own indolence to blame. The dates are mentioned for the exclusive purpose of precluding charges of plagiarism or servile imitation from myself. For there is amongst us a set of critics who seem to hold that every possible thought and image is traditional; who have no notion that there are such things as fountains in the world, small as well as great; and who would therefore charitably derive every rill they behold flowing, from a perforation made in some other man's tank. I am confident, however, that as far as the present poem is concerned, the celebrated poets whose writings I might be suspected of having imitated, either in particular passages or in the tone and spirit of the whole, would be among the first to vindicate me from the charge, and who, on any striking coincidence, would permit me to address them in this doggrel version of two monkish Latin hexameters: """Tis mine and it is likewise yours; But an' if this will not do, Let it be mine, good friend, for I Am the poorer of the two."" Mr. Thomas Ashe, in the "Aldine Edition" of Coleridge, says, "There is little doubt that Christabel suggested to Scott the series of poem-tales which became so famous. He wrote the first canto of the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' in 1802. (The poem was printed in 1805.) The first part, at least, of Christabel had been long circulating in manuscript at that date. Byron's poems, of the same kind, followed a few years later." 8 Coleridge, says Thomas Ashe (Aldine Edition), is mocking us. He had, we can imagine, been interrupted by his little son Hartley, four years old, and had scolded him, when he wrote these lines. Then he calmly sets them down as "the conclusion to Part II." We may well say, with himself "Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other."" BRADBURY, AGNEW, & co. LD., LONDON AND TONBRIDGE. |