonnance of the verse, or to satisfy 
 
62 CHRISTABEL 
 
 From her kennel beneath the rock 
 
 She maketh answer to the clock, 
 
 Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour; lo 
 
 Ever and aye, by shine and shower. 
 
 Sixteen short howls, not over loud ; ^ 
 
 Some say, she sees my lady's shroud. 
 
 Is the night chilly and dark? 
 
 The night is chilly, but not dark.^ is 
 
 The thin gray cloud is spread on high, 
 
 It covers but not hides the sky. 
 
 The moon is behind, and at the full; 
 
 And yet she_lpqks both small and dull.' 
 
 Sir Leoline the Baron rich, 
 
 Hath a toothless mastiff bitch j 
 
 From her kennel beneath the rock 
 
 She makes answer to the clock, 
 
 Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour; 
 
 Ever and aye, moonshine or shower. 
 
 MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. ; First Ed. 
 Sir Leoline, the Baron rich. 
 Hath a toothless mastiff, which 
 From her kennel beneath the rock 
 Maketh answer to the clock, 
 Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour; 
 Ever and aye, by shine and shower, H. 1816 ; i8a8 ; 1829. 
 by shine or shower. H. 1816. 
 
 the scruples of an ' honoured friend ', Coleridge altered lines 7 and 9 in 1816, 
 and embodied the alterations when he reprinted Christabel in 1828, and that he 
 did not alter lines 149-53, but left in ' the other bitch '. But whether Allsop 
 knew that Lamb was poking fun at him, or discerned what Lamb really 
 meant, is and must remain non-proven. 
 
 ' " The manufacturer's dog makes a strange, uncouth howl, which it con- 
 tinues many minutes after there is no noise near it but that of the brook. It 
 howls at the murmur of the village stream." D.W., Jan. 27, 1798. The dog 
 belonged to a Mr. Willmott, who lived at Woodlands, a ' cottage of gentility ' 
 half-way between Stowey and Holford Wood. 
 
 ' " A cold and clear evening.'' D.W., Feb. 6. "The night cloudy but not 
 dark." D.W., March 25. 
 
 ' " The sky spread over with one continuous cloud, whitened by the light 
 
PART I 63 
 
 The night is chill, the cloud is gray : 20 
 
 Tis^ajnonth. before .the jnaQthjof JMay, 
 And the Spring comes slowly up this way.^ 
 
 The lovely lady, Christabel, 
 
 Whom her father loves so well, 
 
 What' makes her in the wood so late, 25 
 
 A furlong from the castle gate? 
 
 She had dreams all yesternight 
 
 K li Of her own betrothdd knight ;» 
 ^sf « And_she in the midnight wood will pray 
 Vj^^^^^For the^eallof her lover that's far away. 3° 
 
 "^ She stole along, she nothing spoke, 
 
 The sighs she heaved were soft and low," 
 
 1 Dreams, that made her moan and leap. 
 As on her bed she lay in sleep. First Edition. Not in any MS. Erased, 
 H. 1816. 
 
 " The breezes they were whispering low. S.T.C.(a). 
 
 The breezes they were still also. MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. ; First Ed. 
 As in text, H. 1816. 
 
 of the moon." D.W., Jan. 25. "The sky flat, ... a white thin cloud." D.W., 
 Feb. 27. Compare Wordsworth's ' Night- Piece ' (1798), lines 1-7 :— 
 
 — "The sky is overcast 
 With a continuous cloud of texture close, 
 Heavy and wan, all whitened by the moon, 
 Which through that veil is indistinctly seen, 
 A dull, contracted circle, yielding light 
 So feebly spread, that not a shadow falls, 
 Chequering the ground — " 
 Jan. 27. " When we left home the moon immensely large, the sky scattered 
 over with clouds. These soon closed in, contracting the dimensions of the 
 moon without concealing her." D.W., Jan. 31. 
 
 " Behind the thin 
 Grey cloud that cover'd but not hid the sky 
 The round full moon look'd small." 
 
 S.T.C. Gutch Memorandum Book, p. 39. 
 ' " The spring continues to advance very slowly, no green trees, the hedges 
 leafless." D. W., March 24. " Little Daisy— very late spring, March." S.T.C. 
 Gutch Mem. Bk., p. i. 
 
64 CHRISTABEL 
 
 And naught' was green upon the oak 
 
 But moss and rarest misletoe : " ^ 
 
 She kneels beneath the huge oak tree,"" 35 
 
 And in silence prayeth she. 
 
 The lady sprang up suddenly, i^ 
 
 The lovely lady, Christabel ! 
 
 It moaned as near, as near can be,^ 
 
 But what it is she cannot tell. — 40 
 
 On the other side it seems to be, 
 
 Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree. 
 
 The night is chill; the forest bare; 
 
 Is it the wind that moaneth bleak ? ^ 
 
 There is not wind enouglTurtRer^r ^i 45 
 
 To move away the ringlet curl 
 
 From the lovely lady's cheek — 
 
 ' nought. First Edition, naught. H. 1816. 
 " But the moss and misletoe. MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. 
 "i She knelt etc. MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. 
 
 ^^ The lady leaps up suddenly. MS.W.; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. First Edition. As 
 in text, H. 1816. 
 
 ' // moan'd as near, as near could be. H. 1816. 
 ■^ Lines 45-7 are not in MS.W. 
 
 * 'The bright green moss was bare at the roots of the trees.' D.W., 
 Feb. 17. 
 
 ' In a note to the Siege of Corinth (pub. Feb. 7, 1816) Byron acknowledges 
 " a close, though unintentional, resemblance in these twelve lines (11. 521-33) to 
 a passage in an unpublished poem of Mr. Coleridge, called Christabel". He 
 had already, in a letter dated Oct. 27, 1815, explained to Coleridge that the lines in 
 the Siege of Corinth were written before he had heard ' M'. S.' [Sir Walter Scott] 
 repeat Christabel in the preceding June. The resemblance is unquestionable, 
 but Byron's plagiarism (" Was it the wind through some hollow stone Sent that 
 soft and tender moan ? " &c.) may have been at the immediate expense of 
 Southey (compare Thalaba, v. 20, " What sound is borne on the wind ? Is it the 
 storm that shakes The thousand oaks of the forest ? ") ; or of Scott (Lay of the 
 Last Minstrel, I. xii. 11, 12, " Is it the wind, that swings the oaks ? Is it the echo 
 from the rocks ? " &c.) ; or he may have heard and forgotten some chance reci- 
 tation of a specimen of the then unpublished but not unquoted Christabel. See 
 Byron's Works, Poetry, 1900, iii. pp. 471-2. 
 
PART I 65 
 
 There is not wind enough to twirl 
 
 The one red leaf, the last of its clan/ 
 
 That dances as often as dance it can, 53 
 
 Hanging so light, and hanging so high, 
 
 On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.' 
 
 Hush, beating heart of Christabel ! 
 Jesu, Maria," shield her well ! 
 She folded her arms beneath her cloak, 65 
 
 And stole to the other side of the oak. 
 What sees she there? 
 
 There she sees a damsel bright, "i 
 
 Drest in a silken robe of white. 
 
 That shadowy in the moonlight shone : 60 
 
 The neck that made that white robe wan, 
 
 Her stately neck, and arms were bare; 
 
 Her blue-veined feet unsandal'd were. 
 
 « — looks out at the sky. MS.W. ; S.H. 
 
 " Jesu Maria. MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. 
 
 1" What sees she there f 
 
 A damsel bright 
 
 Clad in a silken robe of white. 
 
 Her neck, her feet, her arms were bare, 
 
 And the jewels were tumbled in her hair, 
 
 I guess, &c. MS.W. 
 
 There she sees a damsel bright, 
 
 Drest in a silken robe of white ; 
 
 Her neck, her feet, her arms were bare, 
 
 And the jewels were tumbled in her hair. , 
 
 / guess, &c. S.T.C. (a) ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. ; First Edition. 
 
 And the jewels were tangled in her hair. S.T.C. (b). 
 
 And the jewels disordered in her hair. First Edition. 
 [Note in the Hinves Copy (Nov. 1816), lines 60-65 are inserted (by S.T.C.) in 
 the margin, and the two hnes 'Her neck, &c.— her hair', are erased. This 
 addition was included in the editions of 1828, 1829, 1834, &c.] 
 
 > 'One only leaf upon the top of a tree — the sole remaining leaf— 
 danced round and round like a rag blown by the wind.' D.W., March 7, 1798. 
 
 L 
 
66 CHRISTABEL 
 
 And wildly glittered here and there 
 
 The gems entangled in her hair.^ 65 
 
 I guess, 'twas frightful there to see ^^- . 
 
 A lady so richly clad as she — ^/ 
 
 Beautiful exceedingly ! ^ / ^f^'" 
 
 Mary mother, save me now! J^ 
 
 (Said Christabel,) And who art thou ? 70 
 
 The lady strange made answer meet, 
 
 And her voice was faint and sweet: — 
 
 Have pity on my sore distress, 
 
 I scarce can speak for weariness : > 
 
 Stretch forth thy hand, and have no fear! 75 
 
 Said Christabel, How camest thou here?" 
 
 And the lady, whose voice was faint and sweet, 
 
 Did thus pursue her answer meet : — 
 
 My sire is of a noble line. 
 
 And my name is Geraldine; 80 
 
 Five warriors seized me yestermorn,*" 
 
 Me, even me, a maid forlorn : 
 
 * / cannot speak for weariness. H. 1816. 
 
 '* Alas! But say, how cam'st thou here? 
 
 And the lady whose voice was faint and sweet. H. 1816. 
 [Line 76 was to be printed as a paragraph by itself.] 
 *n Five ruffians seized me yestemtorn. 
 
 Me, even me, a maid forlorn ; 
 They choUd my cries with wicked might. 
 
 MS.W.; S.T.C.(a); S.T.C.(c); S.H; 
 Five warriors seised me yestermom. S.T.C. (b). 
 
 * Compare — " Her neck and arms were uncovered ; in her hand she bore 
 a golden wand ; her hair was loose, and flowed wildly upon her shoulders ; 
 her eyes sparkled with a terrific expression." Ambrosio, or The Monk, 
 a Romance, by M. G. Lewis, Esq., M.P., 1798, ii. 27a. 
 
 * Compare Byron's Don Juan, canto vi, stanza xxxvi, lines 2, 3 : — 
 
 "a damsel fair, 
 And fresh, and 'beautiful exceedingly'.'' 
 
PART I 67 
 
 They choked my cries with force and fright/ 
 
 And tied me on a palfrey white. 
 
 The palfrey was as fleet as wind, 85 
 
 And they rode furiously behind. 
 
 They spurred amain, their steeds were white : 
 
 And once we crossed the shade of night." 
 
 As sure as Heaven shall^rescue riie^ 
 
 I have no thought what men they be;i 90 
 
 ' [Lines 82, 83, 84^ are erased in H. 1816. Lines 81-84, 89, 90, which Scott 
 prefixed as a motto to chapter xi of The Black Dwarf (1818), run thus :— 
 
 "Three rufiSans seized me yestermorn, 
 Alas ! a maiden most forlorn ; 
 They choked my cries with wicked might, 
 And bound me on a palfrey white : 
 As sure as Heaven shall pity me, 
 I cannot tell what men they be." Christabel. 
 
