“Behold her bosom and half her side—

Hideous, deformed, and pale of hue.”

‘This line is necessary to make common sense of the first and second part. “It is the keystone that makes up the arch.”[[76]] For that reason Mr. Coleridge left it out. Now this is a greater physiological curiosity than even the fragment of Kubla Khan.

‘In parts of Christabel there is a great deal of beauty, both of thought, imagery, and versification; but the effect of the general story is dim, obscure, and visionary. It is more like a dream than a reality. The mind, in reading it, is spell-bound. The sorceress seems to act without power—Christabel to yield without resistance. The faculties are thrown into a state of metaphysical suspense and theoretical imbecility. The poet, like the witch in Spenser, is evidently

“Busied about some wicked gin.”[[77]]

But we do not foresee what he will make of it. There is something disgusting at the bottom of his subject, which is but ill glossed over by a veil of Della Cruscan sentiment and fine writing—like moon-beams playing on a charnel-house, or flowers strewed on a dead body. Mr. Coleridge’s style is essentially superficial, pretty, ornamental, and he has forced it into the service of a story which is petrific. In the midst of moonlight, and fluttering ringlets, and flitting clouds, and enchanted echoes, and airy abstractions of all sorts, there is one genuine outburst of humanity, worthy of the author, when no dream oppresses him, no spell binds him. We give the passage entire:—’

[Here follow ll. 403–430 of Christabel, beginning ‘But when he heard the lady’s tale.’]

‘Why does not Mr. Coleridge always write in this manner, that we might always read him? The description of the Dream of Bracy the bard, is also very beautiful and full of power.

‘The conclusion of the second part of Christabel, about “the little limber elf,” is to us absolutely incomprehensible. Kubla Khan, we think, only shews that Mr. Coleridge can write better nonsense verses than any man in England. It is not a poem, but a musical composition.

“A damsel with a dulcimer