That the parody is no better is to be regretted, its insertion here is excusable simply because of its scarcity, for although the editor of The Dejeuné admits that it had already been printed, he does not mention where, nor has any other copy of it ever come under our notice.
The European Magazine and London Review for April, 1815, contained a poem entitled “Christobell, a Gothic tale,” which was simply a conclusion to Coleridge’s Christabel, although that fact was somewhat artfully veiled in a foot note, which stated “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.”
It was somewhat ungenerous to steal Coleridge’s metre and plot upon which to found a poem, without mentioning the name of the originator. This sequel is anonymous, in it Geraldine is finally discovered to be a witch of the Lake, and Merlin thus addresses her:—
“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.”