 The motto to chapter xxiv of The Betrothed (1825) is slightly different : — 
 
 "Four Ruffians seized me yestermorn — 
 Alas ! a maiden most forlorn ! 
 They choked my cries with wicked might 
 And bound me on a palfrey white." Coleridge. 
 
 •' And twice we crossed the shade of night. MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. 
 
 * In October, 1802, Dr. (afterwards Sir) John Stoddart visited Walter 
 Scott at Lasswade, and recited to him, or, more probably, read from an MS. 
 copy, Coleridge's Christabel. Thirteen years later, in June 1815, Scott recited 
 Christabel to Byron in a room at Murray's house in Albemarle Street, and in 
 1818, still trusting to his memory of Stoddart's recitation, he prefixed lines 81- 
 84 and 89, 90 as a motto to chapter xi of The Black Dwarf. It must have been 
 the MS. which Stoddart took with him to Scotland, or rather a copy of that 
 MS. made by his sister, Sarah Stoddart (afterwards Mrs. Hazlitt), which 
 Hazlitt gave to Payne Collier ' soon after he married ', took back again 
 into his own possession, and returned to Collier shortly before his death. 
 Again, in a note to The Abbot (pub. 1820) Scott quotes twenty-two lines of 
 Christabel with only accidental variations ; and, finally, as a heading to 
 chapter xxiv of The Betrothed (pub. 1825), he again quotes lines 81-4, and, 
 again, with fresh variants, follows the Stoddart MS., and not the printed version 
 which had been given to the world nine years before. 
 
68 CHRISTABEL 
 
 Nor do I know how long it is 
 
 (For I have lain entranced I wisjj 
 
 Since one, the tallest of the five, 
 
 Took me from the palfrey's back, 
 
 A^ weary woman, scarce alive, 95 
 
 Some muttered words his comrades spoke : 
 
 He placed me underneath this oak ; 
 
 He swore" they would return with haste; 
 
 Whither they went I cannot tell — 
 
 I thought I heard, some minutes past, loo 
 
 Sounds as of a castle bell. 
 
 Stretch forth thy hand (thus ended she), 
 
 And help a wretched maid to flee. 
 
 Then Christabel stretched forth her hand, 
 
 And comforted fair Geraldine : 105 
 
 O well, bright dame! may you command"' 
 
 The service of Sir Leoline ; 
 
 And gladly our stout chivalry 
 
 Will he send forth and friends withal 
 
 To guide and guard you safe and free no 
 
 Home to your noble father's hall. 
 
 • For I have lain in fits, I wis. 
 
 MS.W. ; S.T.C. (a) ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. ; First Ed. 
 For I have lain entranced I wis, S.T.C. (b) ; H. 1816. 
 " They swore — MS.W. 
 •*' Saying, that she should command 
 The service of Sir Leoline ; 
 And straight be convoy'd, free from thrall, 
 
 Back to her noble father's hall MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. ; First Ed. 
 [In the Hinves Copy, lines 106-11 of the text are substituted for the above, 
 but 1. 106 is not in Coleridge's handwriting. The reading of the text was first 
 adopted in 1828.] 
 
PART I 69 
 
 She rose : and forth with steps they passed » . 
 
 That strove to be, and were not, fast. 
 
 Her gracious stars the lady blest. 
 
 And thus spake on sweet Christabel : 115 
 
 All our household are at rest. 
 
 The hall as silent as the cell; 
 
 Sir Leoline is weak in health, 
 
 And may not well awakened be. 
 
 But we will move as if in stealth, 120 
 
 And I beseech your courtesy. 
 
 This night, to share your couch with me. 
 
 They crossed the moat, and Christabel 
 Took the key that fitted well; 
 
 1 So up she rose, and forth they pass'd 
 
 With hurrying steps, yet nothing fast; 
 Her lucky stars the lady blest, 
 And Christabel she sweetly said — 
 All our household are at rest, 
 Each one sleeping in his bed ; 
 Sir Leoline is weak in health. 
 And may not awaken' d be; 
 So to my room w^ll creep in stealth. 
 And you to-night must sleep with Me. 
 
 MS.W.; S.T.C.(c); S.H. ; First Edition. 
 
 Lines 3-6, "Her lucky stars "—•' bed". S.T.C. (a). 
 
 And may not well awakened be. First Edition. 
 
 Her smiling stars the lady blest 
 
 And thus bespake sweet Christabel : 
 
 All our household is at rest 
 
 The hall as silent as a cell, S.T.C. (b). 
 
 [In the Hinves Copy lines 112-22 of the text are inserted in Coleridge's 
 handwriting. Line 113 reads — "yet were not fast." Line 122 reads — "share 
 your bed with me." In 1828 lines 117-21 were added to the text ; and " Her 
 gracious stars" substituted for "Her lucky stars." — S.T.C. (b) is the sole 
 authority for " Her smiling stars," and for "a cell."] 
 
70 CHRISTABEL 
 
 A little door she opened straight, 125 
 
 All in the middle of the gate ; 
 The gate that was ironed within and without/ 
 Where an army in battle array had marched out. 
 The lady sank, belike through pain, 
 ' And Christabel with might and main 130 
 
 Lifted her up, a weary weight. 
 Over the threshold of the gate : ^ 
 Then the lady rose again, 
 And moved, as she were not in pain. 
 
 So free from danger, free from fear, 135 
 
 They crossed the court : right glad they were. 
 And Christabel devoutly cried i 
 To the Lady by her side; 
 
 And Christabel she sweetly cried, MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. 
 
 ' Compare — " A Gothic gate richly ornamented with fretwork— A gate which' 
 is heavy with ironwork.'' The Romance of the Forest, by Ann Radcliife, 1791, 
 
 PP- 37. 45- 
 
 ' Compare — " ' Reverend Father,' replied Magdalen, ' hast thou never 
 heard that there are spirits powerful to rend the walls of a castle asunder when 
 once admitted which yet cannot enter the house unless they are invited, nay 
 dragged over the threshold ? ' " 
 
 "... But the most picturesque use of this popular belief [that evil spirits 
 cannot cross a threshold] occurs in Coleridge's beautiful and tantalizing frag- 
 ment of Christabel. Has not our own imaginative poet cause to fear that future 
 ages will desire to summon him from his place of rest, as Milton longed 
 ' To call him up, who left half told 
 The story of Cambuscan bold ? ' 
 The verses I refer to are when Christabel conducts into her father's castle 
 a mysterious and malevolent being, under the guise of a distressed female 
 stranger. 
 
 ' They cross'd the moat,' &c. — lines 123-44." 
 
 The Abbot, chapter xv and note. 
 
 " Because no demon could without aid pass the holy emblem over the lintel. 
 There is a profound moral in this popular superstition. The devil cannot 
 come into a house unless you bring him in yourself." The Poetry of Samuel 
 Taylor Coleridge, edited by R, Garnett, C.B., LL.D., 1898, p. 289. 
 
PART I 71 
 
 Praise we the Virgin all divine i 
 
 Who hath rescued thee from thy distress! 140 
 
 Alas, alas! said Geraldine, 
 
 I cannot speak for weariness. 
 
 So free from danger, free from fear, 
 
 They crossed the court : right glad they were. 
 
 Outside her kennel, ^ the mastiff old 145 
 
 Lay fast asleep, "i in moonshine cold. 
 
 The mastiff old did not awake. 
 
 Yet she an angry moan did make! 
 
 And what can ail the mastiff bitch ? 
 
 Never till now she uttered yell 150 
 
 Beneath the eye of Christabel. 
 
 Perhaps it is the o wlet's scritcj u 
 
 For what can ail the mastiff bitch ? 
 
 They passed the hall, that echoes still. 
 
 Pass as lightly as you will I 155 
 
 The brands were flat, the brands were dying, 
 
 Amid their own white ashes lying; 
 
 But when the lady passed, there came 
 
 A tongue of light, a fit of flame ; 
 
 And Christabel saw the lady's eye, >* 160 
 
 And nothing else saw she thereby, ^ 
 
 Save the boss of the shield ^ of Sir Leoline tall. 
 
 Which hung in a murky old niche in the wall. 
 
 » O praise the Virgin all divine. MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. 
 
 " Beside her kennel. MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. 
 
 "* Was stretch'd asleep. H. 1816. (Not in S.T.C. 's handwriting.) 
 
 «T S.T.C. (a) omits line 160, 
 ' And nothing else she saw thereby. MS.W.; S.T.C. (c); S.H. 
 
 ' The arms of Vaux of Triermain were, Argent, a bend [dexter] chequey, or 
 and gules. See Sir Walter Scott's note to the Bridal of Triermain, c. 11. st. i. 
 
72 CHRISTABEL 
 
 O softly tread, said Christabel, 
 
 My father seldom sleepeth well. 165 
 
 Sweet Christabel her feet doth bare/ 
 
 And jealous of the listening air 
 
 They steal their way from stair to stair, 
 
 Now in glimmer, and now in gloom, 
 
 And now they pass the Baron's room, 170 
 
 As still as death, with stifled breath ! " 
 
 And now have reached her chamber door; 
 
 And now doth Geraldine press down"* 
 
 The rushes of the chamber floor. 
 
 The moon shines dim in the open air, 175 
 
 And not a moonbeam enters here. 
 But they without its light can see 
 The chamber carved so curiously,^ 
 Carved with figures strange and sweet, 
 
 Sweet Christabel her feet she bares, 
 And they are creeping up the stairs; 
 Now in glimmer, and now in gloom. 
 
 MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. ; First Edition. 
 
 Sweet Christabel her feet doth bare 
 
 And jealous of the listening air 
 
 They steal their way from stair to stair. Ed. 1828. 
 
 With stifled breath, as still as Death. 
 
 H. 1816. (Not in S.T.C.'s handwriting.) 
 
 And now they with their feet press down 
 The rushes of her chamber floor. 
 
 MS.MT.; S.T.C. (c); S.H.j First Edition. 
 And now with eager feet press down. 
 
 First Edition. H. 1816. (Not in S.T.C.'s handwriting.) 
 
 ^ Compare the following stage direction in The Castle Spectre, Act III, 
 Scene iii : "Alice [having opened the folding doors, an Oratory is seen, richly 
 ornamented with carving and painted glass— ]." 
 
PART I 73 
 
 All made out of the carver's brain, i8o 
 
 For a lady's chamber meet : 
 
 The lamp with twofold silver chain 
 
 Is fastened to an angel's feet. 
 
 The silver lamp burns dead and dim; 
 
 But Christabel the lamp will trim. 185 
 
 She trimmed^helamp, ahd»>.made it bright, 
 
 And left it swinging to and fro, 
 
 While Geraldine, in wretched plight, 
 
 Sank down upon the floor below. 
 
 weary lady, Geraldine, 190 
 
 1 pray you, drink this cordial wine ! ' 
 It is a wine of virtuous powers ; 
 
 My mother made it of wild flowers. " 
 
 And will your mother pity me, 
 
 Who am a maiden most forlorn? 195 
 
 Christabel answered — Woe is me! 
 
