'To call up him who left half told
The story of Cambuscam bold.'"
Since writing the preceding pages, I have met with a critique on the Christabel, written immediately after it was published, from which I select a few passages, in the hope that they may further interest the admirers of this poem:
"The publication of Christabel cannot be an indifferent circumstance to any true lover of poetry — it is a singular monument of genius, and we doubt whether the fragmental beauty that it now possesses can be advantageously exchanged for the wholeness of a finished narrative. In its present form it lays irresistible hold of the imagination. It interests even by what it leaves untold. — The story is like a dream of lovely forms, mixed with strange and indescribable terrors. The scene, the personages, are those of old romantic superstition; but we feel intimate with them, as if they were of our own day, and of our own neighbourhood. It is impossible not to suppose that we have known "sweet Christabel," from the time when she was "a fairy thing, with red round cheeks," till she had grown up, through all the engaging prettinesses of childhood, and the increasing charms of youth, to be the pure and dignified creature, which we find her at the opening of the poem. The scene is laid at midnight, in the yet leafless wood, a furlong from the castle-gate of the rich Baron Sir Leoline, whose daughter, "the lovely Lady Christabel," has come, in consequence of a vow, to pray at the old oak tree, "for the weal of her lover that's far away." In the midst of her orisons she is suddenly alarmed by a moaning near her, which turns out to be the complaint of the Lady Geraldine, who relates, that she had been carried off by warriors, and brought to this wild wood, where they had left her with intent quickly to return. This story of Geraldine's easily obtains credence from the unsuspecting Christabel, who conducts her secretly to a chamber in the castle. There the mild and beautiful Geraldine seems transformed in language and appearance to a sorceress, contending with the spirit of Christabel's deceased mother for the mastery over her daughter; but Christabel's lips are sealed by a spell. What she knows she cannot utter; and scarcely can she herself believe that she knows it.
On the return of morning, Geraldine, in all her pristine beauty, accompanies the innocent but perplexed Christabel to the presence of the Baron, who is delighted when he learns that she is the daughter of his once loved friend, Sir Roland de Vaux, of Tryermaine. — We shall not pursue the distress of Christabel, the mysterious warnings of Bracy the Bard, the assumed sorrow of Geraldine, or the indignation of Sir Leoline, at his daughter's seemingly causeless jealousy — what we have principally to remark with respect to the tale is, that, wild and romantic and visionary as it is, it has a truth of its own, which seizes on and masters the imagination from the beginning to the end. The poet unveils with exquisite skill the finer ties of imagination and feeling by which they are linked to the human heart.
The elements of our sensibility, to all that concerns fair Christabel, are of the purest texture; they are not formally announced in a set description, but they accompany and mark her every movement throughout the piece — Incessu patuit Dea. — She is the support of her noble father's declining age — sanctified by the blessing of her departed mother — the beloved of a valorous and absent knight — the delight and admiration of an inspired bard — she is a being made up of tenderness, affection, sweetness, piety! There is a fine discrimination in the descriptions of Christabel and Geraldine, between the lovely and the merely beautiful. There is a moral sensitiveness about Christabel, which none but a true poet could seize. It would be difficult to find a more delicate touch of this kind in any writer, than her anxious exclamation when, in passing the hall with Geraldine, a gleam bursts from the dying embers.
Next in point of merit to the power which Mr. Coleridge has displayed, in interesting us by the moral beauty of his heroine, comes the skill with which he has wrought the feelings and fictions of superstition into shape. The witchlike Geraldine lying down by the side of Christabel, and uttering the spell over her, makes the reader thrill with indefinable horror.
[We] find another striking excellence of this poem, and which powerfully affects every reader, by placing, as it were before his eyes, a distinct picture of the events narrated, with all their appendages of sight and sound — the dim forest — the massive castle-gate — the angry moan of the sleeping mastiff — the sudden flash of the dying embers — the echoing hall — the carved chamber, with its curious lamp — in short, all that enriches and adorns this tale, with a luxuriance of imagination seldom equalled."[7]
Whilst in the full enjoyment of his creative powers, Coleridge wrote in a letter to a friend the following critique on the
Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni,
which is supposed to have been composed about the time of the
Christabel
, though not published till 1816, in the
Sibylline Leaves
. It will serve to shew how freely he assented to the opinions of his friends, and with what candour he criticised his own poems, recording his opinions whether of censure or of praise:—