350-360. Langdale Pike and Dungeon-Ghyll both appear by name in Wordsworth's poems. The mountain-echoes Wordsworth delighted to notice, and he celebrates them more cheerily than does Coleridge, in his lines Joanna's Laugh. 407. Tryermaine: Scott used the same word in The Bridal of Triermain in 1813. 408. Coleridge called this passage "the best and sweetest lines I ever wrote." Some think Southey was in Coleridge's mind, others suggest other friends. The lines take us out of fairyland into the common light of everyday tenderness and pain. Byron imitated this passage, Childe Harold, Canto III., st. 94. 459. The snake suggestion runs through the poem in connection with Geraldine. It recalls the frequent use in fiction (Cf. Dr. Rappacini's Daughter, Hawthorne, and Elsie Venner, Oliver Wendell Holmes) of the motif of a fair girl poisoned by venom. In mediæval romance there is a serpent maiden under a spell (as in the Middle English poem, Sir Libeaus Desconnus). Bracy's dream, line 530, helps the suggestion and leads to line 583, where it is given most clearly. 463. The touch, the sight: In the manuscript this line read: "The pang, the sight, was passed away." Probably Coleridge changed it not to have the line resemble too closely one in the Ancient Mariner, Part VI.: "The pang, the curse with which they died 475-6. Swinburne says that Christabel is the loveliest of Coleridge's poems, "for simple charm of inner and outer sweetness. The very terror and mystery of magical evil is imbued with this sweetness. The witch has no less of it than the maiden." 582. When The Lay of the Last Minstrel appeared, Southey wrote to Wynn, March 5, 1805: "The beginning of the story is too like Coleridge's Christobell, which he (Scott) had seen; the very line "Jesu Maria, shield her well!" is caught from it. . . I do not think [he copied anything] designedly, but the echo was in his ear, not for emulation, but propter amorem. This only refers to the beginning." CONCLUSION TO PART II. These lines were probably not originally meant for Christabel. They were sent in a letter to Southey in May, 1801, and were probably written about that time, and referred to Coleridge's exquisite little son Hartley. They do not seem to have much connection with the poem except that they present the relation of parent and child. In Gilman's Life of Coleridge we are told that the poet on one occasion suggested the following scheme for the conclusion of the poem. Too much stress should not be placed on it: "The following relation was to have occupied a third and fourth canto, and to have closed the tale. Over the mountains, the Bard, as directed by Sir Leoline, 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 discoveredthe edifice itself being washed away. He determines to return. Geraldine being acquainted with all that is passing, like the weird sisters in Macbeth, vanishes. Reappearing, however, she awaits the return of the Bard, exciting in the meantime, by her wily arts, all the anger she could rouse in the Baron's breast, as well as that jealousy of which he is described to have been susceptible. The old Bard and the youth at length arrive, and 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. distressing to Christabel, who feels, gust for her once favored knight. to the Baron, who has no more conception than herself of the supernatural transformation. 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 produces 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." Now ensues a courtship most she knows not why, great disThis coldness is very painful The hint dropped by Coleridge, mentioned in the Introduction, was to different effect. Probably his plan wavered in his mind. Introduction. sweeter song. KUBLA KHAN. NOTES. ἄμριον ἄριον ἄσω: Tomorrow I shall sing a Line 1. The following must be the passage to which Coleridge alludes: "In Xamdu did Cublai Can build a stately Palace, encompassing sixteene miles of plaine ground with a wall, wherein are fertile Meddowes, pleasant Springs, delightful streames, and all sorts of beasts of chase and game, and in the middest thereof a sumptuous house of pleasure." Purchas his Pilgrimage: Lond. fol. 1626, Bk. iv. chap. xiii., p. 418. Then all the charm, seq. These lines are from Coleridge's poem The Picture; or the Lover's Resolution. GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON. I. Byron was born in 1788, a year before the Bastille was taken. He died in 1824, nine years after the battle of Waterloo. His life thus covered that period of political storms and unrest spiritual and social which inaugurated the period we live in. Goldsmith and Gray represent a restrained epoch that "studied to be quiet," and offered few incentives to poetry. Byron's brief life was passed in an age which, perhaps on account of its outer excitements, proved a mighty nursing mother to poets. Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey were from fifteen to twenty years his senior; Shelley and Keats were a few years younger. Among these men of genius, Byron expressed most clearly, if not most deeply, the passions of contemporary Europe. "It is he," says the Danish critic Georg Brandes, "who sets the final and decisive stamp on the poetic literature of the age." Byron has well been called "a revolutionary aristocrat." He was of an ancient line; several of his predecessors had led violent and disorderly lives. The child was born lame, and although he was always of remarkable personal beauty, this defect embittered his whole life. His mother, a woman of ungoverned passions, alternately petted and abused him. She encouraged him in pride of rank; when the little boy was told that he had succeeded to a title, he was so moved |