 She died the hour that I was born. 
 
 I have heard the grey-haired friar tell, 
 
 How on her death-bed she did say. 
 
 That she sh QuldJbteaf-the. castJerbelL 200 
 
 Stake..t3KelvejjpQjL.my ^ffiddingday. 
 
 mother dear! that thou ^yert. here! 
 
 1 would, said Geraldine, she were ! 
 
 ' / pray you drink this spicy wine. 
 
 MS.W.; S.T.C.(a); S.T.C.(c); S.H. 
 
 •' Nay drink it up I pray you do, 
 
 Believe me it will comfort you. 
 
 MS.W. ; S.T.C. (a) ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. The omission was made in the First 
 Edition. 
 
 M 
 
74 CHRISTABEL 
 
 But soon with altered voice, said she — 
 
 " Off, wandering mother ! Peak and pine ! » 205 
 
 I have power to bid thee flee." 
 
 Alas ! what ails poor Geraldine ? 
 
 Why stares she with unsettled eye? 
 
 Can she the bodiless dead espy? 
 
 And why with hollow voice cries she, 210 
 
 "Off, woman, off! this hour is mine — 
 
 Though thou her guardian spirit be,^ 
 
 Off, woman, off! 'tis given to me." 
 
 Then Christabel knelt by the lady's side. 
 
 And raised to heaven her eyes so blue — 215 
 
 Alas! said she, this ghastly ride — ^ 
 
 Dear lady! it hath wildered you! 
 
 The lady wiped her moist cold brow. 
 
 And faintly said, "'tis over now!"" 
 
 Again the wild-flower wine she drank : 220 
 
 Her fair large eyes 'gan glitter bright. 
 
 And from the floor whereon she sank. 
 
 The lofty lady stood upright : 
 
 She was most beautiful to see. 
 
 Like a lady of a far countr^e.'" 225 
 
 ' MS.W. omits lines 205-10, ai2. 
 " And faintly said I'm better now. 
 
 MS.W. ; S.T.C. (a) ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. 
 
 'TVs over now. First Edition. 
 
 '" Like a lady of a fair countre'e. MS.W. 
 
 * Compare The Castle Spectre, Act II, Scene i : " Above all, they say that the 
 spirit of the late Countess sits nightly in her Oratory, and sings her baby to 
 sleep." 
 
 " Compare—" O'ertortured by that ghastly ride." Byron's Mazeppa, 1. 549. 
 
PART I 75 
 
 And thus the lofty lady spake— 
 
 All they, who live in the upper sky, * 
 
 Do love you, holy Christabel ! 
 
 And you love them, and for their sake 
 
 And for the good which me befell, 230 
 
 Even I in my degree will try. 
 
 Fair maiden, to requite you well. 
 
 But now unrobe yourself; for I 
 
 Must pray, ere yet in bed I lie. 
 
 Quoth Christabel, So let it be ! 235 
 
 And as the lady bade, did she. 
 
 Her gentle limbs did she undress. 
 
 And lay down in her loveliness. 
 
 But through her brain of weal and woe 
 
 So many thoughts moved to and fro, 240 
 
 That vain it were her lids to close; 
 
 So half-way from the bed she rose, 
 
 And on her elbow did recline 
 
 To look at the lady Geraldine. 
 
 Beneath the lamp the lady bowed, 245 
 
 And slowly rolled her eyes around ; 
 
 Then drawing in her breath aloud 
 
 Like one that shuddered, she unbound 
 
 The cincture from beneath her breast : 
 
 Her silken robe, and inner vest, 250 
 
 Dropt to her feet, and full in view. 
 
 Behold ! her bosom and half her side — " ^ 
 
 > Lines 227-36 are erased in H. 1816. 
 " After line 352 — Are lean and old and foul of hue. 
 MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. 
 
 » " The manuscript runs thus, or nearly thus : — 
 
 ' Behold her bosom and half her side, 
 Hidden, deformed and pale of hue! 
 
76 CHRISTABEL 
 
 r 
 
 A sight to dream of, not to tell!^ 
 
 O shield her ! shield sweet Christabel ! ' 
 
 Yet Geraldine nor speaks nor stirs; ass 
 
 Ah 1 what a stricken look was hers ! ^ 
 
 And she is to sleep with Christabel. MS.W. 
 
 And she is to sleep by Christabel. S.T.C. (c) ; S.H.; First Edition. 
 
 And must she sleep with Cfirisiabcl. H. 1816. Erased. 
 
 And. must she sleep by Christabel. H. 1816. 
 
 And she is alone with Christabel. 
 
 H. 1816. Erased. (Not in S.T.C. 's handwriting.) 
 
 O shield her, shield sweet Christabel— 
 
 H. 1816. (Not in S.T.C.'s handwriting.) 
 
 I This line is necessary to make common sense of the first and second part. " It 
 I is the key stone that makes up the arch." For'that reason Mr. C. left it out. Now 
 / this is a greater psychological curiosity than even the fragment of Kubla Khan. 
 
 
 " There is something disgusting at the bottom of his subject which is but ill 
 glossed over by a veil of Delia Cruscan sentiment and fine writing, like 
 moonbeams playing on a charnel-house, or flowers strewed on a dead body." 
 Examiner, June 2, 1816. 
 
 The fact that Hazlitt's wife, born Sarah Stoddart, made a copy of Christabel, 
 and that this copy was for many years in Hazlitt's possession, suggests, if it 
 does not reveal, the source of this private information. It is, of course, prob- 
 able that Leigh Hunt added some finishing touches to the miching mallecho. 
 Both editor and reviewer must have known perfectly well that the omission of 
 the line had nothing whatever to do with delicacy or indelicacy, and that its 
 retention would have removed the remotest possibility of there being " any- 
 thing disgusting at the bottom of the subject ". It was left out on the principle 
 of ' omne ignotum pro mysterio '. Hence the effect of this passage on Shelley. 
 " Towards midnight on the i8th of July [1816] Byron recited the lines in 
 Christabel about the lady's breast ; when Shelley suddenly started up, shrieked 
 and fled from the room. He had seen a vision of a woman with eyes instead 
 of nipples.'' Shelley, by J. A. Symonds, 1878, pp. 90, 91. 
 
 ' Compare — " It was a thing to see, not hear." Byron's Parisina, line 339. 
 
 J'There are indications that the Geraldine of the First Fart of the poem was 
 the mercy" of settielmaJign influence. nojt herself, and that her melting mood 
 was partly genuine. She is ' stricken ' with horror at her unwelcome task, 
 because, she cannot at first overcome the temptation to do. right. She was in 
 a strait between contending powers of good and evil. 
 
 sxAht 
 
PART I 77 
 
 Deep from within she seems half-way' 
 
 To lift some weight with sick assay, 
 
 And eyes the maid and seeks delay; 
 
 Then suddenly, as one defied," 260 
 
 Collects herself in scorn and pride. 
 
 And lay down by the Maiden's side ! — 
 
 And in her arms the maid she took. 
 
 Ah well-a-day! 
 And with low voice and doleful look 265 
 
 These words did say : 
 
 In the- touch . c £JJaisL^hQ§GWi Jh^rj^^yvgrke^ a spell, 
 Which isjgrd^ of thy utterance, Christabel ! 
 Thou knowest to-night, and wilt know to-morrow, 
 This mark of my shame, this seal of my sorrow ; 270 
 
 But vainly thou warrest. 
 For this is alone in 
 
 ' Lines 255-62, which were first included in the edition of 1828, are 
 inscribed in H. 1816, but not by S.T.C. 
 
 •' She took two paces and a stride, 
 
 And lay down by the maiden's side 
 And in her arms the maid she took. 
 
 Ah wel-a-dayl 
 And with sad voice and doleful look 
 These words did say : 
 
 In the touch of my Bosom there worketh a spell 
 Which is lord of thy utterance, Christabel! 
 Thou knowest to-night, and wilt know to-morrow. 
 The mark of my shame, the seal of my sorrow. 
 
 MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. 
 She took two paces and a stride. 
 
 Ah wel-a-day / First Edition. 
 
 She ga^d upon the maid, she eigh'd. 
 
 She took two paces at t d a ofride. 
 
 Then 
 
 And lay down by th e ma i den's side. H. 1816. 
 
78 CHRISTABEL 
 
 Thy power to declare, 
 
 That in the dim forest 
 Thou heard'st a low moaning, 275 
 
 And found'st a bright lady, surpassingly fair; 
 And didst bring her home with thee in love and 
 
 in charity, i 
 To shield her and shelter her from the damp air." 
 
 ' And didst bring her home with thee with love and with charity. 
 
 MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. 
 
 " To shield her, and shelter her, and shelter far from the damp air. 
 
 MS.W. 
 
 NOTE.— ADDITIONS AND OMISSIONS. 
 (Part I.) 
 
 MS.W. numbers 257 lines. Lines 45-7 : — 
 
 There is not wind enough in the air 
 To move away the ringlet curl 
 From the lovely lady's cheek — 
 
 and lines 205-10, 21a : — 
 
 " Off, wandering mother! peak and pine I 
 I have power to bid thee flee." 
 Alas ! what ails poor Geraldine ? 
 Why stares she with unsettled eyef 
 Can she the bodiless dead espy t 
 And why with hollow voice cries she, 
 Though thou her guardian spirit be — 
 
 appear for the first time in S.T.C. (c), which numbers 266 hnes. 
 
 The First Edition numbers 265 lines. The lines — 
 
 Dreams that made her moan and leap. 
 As on her bed she lay in sleep — 
 
 were inserted, and the lines — 
 
 Nay drink it up, I pray you do ! 
 Believe me it will comfort you — 
 
PART I 79 
 
 and the line— 
 
 Are lean and old and foul of hue. 
 were omitted. 
 
 The Edition of 1828 (and all subsequent editions) numbers 278 lines. The 
 two lines — " Dreams that made her moan and leap, As on her bed she lay 
 in sleep," were omitted and the following fifteen lines were inserted : — 
 
 Lines 60, 61, 63, 64— 
 
 That shadowy in the moonlight shone: 
 The neck that made that white robe wan, 
 The blue-veined feet un-sandaPd were, 
 And wildly glittered here and there. 
 
 Lines 109-10 — 
 
 Will he send forth and friends withal 
 To guide and guard you safe and free 
 
 117 — The hall as silent as the cell 
 
 121 — And I beseech your courtesy 
 
 167 — And jealous of the listening air 
 
 257-62 — Deep from within she seems half-way 
 To lift some weight with sick assay. 
 And eyes the maid and seeks delay ; 
 Then suddenly, as one defied. 
 Collects herself in scorn and pride 
 And lay down by the maiden's side ! — 
 
 Note that these fifteen lines, all but line 167, " And jealous of the listening 
 air," are inscribed in the copy of the First Edition which Coleridge gave to 
 David Hinves, November 11, 1816, and were probably composed in 1816. 
 
