NOTE ON COLERIDGE'S CHRISTABEL.
Should the English language ever become after the lapse of years a dead language, it is a curious question, whether the works of our poets and prose writers would present such difficulties to students at that remote period, as the pages of the Greek and Roman authors present to ourselves. Our text, it is to be hoped, would not prove so corrupt as theirs, or afford so much scope to the ingenuity of scholars; but the lax phraseology now in vogue would amply supply its place. As to downright inherent obscurity, I think it is not at all clear that we are a whit behind the ancients. More than one, even of our living poets, would require a Delphin interpretation. As a fair sample of what English poetry is able to offer in the way of difficulty, I would refer to the "conclusion" of Coleridge's unfinished poem of Christabel.
The few lines, of which this conclusion consists, form an unquestionably difficult passage. How many persons, and they of no mean abilities, read it over and over again, and, after all, confess they can make nothing of it! How many are there, who have come to regard it in the light of a quaint enigma, and "give it up!" The passage certainly seems to possess one property of the enigma, inasmuch as it requires a key to elucidate it; but, as soon as this is obtained it becomes not only perfectly plain, but, I think, forces an acknowledgment from the reader, that it could hardly have been more clearly or more justly expressed.
To say that this conclusion is the most beautiful and the most valuable portion of the poem of Christabel, may appear to savour a little of extravagance; still, I cannot but think that it is, and that the author intended to convey by it far more than is usually contained in the common-place "moral." In support of this opinion I will briefly discuss these two-and-twenty lines.
Of the first six lines I will only remark, where shall we find, in the whole range of English poetry, a more exquisite picture than is here contained in this small compass?
"A little child, a limber elf,
Singing, dancing to itself,
A fairy thing with red round cheeks,
That always finds, and never seeks,
Makes such a vision to the sight,