He lifted his head, and he looked on the sea,

But it was unrippled as glass may be;

He looked on the long grass-it waved not a blade;
How was that gentle sound conveyed?

He looked to the banners-each flag lay still,
So did the leaves on Citharon's hill,

plagiarism, by explaining that lines 521-532 of stanza xix. were written before he heard Walter Scott repeat Christabel in the preceding June. Now, as Byron himself perceived, perhaps for the first time, when he had the MS. of Christabel before him, the coincidence in language and style between the two passages is unquestionable; and, as he hoped and expected that Coleridge's fragment, when completed, would issue from the press, he was anxious to avoid even the semblance of pilfering, and went so far as to suggest that the passage should be cancelled. Neither in the private letter nor the published note does Byron attempt to deny or explain away the coincidence, but pleads that his lines were written before he had heard Coleridge's poem recited, and that he had not been guilty of a "wilful plagiarism." There is no difficulty in accepting his statement. Long before the summer of 1815 Christabel "had a pretty general circulation in the literary world" (Medwin, Conversations, 1824, p. 261), and he may have heard without heeding this and other passages quoted by privileged readers; or, though never a line of Christabel had sounded in his ears, he may (as Kölbing points out) have caught its lilt at second hand from the published works of Southey, or of Scott himself.

Compare Thalaba the Destroyer, v. 20 (1838, iv. 187)—

"What sound is borne on the wind?

Is it the storm that shakes

The thousand oaks of the forest?

Dashed down some rocky descent?" etc.

Or compare The Lay of the Last Minstrel, I. xii. 5, seq. (1812, P. 24)

"And now she sits in secret bower

In old Lord David's western tower,
And listens to a heavy sound,

That moans the mossy turrets round.

Is it the roar of Teviot's tide,

That chafes against the scaur's red side?

Is it the wind that swings the oaks?

Is it the echo from the rocks?" etc.

Certain lines of Coleridge's did, no doubt, "find themselves" in the Siege of Corinth, having found their way to the younger poet's ear and fancy before the Lady of the vision was directly and formally introduced to his notice.]

ACTOR, LENOX AND

UNDATION

R