8o CHRISTABEL 
 
 THE CONCLUSION TO PART P 
 
 It was a lovely sight to see 
 
 The lady Christabel, when she aSo 
 
 Was praying at the old oak tree. 
 
 Amid the jagged shadows 
 
 Of mossy leafless boughs, 
 
 Kneeling in the moonlight, 
 
 To make her g entle vows : _. 285 
 
 Her slender palms together prest. 
 Heaving sometimes on her breast ; 
 Herface resigned to_ bliss or JbaLe — 
 Her face, oh call it fair not pale,^ 
 And both blue eyes more bright than clear, 290 
 Each about to have a tear. 
 
 With open eyes (ah woe is me !) ^ 
 Asleep, and dreaming fearfully. 
 
 The Conclusion of Book the First. MS.W. 
 
 The Conclusion to Book the First. S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. 
 
 ' Compare: — 
 
 " E smarrisce il bel volto in un colore, 
 Che non e pallidezza, ma candore.'' 
 
 Tasso, G. Lib. canto ii. st. 26. 
 
 The parallel passage is pointed out by J. M. B. in Notes and Queries, 1853, 
 I St Series, vii. 292. 
 " Compare : — 
 
 " Though her eye shone out, yet the lids were fixed, 
 And the glance that it gave was wild and unmixed 
 With aught of change, as the eyes may seem 
 Of the restless who walk in a troubled dream." 
 
 Byron's Siege of Corinth, lines 616-9. 
 
PART I 8i 
 
 ^SHl[yb^--dESSSl^*!&.' y^^' I wis, 
 
 Dreaming that alone which is" — ^ 295 
 
 O sorrow and shame 1 Can this be she, 
 
 The lady, who knelt™ at the old oak tree? 
 
 And lo ! the worker of these harms. 
 
 That holds the maiden in her arms, 
 
 Seems to slumber still and mild, 300 
 
 As a mother with her child. 
 
 A star hath set, a star hath risen, 
 
 O Geraldine ! since arms of thine 
 
 Have been the lovely lady's prison. 
 
 O Geraldine I one hour was thine — 305 
 
 Thou'st had thy will! By tairn i^'and rill, 
 
 The night-birds all that hour were still. 
 
 But now they are jubilant anew. 
 
 From cliff and tower, tu — ^whoo ! tu — ^whoo ! 
 
 Tu — whoo! tu — whoo! from wood and fell! 310 
 
 And see! the lady Christabel ' 
 
 Gathers herself from out her trance ; 
 Her limbs relax, her countenance 
 Grows sad and soft; the smooth thin lids 
 
 ' Here in MS.W. the handwriting changes. ' Dreaming' was written by 
 S. T. C. : 'yet ' by Mary Hutchinson. 
 
 ** The word 'is' is italicized in H. 1816. 
 
 '" The lady thai knelt. MS.W. ; S.T.C.(c) ; S.H.; H. 1816. 
 
 *' Tairn or Tarn {derived by Lye from the Icelandic Tiorn, stagnum, palus) is 
 rendered in our dictionaries as synonymous with Mere or Lake ; but it is properly 
 a large Pool or Reservoir in the Mountains, commonly the Feeder of some Mere in 
 the Valleys. Tarn Watling and Blellum Tarn, though on lower ground than other 
 Tarns, are yet not exceptions, for both are on elevaHons, and Blellum Tarn feeds the 
 Wynander Mere. Note to S.T.C. (c). 
 
 * She was dreaming that she was in a witch's arms. Had she not seen 
 a sight ' to dream of ? 
 
 N 
 
82 
 
 CHRISTABEL 
 
 Close o'er her eyes ; and tears she sheds — 316 
 Large tears that leave the lashes bright! 
 And oft the while she seems to smile 
 As infants at a sudden light ! ^ 
 
 Yea, she doth smile, and she doth weep, 
 
 Like a youthful hermitess,^ 320 
 
 Beauteous in a wilderness, 
 
 Who, praying always, prays in sleep. 
 
 And, if she move unquietly. 
 
 Perchance, 'tis but the b^ood so free* 
 
 Comes back and tingles in her feet. 325 
 
 No doubt, she hath a vision sweet. 
 
 What if her guardian spirit 'twere. 
 
 What if she knew her mother near ? 
 
 But this she knows, in joys and woes. 
 
 That Saints will aid if men will call : 
 
 For the blue sky bends over all ! ' 
 
 330 
 
 PART II « 
 
 Each matin bell, the Baron saith. 
 Knells us back to a world of death. 
 These words Sir Leoline first said. 
 When he rose and found his lady dead : 
 
 * A query is attached to this line. H. 1816. 
 « Book the Second. MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. 
 
 336 
 
 * Vide ante, p. 18. ' Vide ante, p. 19. 
 
 ' "Just at present, I am absorbed in 500 contradictory contemplations, 
 though with but one object in view— which will probably end in nothing, as 
 most things we wish do. But never mind— as somebody says, ' for the blue 
 sky bends over all.'" Byron to Moore, Jan. 5, 1816. Letters of Lord Byron, 
 1899, ■"• 254. This, if we except the " Jesu, Maria, shield us well " of the Lay of 
 the Last Minstrel, must have been one of the earliest quotations from Christabel. 
 
PART II 83 
 
 These words Sir Leoline will say 
 Many a morn to his dying day ! 
 
 And hence the custom and law began 
 
 That still at dawn the Sacristan, 
 
 Who duly pulls the heavy bell, 340 
 
 Five and forty beads must tell 
 
 Between each stroke — a warning knell. 
 
 Which not a soul can choose but hear 
 
 From Bratha Head to Wyndermere. i 
 
 Saith Bracy the bard, So let it knell! 345 
 
 And, let the drowsy Sacristan 
 
 Still count as slowly as he can. 
 
 There is no lack of such, I ween, 
 
 As well fill up the space between ! 
 
 In Langdale Pike and Witch's Lair, 3Sp 
 
 And Dungeon-ghyll so foully rent. 
 
 With ropes of rock and bells of air 
 
 Three sinful" sextons' ghosts are pent. 
 
 Who all give back, one after t'other, »> 
 
 The death-note to their living brother; 355 
 
 And oft too, by the^^ knell offended. 
 
 Just as their one I two ! three is ended. 
 
 The devil mocks the doleful tale 
 
 With a merry peal from Borodale."' 
 
 The air is still I through mist and cloud ^J 360 
 
 That merry peal comes ringing loud ; 
 
 i Wyn'der-mere. MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. ; First Edition, 
 
 u Three simple sexton^ ghosts are pent. MS.W. 
 
 1" A query is attached to this line. H. 1816. 
 
 «▼ And oft too, by their knell offended. MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. 
 
 ' Borrodale S.T.C.(c): Borrowdale MS.W.; S.H; First Edition; Ed. 
 1828 ; Ed. 1829 : Borodale Ed. 1834. 
 
 " The air is still through many a cloud. MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. 
 
84 CHRISTABEL 
 
 And Geraldine shakes off her dread, 
 
 And rises lightly from the bed;* 
 
 Puts on her silken vestments white, 
 
 And tricks her hair in lovely plight, 3^5 
 
 And nothing doubting of her spell 
 
 Awakens the lady Christabel. 
 
 "Sleep you, sweet lady Christabel? 
 
 I trust that you have rested well." 
 
 And Christabel awoke and spied 37© 
 
 The same who lay down by her side — 
 
 O rather say, the same whom she 
 
 Raised up beneath the old oak tree ! 
 
 Nay, fairer yet ! and yet more fair ! 
 
 For she, belike, hath drunken deep 375 
 
 Of all the blessedness of sleep I * 
 
 And while she spake, her looks, her air 
 
 Such gentle thankfulness declare. 
 
 That (so it seemed) her girded vests 
 
 Grew tight beneath her heaving breasts.'^ 3^0 
 
 " Sure I have sinn'd 1 " said Christabel, 
 
 " Now heaven be praised if all be well ! " 
 
 And in low faltering tones, yet sweet, 
 
 Did she the lofty lady greet. 
 
 » And rises lightly from her bed. MS.W.; S.T.C.(c); S.H. 
 
 " Puts on her simple vestments white. MS.W. 
 
 * Compare Wordsworth's sonnet ' To Sleep ', lines 13, 14 : — 
 
 " Come, blessed barrier betwixt day and day, 
 Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health ! " 
 
 * Compare Coleridge's Genevieve : — 
 
 " I've seen your breast with pity heave." 
 and Love, 1. 81 : — 
 
 " Her bosom heaved — she stepped aside." 
 and Byron's Siege of Corinth, 1. 614 : — 
 
 "And there rose not a heave o'er her bosom's swell" 
 
PART II 85 
 
 With such perplexity of mind 385 
 
 As dreams too lively leave behind. 
 
 So quickly she rose, and quickly arrayed 
 
 Her maiden limbs, and having prayed 
 
 That He, who on the Cross did groan. 
 
 Might wash away her sins unknown, 390 
 
 She forthwith led fair Geraldine 
 
 To meet her Sire, Sir Leoline. 
 
 The lovely maid and the lady tall 
 
 Are pacing both into the hall, 
 
 And pacing on through page and groom, 395 
 
 Enter the Baron's presence-room. 
 
 The Baron rose, and while he prest 
 
 His gentle daughter to his breast, 
 
 With cheerful wonder in his eyes 
 
 The lady Geraldine espies, 400 
 
 And gave such welcome to the same. 
 
 As might beseem so bright a dame! 
 
 But when he heard the lady's tale. 
 
 And when she told her father's name, 
 
 Why waxed Sir Leoline so pale, 4®s 
 
 Murmuring o'er the name again. 
 
 Lord Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine ? 
 
 Alas ! they had been friends in youth ; ' 
 But whispering tongues can poison truth; 
 
 ^ Compare Childe Harold, canto III, stanza xciv, lines 1-4 : — 
 
 "Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves his way between 
 Heights which appear as lovers who have parted 
 
86 CHRISTABEL 
 
 And Constancy lives in realms above ; 4'° 
 
 And Life is thorny ; and Youth is vain ; 
 
 And to be wmth with one we love 
 
 Doth work like madness in the brain. 
 
 And thus it chanced, as I divine, 
 
 With Roland and Sir Leoline. 4 is 
 
 Each spake words of high disdain 
 
 And insult to his heart's best brother : 
 
 They parted ' — ne'er to meet again ! 
 
 But" never either found another 
 
 To free the hollow heart from paining — 4»o 
 
 They stood aloof, the scars remaining, 
 
 Like cliffs which had been rent asunder; 
 
 A dreary sea now flows between; — 
 
 But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,™ 
 
 Shall wholly do away, I ween, 425 
 
 The marks of that which once hath been.^ 
 
 Sir Leoline, a moment's space. 
 Stood gazing on the damsel's face : 
 
 In hate, whose mining depths so intervene 
 
 That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted." 
 
 Byron prefixed lines 408-13, 419-26 as a motto to ' Fare Thee Well ' when 
 he republished it in Poems, 1816. 
 
