st literary notebook:--

"In August 1838 I was at Dover, and from a library read for the first
time Coleridge's Christabel;" it was the original edition, before the
author's afterward improvements. "Being much taken with the poem, the
thought struck me to continue it to a probable issue, especially as I
wanted a leading subject for a new volume of miscellaneous verse. The
notion was barren till I got to Heine Bay a fortnight after, and then I
put pen to paper and finished the tale. It occupied me about eight days,
an innocent fact which divers dull Zoili have been much offended withal,
seeing that Coleridge had thought proper to bring out his two Parts at a
sixteen years' interval; a matter doubtless attributable either to
accident or indolence,--for to imagine that he was diligently polishing
his verses the whole time (as some blockheads will have it) would indeed
be a verification of the _parturiunt montes_ theory. The fact is, these
things are done at a heat, as every poet knows. Pegasus is a racer, not
a cart-horse; Euterpe trips it like the hare, while dogged criticism is
the tortoise, &c." The book had a fair success, both here and in
America, and has been many times reprinted. Critiques of course were
various, for and against; the shuttlecock of fame requires conflicting
battledores: but, as I now again quote from that early notebook, "It is
amusing to notice, and instructive also to any young author who may
chance to see this, how thoroughly opposite many of the reviews are,
some extolling what others vilify; it just tends to keep a sensible man
of his own opinion, unmoved by such seemingly unreasonable praise or
censure. When Coleridge first published Christabel (intrinsically a most
melodious and sweet performance) it was positively hooted by the
critics; see in particular the _Edinburgh Review_. Coleridge left behind
him a very much improved and enlarged version of the poem, which I did
not see till years after I had written the sequel to it: my Geraldine
was composed for an addition to Christabel, as originally issued."
Another note of mine, in reply to a critic of _The Atlas_, runs
thus:--"Nobody who has not tried it can imagine the difficulties of
intellectual imitation: it is to think with another's mind, to speak
with another's tongue: I acknowledge freely that I never was satisfied
with Geraldine as a mere continuation of a story, but as an independent
poem, I will yet be the champion of my child, and th