old age;
Dishonour'd by his only child;
And all his hospitality
To th' insulted daughter of his friend
By more than woman's jealousy,
Brought thus to a disgraceful end.--'

Nothing further is said to explain the mystery; but there follows
incontinently, what is termed '_The conclusion of Part the Second_.' And
as we are pretty confident that Mr Coleridge holds this passage in the
highest estimation; that he prizes it more than any other part of 'that
wild, and singularly original and beautiful poem Christabel,' excepting
always the two passages touching the 'toothless mastiff bitch;' we shall
extract it for the amazement of our readers--premising our own frank
avowal that we are wholly unable to divine the meaning of any portion of
it.

'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
As fills a father's eyes with light;
And pleasures flow in so thick and fast
Upon his heart, that he at last
Must needs express his love's excess
With words of unmeant bitterness.
Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together
Thoughts so all unlike each other;
To mutter and mock a broken charm,
To dally with wrong that does no harm
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.'

Hence 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 an