 • And parted ne'er to meet again. MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. 
 " And never either found another. MS.W. 
 '" But neither frost nor heat nor thunder 
 
 Can wholly do away, I ween, — S.T.C. to T. Poole, Jan. 1813. 
 
 • It has been pointed out that neither heat nor thunder, but only frost could 
 materially affect the sundered rocks. Cedat Geologice, as Coleridge might have 
 pleaded, if he had been confronted with the objection. The imagery of the 
 opposing cliffs divided by a • dreary sea' may have been derived from memories 
 of the Avon at Clifton, or of the Wye below Chepstow. It was at Chepstow 
 in 1795 that a discussion arose between Coleridge and Southey with regard to 
 Pantisocracy, and Coleridge was ' greatly agitated, even to tears '. 
 
PART II 87 
 
 And the youthful Lord of Tryermaine 
 
 Came back upon his heart again. 430 
 
 then the Baron forgot his age, 
 
 His noble heart swelled high with rage ; 
 
 He swore by the wounds in Jesu's side, 
 
 He would proclaim it far and wide. 
 
 With trump and solemn heraldry, 435 
 
 That they, who thus had wronged the dame. 
 
 Were base as spotted infamy ! 
 
 " And if they dare deny the same, 
 
 My herald shall appoint a week. 
 
 And let the recreant traitors seek 440 
 
 My tourney i court — that there and then 
 
 1 may dislodge their reptile souls 
 From the bodies and forms of men ! " 
 He spake : his eye in lightning rolls ! 
 
 For the lady was ruthlessly seized; and he kenned 
 In the beautiful lady the child of his friend ! 446 
 
 And now the tears were on his face, 
 And fondly in his arms he took 
 _£aiji_£ieraldme, who met tKe"~embrace, 
 Prolonging, it with joyous look 450 
 
 Which when she viewed, a vision fell 
 Upon the soul of Christabel, 
 The vision of fear, the touch and pain ! " 
 She shrunk and shuddered, and saw again — 
 
 « My Toumay Court. MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; First Edition. 
 
 11 The vision foul of fear and Pain. 
 
 MS.W.; S.T.C. (a); S.T.C. (c); S.H. 
 
 The vision of fear, the touch of pain. S.T.C. (b). 
 
88 CHRISTABEL 
 
 (Ah, woe is me ! Was it for thee, 455 
 
 Thou gentle maid ! such sights to see ?) 
 Again she saw that bosom old. 
 Again she felt that bosom cold, 
 And drew in her breath with a hissing sound : 
 Whereat the Knight turned wildly round, 460 
 
 And nothing saw, but his own sweet maid 
 With eyes upraised, as one that prayed. 
 
 ^,The touch, the sight, had passed away,? 
 
 And in its stead that vision blest. 
 
 Which comforted her after-rest, 465 
 
 (While in the lady's arms she lay. 
 
 Had put a rapture in her breast, 
 /And on her lips and o'er her eyes 
 
 Spread smiles like light ! 
 
 With new surprise, 
 
 "What ails then my belovdd child?" 470 / ^ 
 
 The Baron said — His daughter mild J. *!aMj^ 
 
 Made answer, "All will yet be well ! " ^/^^^'^ '^'■'^'"^^'^"' 
 
 I ween, she had no power to tell ^ 
 
 Aught else : so mighty was the spell. 
 
 Yet he^who saw Jhjs_ Geraldine, _ 475 
 
 Had^deemed her sure a thing divine. 
 
 Such sorrow with such grace she blended. 
 
 As if she feared she had offended 
 
 Sweet Christabel, that gentle maid ! 
 
 And with such lowly tones she prayed, 480 
 
 She might be sent without delay 
 
 Home to her father's mansion. 
 
 The pang, the sight was passed away. S.T.C. (a). 
 The pang, the sight, had passed away. 
 
 MS.W.; S.T.C. (c); S.H. ; First Edition. 
 
PART II 89 
 
 " Nay ! 
 Nay, by my soul ! " said Leoline. 
 " Ho 1 Bracy the bard, the charge be thine ! 
 Go thou, with music sweet and loud, 485 
 
 And take two steeds with trappings proud. 
 And take the youth whom thou lov'st best 
 To bear thy harp, and learn thy song. 
 And clothe you both in solemn vest, 
 And over the mountains haste along,', 490 
 
 Lest wandering folk, that are abroad. 
 Detain you on the valley road. 
 
 "And when he has crossed the Irthing flood,^ 
 
 My merry bard ! he hastes, he hastes 
 
 Up Knorren Moor, through Halegarth Wood, 495 
 
 And reaches soon that castle good 
 
 Which stands and threatens Scotland's wastes.^ 
 
 " Bard Bracy ! bard Bracy ! your horses are fleet. 
 
 Ye must ride up the hall, your music so sweet, 
 
 More loud than your horses' echoing feet ! 500 
 
 And loud and loud to Lord Roland call, 
 
 Thy daughter is safe in Langdale hall ! 
 
 Thy beautiful" daughter is safe and free — 
 
 Sir Leoline greets thee thus through me. 
 
 He bids thee come without delay 505 
 
 With all thy numerous array 
 
 * Line 490 is omitted in MS.W. 
 " Thy beauteous daughter is safe and free. MS.W. 
 
 ^ Vide ante, p. 26. 
 
 ^ Probably Spadeadam Waste, to the north-east of Triermain, which 
 stretches as far as the border.- 
 
 O 
 
90 CHRISTABEL 
 
 And take* thy lovely daughter home : 
 
 And he will meet thee on the way 
 
 With all his numerous array 
 
 White with their panting palfreys' foam : 6»o 
 
 And, by mine honour! I will say, 
 
 That I repent me of the day 
 
 When I spake words of fierce disdain 
 
 To Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine ! — 
 
 — For since that evil hour hath flown, 515 
 
 Many a summer's sun hath shone ; " 
 
 Yet ne'er found I a friend again 
 
 Like Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine." 
 
 The lady fell, and clasped his knees, 
 
 Her face upraised, her eyes overflowing; 520 
 
 And Bracy replied, with faltering voice, 
 
 His gracious hail on all bestowing; — 
 
 "Thy words, thou Sire of Christabel, 
 
 Are sweeter than my harp can tell; 
 
 Yet might I gain a boon of thee, 525 
 
 This day my journey should not be, 
 
 So strange a dream hath come to me; 
 
 That I had vowed with music loud 
 
 To clear yon wood from thing unblest. 
 
 Warned by a vision in my rest ! 530 
 
 F or in my sl eefiJL^saw ^at dpYe^ 
 
 That gentle bird, whom thou dost love. 
 
 And call'st by thy own daughter's name — 
 
 Sir Leoline ! I saw the same, 
 
 Fluttering, and uttering fearful moan, 535 
 
 Among the green herbs in the forest alone. 
 
 * And fetch thy lovely daughter home. MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.II, 
 " Many a Summer's suns have shone. MS.W, ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H, 
 
PART 11 91 
 
 Which when I saw and when I heard, 
 
 I wonder'd what might ail the bird; 
 
 For nothing near it could I see, 
 
 Save the grass and green herbs underneath the old tree. 
 
 "And in my dream, methought, I went 541 
 
 To search out what might there be found; 
 
 And what the sweet bird's trouble meant, 
 
 That thus lay fluttering on the ground. 
 
 I went and peered, and could descry 545 
 
 No cause for her distressful cry; 
 
 But yet for her dear lady's sake 
 
 I stooped, methough^ the dove to take,^^ 
 
 When lo ! I saw a bright green snake 
 
 Coiled around its wings and neck. 55° 
 
 Green as the herbs on which it couched. 
 
 Close by the dove's its head it crouched ; 
 
 And with the dove it heaves and stirs, 
 
 Swelling its neck as she swelled hers ! 
 
 I woke; it was the midnightjioiir, 555 
 
 The clock was echoing in the tower; 
 
 But though my slumber was gone by, 
 
 This dream it would not pass away^ 
 
 * Compare— "The high road being here open and spacious . . . I observed 
 a large hawk on the ground in the middle of the road : he seemed to be in 
 distress endeavouring to rise ; when coming up near him, I found him closely 
 bound up by a very long coach-whip snake, that had wreathed himself several 
 
 times round the hawk's body, who had but one of his wings at liberty 
 
 I suppose the hawk had been the aggressor, . . and that the snake dexterously 
 and luckily threw himself in coils round his body." Travels through North and 
 South Carolina, &c., by W. Bartram, 1794, pp. 216-17. 
 
 For Coleridge's acquaintance With Bartram's Travels see "Coleridge, 
 Wordsworth, and the American Botanist William Bartram: a lecture by 
 Ernest Hartley Coleridge", Transactions R.S.L. (1906), vol. xxvii. 
 
92 CHRISTABEL 
 
 It seems » to live upon my eye ! 
 
 And thence I vowed this self-same day 560 
 
 "With music strong and saintly song 
 
 To wander through the forest bare, 
 
 Lest aught unholy loiter" there." 
 
 Thus Bracy said: the Baron, the while. 
 
 Half-listening heard him with a smile; 6^6 
 
 Then turned to Lady Geraldine, 
 
 His eyes made up of wonder and love ; 
 
 And said in courtly accents fine, 
 
 "Sweet maid. Lord Roland's beauteous dove. 
 
 With arms more strong than harp or song, 570 
 
 Thy Sire and I will crush the snake ! " 
 
 He kissed her forehead as he spake, 
 
 And Geraldine, in maiden wise. 
 
 Casting down her large bright eyes. 
 
 With blushing cheek and courtesy fine 575 
 
 She turned her from Sir Leoline ; 
 
 Softly gathering up her train. 
 
 That o'er her right arm fell again; 
 
 And folded her arms across her chest, 
 
 And coudbedniei^ead^uponjier breast, 580 
 
 And looked askance at Christabel 
 
 Jesu, Maria, shield her well! 
 
 A snake's small eye blinks dull and shy,^ 
 And the lady's eyes they shrunk in her head. 
 
 ' It seem'd to live upon my eye. MS.W. S.T.C. (c). 
 
 •i Lest aught unholy wander there. MS.W. 
 
 ' Compare—" Breathless with fear, I listened while she repeated my own 
 expressions. The apparition seated herself opposite to me at the foot of the bed, 
 and was silent. Her eyes were fixed earnestly on mine ; they seemed endowed 
 
PART II 93 
 
 Each shrunk up to a serpent's eye, 585 
 
 And with somewhat of mahce, and more of dread, 
 
 At Christabel she looked askance ! — 
 
 One moment — and the sight was fled! 
 
 But Christabel in dizzy trance 
 
 Stumbling on the unsteady ground 69° 
 
 Shuddered aloud, with a' hissing sound; 
 
 And Geraldine again turned round. 
 
 And like a thing, that sought relief, 
 
 Full of wonder and full of grief, 
 
 She rolled her large bright eyes divine 695 
 
 Wildly" on Sir Leoline, 
 
 The maid, alasl her thoughts are gone, 
 
 She nothing sees — no sight but one 1 
 
 The maid, devoid of guile and sin, 
 
 I know not how, in fearful wise, 600 
 
 So deeply had she drunken in 
 
 That look, those shrunken serpent eyes, 
 
 That all her features were resigned 
 
 To this sole image in her mind; 
 
 And passively did imitate 605 
 
 That look of dull and treacherous hate ! 
 
