Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

by Sir Hall Caine

I imagine the “Sir Vinegar Sponge” who translated “Christabess from the Doggerel” must belong to the family of Sponges described by Coleridge himself, who give out the liquid they take in much dirtier than they imbibe it. I thought it very possible that Coleridge’s epigram to this effect might have been provoked by the lampoon referred to, and Rossetti also thought this probable. Immediately after meeting with the continuation of Christabel already referred to, I came across great numbers of such continuations, as well as satires, parodies, reviews, etc., in old issues of Blackwood, The Quarterly, and The Examiner. They seemed to me, for the most part, poor in quality—the highest reach of comicality to which they attained being concerned with side slaps at Kubla Khan:

Better poetry I make
When asleep than when awake.
Am I sure, or am I guessing?
Are my eyes like those of Lessing?

This latter elegant couplet was expected to serve as a scorching satire on a letter in the Biographia Literaria in which Coleridge says he saw a portrait of Lessing at Klopstock’s, in which the eyes seemed singularly like his own. The time has gone by when that flight of egotism on Coleridge’s part seemed an unpardonable offence, and to our more modern judgment it scarcely seems necessary that the author of Christabel should be charged with a desire to look radiant in the glory reflected by an accidental personal resemblance to the author of Laokoon. Curiously enough I found evidence of the Patmore version of Coleridge’s intentions as to the ultimate disclosure of the sex of Géraldine in a review in the Examiner. The author was perhaps Hazlitt, but more probably the editor himself, but whether Hazlitt or Hunt, he must have been within the circle that found its rallying point at Highgate, and consequently acquainted with the earliest forms of the poem. The review is an unfavourable one, and Coleridge is told in it that he is the dog-in-the-manger of literature, and that his poem is proof of the fact that he can write better nonsense poetry than any man in England. The writer is particularly wroth with what he considers the wilful indefiniteness of the author, and in proof of a charge of a desire not to let the public into the secret of the poem, and of a conscious endeavour to mystify the reader, he deliberately accuses Coleridge of omitting one line of the poem as it was written, which, if printed, would have proved conclusively that Géraldine had seduced Christabel after getting drunk with her,—for such sequel is implied if not openly stated. I told Rossetti of this brutality of criticism, and he replied:

As for the passage in Christabel, I am not sure we quite
understand each other. What I heard through the Patmores (a
complete mistake I am sure), was that Coleridge meant
Géraldine to prove to be a man bent on the seduction of
Christabel, and presumably effecting it. What I inferred (if
so) was that Coleridge had intended the line as in first
ed.: “And she is to sleep with Christabel!” as leading up
too nearly to what he meant to keep back for the present.
But the whole thing was a figment.

What is assuredly not a figment is, that an idea, such as the elder Patmore referred to, really did exist in the minds of Coleridge’s so-called friends, who after praising the poem beyond measure whilst it was in manuscript, abused it beyond reason or decency when it was printed. My settled conviction is that the Examiner criticism, and not the sudden advent of the idea after the first part was written, was the cause of Coleridge’s adopting the correction which Rossetti mentions.

Rossetti called my attention to a letter by Lamb, about which he gathered a good deal of interesting conjecture:

There is (given in Cottle) an inconceivably sarcastic,
galling, and admirable letter from Lamb to Coleridge,
regarding which I never could learn how the deuce their
friendship recovered from it. Cottle says the only reason he
could ever trace for its being written lay in the three
parodied sonnets (one being The House that Jack Built)
which Coleridge published as a skit on the joint volume
brought out by himself, Lamb, and Lloyd. The whole thing was
always a mystery to me. But I have thought that the passage
on division between friends was not improbably written by
Coleridge on this occasion. Curiously enough (if so) Lamb,
who is said to have objected greatly to the idea of a second
part of Christabel, thought (on seeing it) that the
mistake was redeemed by this very passage. He may have
traced its meaning, though, of course, its beauty alone was
enough to make him say so.

The three satirical sonnets which Rossetti refers to appear not only in Cottle but in a note to the Biographia Literaria They were published first under a fictitious name in he Monthly Magazine They must be understood as almost wholly satirical of three distinct facets of Coleridge’s own manner, for even the sonnet in which occur the words

Eve saddens into night, {*}

has its counterpart in The Songs of the Pixies—