Perhaps ’tis tender too, and pretty,
At each wild word to feel within
A sweet recoil of love and pity.
And what if in a world of sin
(O sorrow and shame should this be true!)
Such giddiness of heart and brain
Comes seldom save from rage and pain,
So talks as it’s most used to do.”
‘Here endeth the Second Part, and, in truth, the “singular” poem itself; for the author has not yet written, or, as he phrases it, “embodied in verse,” the “three parts yet to come;”—though he trusts he shall be able to do so “in the course of the present year.”
‘One word as to the metre of Christabel, or, as Mr. Coleridge terms it, “the Christabel”—happily enough; for indeed we doubt if the peculiar force of the definite article was ever more strongly exemplified. He says, that though the reader may fancy there prevails a great irregularity in the metre, some lines being of four, others of twelve syllables, yet in reality it is quite regular; only that it is “founded on a new principle, namely, that of counting in each line the accents, not the syllables.” We say nothing of the monstrous assurance of any man coming forward coolly at this time of day, and telling the readers of English poetry, whose ear has been tuned to the lays of Spenser, Milton, Dryden, and Pope, that he makes his metre “on a new principle!” but we utterly deny the truth of the assertion, and defy him to show us any principle upon which his lines can be conceived to tally. We give two or three specimens, to confound at once this miserable piece of coxcombry and shuffling. Let our “wild, and singularly original and beautiful” author, show us how these lines agree either in number of accents or of feet.