 • Shuddered aloud with hissing sound. MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c); S.H. 
 
 " Wildly o'er Sir Leoline. MS.W. 
 
 with the property of the rattlesnake's, for I strove in vain to look off her. My 
 eyes were fascinated, and I had not the power of withdrawing them from the 
 spectre's." Ambrosia, or The Monk, by M. G. Lewis, Esq., M.P., 1798, ii. 63. 
 Compare, too, Byron's Don Jtmn, canto v, stanza xc, lines 4-8 : — 
 
 — "it scared 
 Juan a moment, as this pair so small, 
 
 With shrinking serpent optics on him stared ; 
 It was as if their little looks could poison 
 Or fascinate whome'er they fixed their eyes on." 
 
94 CHRISTABEL 
 
 And thus she stood, in dizzy trance, 
 
 Still picturing that look askance 
 
 With forced unconscious sympathy 
 
 Full before her father's view — - <5io 
 
 As far as such a look could be 
 
 In eyes so innocent and blue I 
 
 And when the trance was o'er, the maid» 
 
 Paused awhile, and inly prayed : 
 
 Then falling at the Baron's feet," 6is 
 
 " By my mother's soul do I entreat 
 
 That thou this woman send away!" 
 
 She said : and more she could not say : 
 
 For what she knew she could not tell, 
 
 O'er-mastered by the mighty spell."* 6zo 
 
 Why is thy cheek so wan and wild. 
 Sir Leoline? Thy only child 
 Lies at thy feet, thy joy, thy pride. 
 So fair, so innocent,^ so mild ; 
 The same, for whom thy lady died I 625 
 
 O, by the pangs of her dear mother 
 Think thou no evil of thy child ! 
 For her, and thee, and for no other, 
 She prayed the moment ere she died : 
 Prayed that the babe for whom she died, 630 
 
 Might prove her dear lord's joy and pride ! 
 That prayer her deadly pangs beguiled, 
 Sir Leoline ! 
 
 1 
 
 iii 
 
 But when the trance was o'er, the maid. 
 
 MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. ; First Edition. 
 Then falling at her father's feet. 
 
 MS.W. ; S.T.C. (c) ; S.H. ; First Edition ; Ed. 1828. 
 O'er mastered by that mighty spell. MS.W. 
 
PART II 95 
 
 And wouldst thou wrong thy only child, 
 
 Her child and thine? 635 
 
 Within the Baron's heart and brain 
 
 If thoughts, like these, had any share, 
 
 They only swelled his rage and pain. 
 
 And did but* work confusion there. 
 
 His heart was cleft with pain and rage, 640 
 
 His cheeks they quivered, his eyes were wild; 
 
 DishofloUEed-lhus in his-X)ld..-age^ 
 
 Dishonoured by his only child ; — 
 
 And all his hospitality 
 
 To the wronged" daughter of his friend 645 
 
 Bymore than woman's jealousy 
 
 Brought thus to a disgraceful end : — 
 
 He rolled his eye with stern regard 
 
 Upon the gentle minstrel bard. 
 
 And said in tones abrupt, austere — 650 
 
 "Why, Bracy! dost thou loiter here? 
 
 I bade thee hence!" The bard obeyed; 
 
 And turning from his own sweet maid, 
 
 The ag^d knight. Sir Leoline, 
 
 Led forth the lady Geraldine! 655 
 
 * And did not work confusion there. MS.W. 
 
 " To the insulted daughter of his friend. 
 
 MS.W.; S.T.C.(c); S.H.; First Edition ; Ed. 1828; Ed. 1829. 
 
96 CHRISTABEL 
 
 THE CONCLUSION TO PART IV 
 
 A little child, a limber elf, 
 
 Singing, dancing to itself, — 
 
 A fairy thing with red round cheeks. 
 
 That always finds," and never seeks, 
 
 Makes such a vision to the sight"' 660 
 
 As fills a father's eyes with light; 
 
 And pleasures flow in so thick and fast 
 
 Upon his heart, that he at last 
 
 Must needs express his love's excess'^ 
 
 With V words of unmeant bitterness. 665 
 
 Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together 
 
 Thoughts so all unlike each other ; 
 
 To mutter and mock a broken charm. 
 
 To dally with wrong that does no harm : 
 
 Perhaps 'tis tender too and pretty 670 
 
 At each wild word to feel within 
 
 A sweet recoil of love and pity I 
 
 And what, if in a world of sin 
 
 (O sorrow and shame should this be true !) 
 
 Such giddiness of heart and brain 675 
 
 Comes seldom save from rage and pain, 
 
 So talks as it's most used to do? 
 
 y* Not in any of the MSS. or in S.H. For the first manuscript Version, 
 ydee letter to Southey, May 6, 1801. 
 
 " ' Finds ' and ' seeks ' are italicized in letter. 
 *" Doth make a vision to the sight 
 
 Which fills a father's eyes with light. Letter to Southey. 
 1' In H. 1816 there is a direction (not in S.T.C.'s handwriting) to print line 
 664 as two lines. 
 
 ^ In words of wrong and bitterness. Letter to Southey. 
 
APPENDICES 
 
APPENDIX I 
 
 REVIEWS AND NOTICES OF CHRISTABEL 
 
 I. Gentleman's Magazine, March, 1816. Vol. Ixxxvi, p. 242. 
 
 [On Lord Byron's Note to the Siege of Corinth, in which 
 he defends himself from a possible charge of plagiarism from 
 Christabel.] 
 
 II. The Monthly Literary Advertiser, May, 1816. p. 34. 
 
 Printed for John Murray, 50 Albemarle Street. 
 I. Coleridge's Christabel, 8"". 45. dd. sewed. 
 Christabel : etc.— By S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 
 ' That wild and singularly original and beautiful poem.' — 
 
 Lord Byron. 
 
 III. The Champion, May 26, 1816. 
 
 'One friend suggests that the whole is a mere hoax. . . . 
 Another thinks it is the result of a wager on the digestive 
 capabilities of the public taste ; and a third declares that the poem 
 has just the same effect on his temper as if a man were to salute 
 him in the street with a box on the ear and walk away.' 
 
 ^ IV. Critical Review, May, 1816. S. v., vol. iii, pp. 504-10. cA-'il. -^€4 
 'We apprehend that the most fastidious would find much 
 more to praise than to blame in this newly-published effort. . . . 
 Nothing can be better contrasted than Chf istafeeland, Geraldine— 
 both exquisite, but both different ; the first all innocence, mildness, 
 and grace, the last all dignity, grandeur, and majesty ; . . . the one 
 the gentle soul-delighting Una~ the other 'the se*eming fair but 
 infamous Duessa.' 
 
; 
 
 Nr 
 
 CHRISTABEL 
 
 J^^ 'i V. The Examiner, June 2, 1816. No. 440. 
 
 [For quotations from this review vide ante, p. 71.] 
 
 '^I. The Champion, June 9, 1816. [Review of James Hogg's 
 Mador of the Moor.] 
 ' We have now, however, poets that forcibly set before us the 
 genius of " olden times ". The names of Wordsworth, Moore, 
 Byron, Coleridge (notwithstanding his indolence and Christabet), 
 whose "Souls are like the stars that dwell apart", will throw their 
 light into the bosom of after-ages.' 
 
 [Note. — John Scott, the Editor of The Champion, was on terms 
 of friendly correspondence with Wordsworth.] 
 
 . VII. Eclectic Review, June, 1816. N. S., vol. v, pp. 565-72. 
 
 ' Our curiosity to see this long-hoarded treasure was pro- 
 portionate to the pre-eminent abilities of which its author is 
 known by his friends, we cannot say to have the command, but 
 to sustain the responsibility. . . . We cannot conceal that the 
 effect of the present publication upon readers in general will 
 be that of disappointment. . . . 
 
 ' Yet we are mistaken if this fragment, such as it is, will not 
 be found to take faster hold of the mind than many a poem 
 six cantos long.' 
 
 y VIII. The Anti-Jacobin Review, July, 1816. Vol. 1, pp. 632-6. 
 ' Had we not known Mr. Coleridge to be a man of genius 
 and of talents we should really, from the present production, 
 have been tempted to pronounce him wholly destitute of both : 
 Mr. Coleridge might have spared himself the trouble of antici- 
 pating the charge "of plagiarism or servile imitation" — it is 
 a perfectly original composition, and the like of it is not to be 
 found in the English language.' 
 
 i '' 
 
 / IX. The British Review, August, 1816. Vol. 8, pp. 64-81. 
 
 ' Mr. Coleridge is one of those poets who if we give him an 
 
 inch will be sure to take an ell : if we consent to swallow an 
 
 elf or fairy, we are soon expected not to strain at a witch ; and 
 
 if we open our throats to this imposition upon our good nature, 
 
APPENDIX I loi 
 
 we must gulp down broom-stick and all. . . . We should not be 
 much surprised if the object of the poet was to make fools of 
 the public, . . . and if it was really published on the first " of 
 the month before the month of May," we cannot altogether 
 disapprove of the pleasantry.' 
 
 / X. The Edinburgh Review, September, 1816. Art. 11, vol, xxvii, 
 pp. 58-67. 
 
 ' Upon the whole we look upon this publication as one of the 
 most notable pieces of impertinence of which the press has lately 
 been guilty. ... It is impossible, however, to dismiss it, without 
 a remark or two. The other productions of the Lake School have 
 generally exhibited talents thrown away upon subjects so mean, 
 that no power of genius could ennoble them ; or perverted and 
 rendered useless by a false theory of poetical composition. 
 But even in the worst of them, if we except the White Doe of 
 Mr. Wordsworth and some of the laureate Odes, there were 
 always some gleams of feeling or of fancy. But the thing now 
 before us is utterly destitute of value. It exhibits from beginning 
 to end not a ray of genius ; and we defy any man to point out 
 a passage of poetical merit in any of the three pieces which it 
 contains, except, perhaps, the following lines in p. 32, and even 
 these are not very brilliant ; nor is the leading thought original — 
 " Alas ! they had been friends in youth," etc. 
 
 With this one exception, there is literally not one couplet in the 
 publication before us which would be reckoned poetry, or even 
 sense, were it found in the corner of a newspaper or upon the 
 window of an inn. Must we then be doomed to hear such 
 a mixture of raving and driv'ling, extolled as the work of a " wild 
 and original" genius, simply because Mr. Coleridge has now and 
 then written fine verses, and a brother poet chooses, in his milder 
 mood, to laud him from courtesy or from interest ? And are such 
 panegyrics to be echoed by the mean tools of a political faction, 
 because they relate to one whose daily prose is understood to be 
 dedicated to the support of all that courtiers think should be 
 supported ? ' 
 
102 CHRISTABEL 
 
 ^ XI. The European Magazine, November, 1816. Vol. 70, 
 
 PP- 434-7- 
 
 ' The poem is not heroic, neither is there anything of Dryden 
 or Goldsmith in its composition : little also (though what it does 
 contain includes the worst part of both) either of Scott or Southey. 
 It is, as Lord Byron says of it, " wildly original" : his lordship 
 might have said of it, in some places, " incoherently unintel- 
 ligible". ... It has> been observed that Christabel is not so 
 censurable in itself as it is in consideration of the source from 
 which it sprang. We must honestly confess we do not under- 
 stand this. . . . 
 
 ' In fine Christabel is a composition which may be read often, 
 and in every instance with increase of pleasure. . . . The ideas 
 and incidents are for the most part natural and affecting; the 
 language and versification sweet, simple and appropriate. In our 
 opinion it carries with it the peculiarity of Sterne's writings, — it is 
 hard of imitation ; the attempt published in the Poetic Mirror 
 [by James Hogg] is a burlesque ... we here allude to the 
 " Isabelle " of that volume.' 
 
 ' XII. Monthly Review, January, 1817. Vol. Ixxxii, pp. 22-5. 
 
 ' We shall give the public one opportunity of judging of this 
 extravagant but not ingenious production : — 
 
 " Yea ! she doth smile and she doth weep — 
 For the blue sky bends over all." 
 
 This precious production is not finished, but we are to have more 
 and more of it in future ! It would be truly astonishing that such 
 rude unfashioned stuff should be tolerated, and still more that 
 it should be praised by men of genius (witness Lord Byron, and 
 some others), were we not convinced that every principle of correct 
 writing as far as poetry is concerned, has been long given up : 
 and that the observance rather than the breach of such rules is 
 considered as an incontrovertible proof of rank stupidity. It 
 is grand, in a word it is sublime, to be lawless ; and whoever 
 writes the wildest nonsense in the quickest and newest manner is 
 the popular poet of the day.' 
 
I03 
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 PARODIES AND CONTINUATIONS OF 
 CHRISTABEL 
 
 I. Christobell, A Gothic Tale. The European Magazine and London 
 
 Review. April, 1815. 
 
 II. Christabess, by S. T. Colebriiche, Esq., a right woeful Poem, 
 
 translated from the Doggerel by Sir Vinegar Sponge. 8°. 
 1816. 
 
 III. Isabelle. [By James Hogg.] Poetic Mirror. London, 1817, 
 
 pp. 215-22. 
 
 IV. Introduction to Part III of Christabel. By William Maginn. 
 
 Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, June, 1819. 
 
 V. A Parody of Christabelle. The Baron Rich. ' The Dejeune, 
 
 or Companion for the Breakfast Table,' Monday, Novem- 
 ber 6, 1820. 
 
 VI. The Dream, A Psychological Curiosity. By S. T. C. By 
 
 W. F. Deacon. Warreniana. Longmans & Co. 1824. 
 
 VII. Geraldine, A Sequel to Coleridge's Christabel. By Martin 
 Farquhar Tupper. London, Joseph Rickerby. 1838. 
 
 VIII. Christabel, continued from Coleridge. By Eliza Stewart. 
 Smallwood's Magazine, June, 1841. 
 
 Note. — For the text of these Parodies see Parodies, &c. 
 Collected and Annotated by Walter Hamilton. 1888. Vol. v, 
 pp. 127-35. 
 
I04 
 
 APPENDIX III 
 
 [European Magazine, April 1815, vol. 67, pp. 345-46.] 
 
 CHRISTOBELL. A GOTHIC TALE*^ 
 
 Whence comes the wavering light which falls 
 On Langdale's lonely chapel-walls? 
 
 * Written as a sequel to a beautiful legend of a fair lady and her father, 
 '^deceived by a witch in the guise of a noble knight's daughter. 
 
 • Christobell. A Gothic Tale was published in the European Magazine, 
 Apnl^iSiSi ttio're fhafl Ta year33efore the au^he^^^ issued from the 
 
 press. It is signed "V." "V" was a frequent contributor of feeble and 
 imitative ballad-poems (" The Bridal Eve," " Lomond's Isle," " The Warden 
 of Carlisle," &c.) to the European Magazine, in 1815, 1816, but his identity is 
 a puzzle which awaits solution. Inquiry was made in Notes and Queries (is/ 
 Series, 1853, vii. 292, and 1st Series, 1854, ix. 529), but there was no reply. 
 Whoever "V" may have been he must have possessed or have borrowed 
 a MS. of Christabel. The author o f " Reminiscen ces of Coleridge", which 
 appeared ixiJF'rciser2s~Magasmer.Q^cibgij_^^Ji^ Iviii. vol. x, pp. 379-403), 
 whffiih^arthed the lines from the European^Mjggazh^e,_a,nd republished jthem 
 in'FrascVj "in'a'iecona'artfcre Qan. 1835), maintains that the "Gothic Tale" 
 was writterT by 'Coleridge and publisFeS^anonymously that it might ' be easily" 
 su ppire^i^ if and when a ' better solution ' should be vouchsafe d to him. 
 He argues that in the Biogrdphta LitefariaJiSi']',li''2)' CbleriHge himself spells 
 ' Christabel' ' Christobel', but admits that in the " Gothic Tale", ' Geraldine ' 
 rhymes with ' mien ', &c., and not as in Christabel with ' divine '. He is 
 responsible for the following anecdote : — " A friend of ours in company with a 
 gentleman paid a visit to Coleridge to get at the facts relative to this Conclusion. 
 ' By the bye ', answered Coleridge, 'that is a curious circumstance — I'll tell 
 you all about it,' and then digressed into some other topic, upon which he 
 discoursed so fascinatingly that both himself and the questioner forgot the 
 purport of their visit and came away without the solution which they came to 
 get." AH that can be sai d is that " Christobell " (unUke other continuations ) 
 contains a few Jines_wj3ich_(Joleridge might have written, and very many 
 which he could not have written with 'or . wltHou^ any ' consciousne^. of 
 effort^., Tri "an unpSBIisIied letter to Lord Byron, dated "Calne, Wilts, Easter 
 Week ", 1815 (W. M. March 30), he explains that his " growing vines had been 
 gnawed down by asses, and his richest and rosiest clusters carried off and 
 spoilt by the plundering fox.'' The April number of the European Magazine 
 
APPENDIX III 105 
 
 The noble mother of Christobell 
 Lies in that lone and drear chapelle * ; 
 And ev'ry dawn, ere the sun has shone, 
 A tear and a flower are on that stone: 
 But the tear is dry, the flower is dead, 
 And the night-wind blows on her silent bed. 
 
 A stranger treads o'er the holy mound : 
 
 Thrice it hath breath'd a moaning sound! 
 
 He has lifted thrice his mighty wand; 
 
 He has touch'd the stone with his red right hand ; 
 
 The light which round the chapel streams. 
 
 Bright on his beard of silver gleams ; 
 
 But shines not on his muffled brow. 
 
 Which mortal eye must never know! 
 
 The noble mother of Christobell 
 
 Is wakened by the mighty spell; 
 She seems but as if a wizard's arms 
 
 Awhile had wrapp'd her in his cell ; 
 As if his cold and earthy touch 
 Had blighted her beauteous lips too much. 
 
 But now returning beauty warms 
 Her lips and her kindling cheek so well. 
 She looks like the lovely Christobell. 
 
 could not have been published, or at any rate reached Calne, by March 30, 
 but it is possible that Coleridge had received some intimation of what the 
 forthcoming issue would contain. The metaphor must have been suggested 
 by this anticipation of his unpublished Christabel. It was true that both Scott 
 and BjTon had visited and looked at his ' growing vines ', but even Coleridge 
 would hardly have backed up a plea for Byron's patronage by an insinuation 
 that his patron-designate was a ' plundering fox '- 
 
 ' The rare archaism ' chapelle ' (in line 4) is to be found in ' Wat o' the 
 Cleugh ', James Hogg's parody of Scott, which he printed in his Poetic Mirror, 
 181 7; and at least one passage in "The Gothic Tale" (post, p. iii. 11. 8-20) 
 bears a close resemblance to some lines in The Haunted Glen. (See The 
 Poetical Works of the Ettrick Shepherd, 1838, ii. 135.) It is possible that he 
 who wrote Isabelle and that most beautiful of parodies, The Cherub, which 
 Robert Browning once believed to be genuine, was the pseudonymous ' V ' of 
 the European Magazine. 
 
 Q 
 
io6 CHRISTABEL 
 
 ' Lady, lady, who ! who was she, 
 That met thy child by the old oak tree? 
 When not a breeze was heard to sigh, 
 And the yellow leaf waved not which hung so high ? 
 She who told that men of blood 
 Lured her to the lonely wood? 
 She who slept by thy daughter's side, 
 While the grey dog moan'd and the owlet cried? 
 Isthatjady, of soft and sober mien, 
 sir Roland'^ true jaughter -G^raldine-? ' 
 
 The noble mother of Christobell 
 Has open'd her dim and hollow eye, 
 
 And spirits are thronging from cave and dell 
 To listen to her lips' reply : 
 
 ' Merlin, Merlin ! I know thee well ! 
 Though a minstrel's cloak is around thee flung, 
 And a holy hood on thy brow is hung, 
 
 The dead and living obey thy spell. 
 But not till the moon has passed away, 
 And the bell has toU'd on her bridal day, 
 
 Thou wilt know the foe of Christobell.' 
 
 The grey dog howls though the moon is bright- 
 Why sits the lady alone to-night? 
 Why comes she not at her father's call, 
 While the noble stranger is in his hall? 
 
 That stranger of soft and sober mien, 
 Sir Roland's fair daughter Geraldine. 
 
 3 
 
 But Christobell's brow is cold and damp 
 As she sits alone by her silver lamp — 
 That lamp for a maiden's spousal meet, 
 Which hangs from a smiling angel's feet. 
 But who comes near, with steps so light? 
 And why is her cheek so lily-white? 
 
APPENDIX III 107 
 
 For, glist'ring in his mail of gold, 
 His azure scarf around him roll'd, 
 She sees her own true knight. 
 
 ' Christobell, my task is done ! 
 
 Christobell, my prize is won ! 
 The stars are smiling, the moon is bright. 
 The bell of our spousal shall toll to-night! 
 
 She does not smile, she does not weep ; 
 Her cheek is like the parting snow 
 When early roses bud below. 
 
 But scarce a blush of crimson keep : 
 Yet she has taken her lover's kiss. 
 And the touch of her melting hand is his. 
 
 But another eye is on her face, 
 Another form beside her stands — 
 That form so ghostly, lean, and tall. 
 Is it Bracy, the bard of Langdale Hall? 
 He has touch'd the lamp in its silver vase. 
 And it brighter burns than a thousand brands; 
 He calls on saints in their holy place 
 The spousal of Christobell to grace, 
 Then joins the plighted lovers' hands. 
 
 ' Now follow me, Christobell, with speed ! 
 I go at thy lordly father's call, 
 To strike the harp in his ancient hall. 
 But thou the mirthful dance shall lead ; 
 Thy own true knight shall be near thy side, 
 And the matin-bell shall proclaim a bride.' 
 
 They follow ; but whence is the taper's glare. 
 That leads them down the lonely stair? 
 They look his shadowy face upon — 
 They look, but his silver beard is gone : 
 
io8 CHRISTABEL 
 
 His cloak is changed to an azure dye, 
 And a mirthful gleam is in his eye. 
 But Christobell's cheek is cold and pale, 
 For she sees not her lover's shining mail; 
 He seems but a stripling soft and young, 
 With a minstrel's harp behind him slung. 
 
 With mutter'd words of grammarye 
 
 The bard stalks foremost of the three ; 
 
 At ev'ry soundless stride he takes, 
 
 The base of Langdale's mountain shakes; 
 
 The elf-dog starts as he passes by. 
 
 But closes again his shrinking eye; 
 
 The banner falls from the castle wall 
 
 As he strikes the porch of its blazing hall! 
 
 Lord Leoline sat in chair of pride, 
 The white-armed stranger by his side — 
 O bright was the glance she gave to view, 
 When back her amaranth locks she threw! 
 It was like the moon's on the fountain brim 
 When the amber clouds around her skim; 
 The rubies that on her bosom flamed 
 Seem'd of her richer lips ashamed : 
 There never was lovely lady seen 
 Like the stranger-guest, fair Geraldine. 
 
 ' Now welcome, welcome Bracy the Bard ! 
 Welcome the rites of song to guard ! 
 Sit and waken thy warbling string. 
 The legend of love and beauty sing. 
 Well hast thou sped since noontide's hour. 
 If thou comest from good Sir Roland's tower. 
 ' Sir Roland greets thee, Lord Leoline ! 
 He greets thee first for his Geraldine: 
 
APPENDIX III 109 
 
 His heart thy bounty and love receives, 
 Like dew that drops upon wither'd leaves. 
 vBut he askg one pledge thy faith to prove, 
 JHe asks for his son thy daughter's love; 
 And he sends this goblet of crysolite 
 To grace their feast on the bridal night.' 
 Lord Leoline from his feast rose up, 
 And fiU'd to the brim the shining cup: 
 He waved it high with gesture bland, 
 Then gave it to Geraldine's lily hand ; 
 But the crysolite changed as she touch'd its brim, 
 And the gem on its sapphire edge grew dim — 
 The lamps are quench'd in their sockets of gold. 
 The hour is past, and the bell has toWd! 
 
 Lord Leoline's hall again is bright 
 
 With a thousand lamps of golden liglit ; 
 
 And roses, by fairy fingers tied. 
 
 The banners and shields of knighthood hide ; 
 
 While over the roof and over the ■vyalls 
 
 A curtain of painted vapour falls : 
 
 Now pillars of jasper seem to grow 
 
 From the green bright emerald floor below. 
 
 With garlands of rubies bound. 
 The sky is purple with meteor fires — 
 A thousand tongues and a thousand lyres. 
 
 Through the lone chapelle resound. 
 
 Where is the white-hair'd bard who spoke 
 With voice so meek, in his azure cloak! 
 The sage of eternal might is there, 
 A meteor wreath'd in his ebon hair; 
 And there, in his youthful beauty's pride, 
 The heir of Sir Roland is by his side. 
 
 Where is she, with eyes so fair. 
 
 Who sat and smiled by the baron's chair? 
 
no CHRISTABEL 
 
 There sits a dame of royal mien, 
 But her lips are pearly, her locks are green ; 
 The eider-down hides her speckled breast. 
 The fangs of the sea-wolf clasp her vest ; 
 And those orbs, once bluer than western skies, 
 Are shrunk to the rings of a serpent's eyes. 
 ' Witch of the lake ! I know thee now, 
 
 Thrice three hundred years are gone, 
 Since beneath my cave. 
 In the western wave, 
 
 I doom'd thee to rue and weep alone, 
 And writ thy shame on thy breast and brow. 
 
 ' But thou and thy envious fiends in vain 
 Have risen to mock my power again: 
 
 The spell which in thy bosom worketh 
 No holy virgin's lips can stain; 
 
 The spell that in thy false eye lurketh, 
 But for an hour can truth enchain. 
 Not ev'n thy serpent eye could keep 
 Its ire near guiltless Beauty's sleep; 
 The Spirit of Evil could not dare 
 To look on heav'n — for heaven is there. 
 
 Thy hour is past — thy spells I sever ; 
 
 Witch of the lake, descend for ever I ' 
 
 March, 1815. 
 
 V.' 
 
Ill 
 
 APPENDIX IV 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 
 
 I. Christabeh/Kubla Khan, /A Vision ;/The Pains of Sleep./ 
 
 By/S. T. Coleridge, Esq. / London :/ Printed For John 
 Murray, Albemarle-Street, / By William Bulmer and Co. 
 Cleveland-Row, /St. James's. /1816. / [8°. 
 
 Collation. — Half-title, one leaf [Christabel, etc. in Gothic charac- 
 ters], pp. i, ii; Title, one leaf, pp. iii, iv; Preface, pp. [v]-vii; Second 
 half-title [Christabel. Part I.], pp. [i, 2] ; Text, pp. [31-48. ' Kubla 
 Khan:/or/A Vision in a Dream.': Half-title, one leaf, pp. [49-50]; 
 'Of the /Fragment of Kubla Khan.'; pp. [5i]-54: Text, pp. [55]-58; 
 ' The Pains of Sleep.' : Half-title, pp. [59-60] ; Text, pp. 61-64 » 
 The imprint, London: Printed by W. Bulmer and Co. /Cleveland- 
 row, St. James's./is at the foot of p. 64. 
 
 Note. — The 'pamphlet' (1816), was issued ' price 4s. 6d. sewed'. 
 The cover was of brown paper. It measured 85 x 5I inches. 
 
 II. Christabel, /etc/By /S. T. Coleridge, Esq. /Second Edition./ 
 
 London : / Printed For John Murray, Albemarle-Street, / 
 By William Bulmer and Co. Cleveland-Row, / St. James's. / 
 1816. / [8». 
 
 Collation is identical with that of First Edition. 
 
 Note. — The half-title, Christabel, in Gothic characters, 
 
 III. Christabel, /etc. /By/S. T. Coleridge, Esq./Third Edition./ 
 
 London : / Printed For John Murray, Albemarle-Street, / 
 
 By William Bulmer and Co. Cleveland-Row, /St. James's./ 
 
 1816./ [8». 
 
 Collation is identical with that of First Edition. Half-title as in 
 
 No, II. 
 
 IV. The /Poetical Works /of/ S. T. Coleridge, / Including the 
 
 Dramas of / Wallenstein, Remorse, and Zapolya, / In 
 
112 CHRISTABEL 
 
 Three Volumes. / Vol. I. / London : / William Pickering. / 
 
 M DCCC XXVIII. / [8°, 
 
 Collation. — Vol. ii, pp. [i]-37o ; Half-title [Christabel], pp. [39- 
 40] ; Preface, pp. [4i]-42 ; Text, pp. [43]-74. 
 
 Note. — The title-page is ornamented with a wreath of oak and 
 bay leaves intertwined. 
 
 V. The /Poetical Works/ of/ S. T. Coleridge, /Including the 
 
 Dramas of / Wallenstein, Remorse, and Zapolya./In Three 
 Volumes. / Vol. I. / London : / William Pickering. / 
 
 M DCCC XXIX. / [8". 
 
 Collation.— Vol. ii, pp. [i]-394. Half-title, etc., identical with 
 No. IV. 
 
 Note. — The title-page of this edition is ornamented with the 
 Aldine device, and the motto Aldi/Discip./Anglvs./ 
 
 VI. The Poetical Works of/ S. T. Coleridge / Vol. I. / London. / 
 
 William Pickering / 1834 / [8°. 
 
 Collation. — Vol. ii, pp. [v]-vi ; [i]-338. Preface and Text of 
 Christabel, pp. 28-54. 
 
 Note. — The title-page of this edition is ornamented with the 
 Aldine device and motto as given in No. V. 
 
 VII. The Poems / Of/ Samuel Taylor Coleridge. / Edited by / 
 Derwent and Sara Coleridge. /A New Edition. / London ; / 
 Edward Moxon, Dover Street. / 1852. / 
 
 Collation. — Preface and Text of Christabel, pp. 118-42. 
 
 VIII. The Poetical And Dramatic /Works Of Samuel Tay-/ Lor 
 Coleridge/ Founded On The Author's Latest Edition Of/ 
 1834 With Many Additional Pieces Now/ First Included 
 And With A CoUec- / Tion Of Various Readings / Volume 
 The First / London / Basil Montagu Pickering / 196 Picca- 
 dilly/1877/ [8°, 
 
 Collation.— Vol. ii, pp. [v]-xii. [i]-38i. Preface and Text of 
 Christabel, pp. [6i]-9o. 
 
APPENDIX IV 113 
 
 Note.— The title-page of this edition is ornamented with the 
 Aldine device and motto as given in No. V. 
 
 IX. The / Poetical Works / Of / Samuel Taylor Coleridge / 
 
 Edited / With a Biographical Introduction / By / James 
 Dykes Campbell / London /Macmillan and Co. /and New 
 York / 1893 /AH rights reserved / 
 
 Collation.— ^^. [vii]-cxxiv. (i)-667. Text of Christabel, pp. 116- 
 24. Note [on Christabel by James Dykes Campbell], pp. 601-7. 
 
 X. Christabel . / By . / Samuel . /Taylor . / Coleridge . / Illus- 
 
 trated/. By./C. M. Watts./. London: Published at . Aldine/. 
 House . 29 . & . 30 . Bedford Street . / - Covent , Garden . 
 
 W.C. M CM IV . / 
 
 Collation. — Half-title, The Illustrated English Poems / Edited 
 by Ernest Rhys /Christabel /pp. [2-4]; Title [pp. 5,6]; Reverse, 
 Printed by Ballanfyne, Hanson &» Co. /At the Ballantyne Press/; 
 List of illustrations, pp. [7, 8] ; Christabel, [Preface by Ernest 
 Rhys], pp. 9-23 ; Text, pp. 25-[84] ; The imprint, Printed by 
 Ballantyne, Hanson Sr^ Co. / . Edinburgh and London /, is at the 
 foot of page [84]. 
 
 XI. Christabel, Kubla Khan, / Fancy In Nubibus, And Song / 
 
 From Zapolya. / By Samuel Taylor Coleridge. / 
 
 Collation. — pp. (i)-(44). Preface and Text of Christabel, 
 pp. (i)-32- 
 
 Colophon : The Frontispiece Has Been De/signed & Engraved 
 On The Wood / By L. Pissarro : The Border & / Initial Letters 
 Were Designed / By L. Pissarro & Engraved By E. / Pissarro. 
 The Book Has Been /Printed By Them At Their /Eragny Press, 
 The / Brook, Hammer-/Smith, & Fin-/ished In / Octo-/Ber, 
 / 1904. ; p. [43]. The imprint. Sold By The Eragny / Press, 
 London, /And /John Lane, New York. / is at the foot of p. [43]. 
 
OXFORD : HORACE HAkT 
 PRINTER to THE USiIVERSltV