| In a note to stanza 19 of the Siege
of Corinth, Byron writes of his indebtedness to "Christabel":
|
I must here acknowledge a
close, though unintentional, resemblance in these twelve lines
[476-87] to a passage in an unpublished poem of Mr. Coleridge's,
called Christabel. It was not till after these lines were
written that I heard that wild and singularly original and beautiful
poem recited; and the MS of that production I never saw till very
recently, by the kindness of Mr. Coleridge himself, who, I hope, is
convinced that I have not been a wilful plagiarist. The original
idea undoubtedly pertains to Mr. Coleridge, whose poem
has been composed some fourteen years. Let me
conclude by a hope that he will not long delay the publication of a
production, of which I can only add my mite of approbation to the
applause of far more competent judges.(1)
|
| Although flattering in tone, Byron's
advertisement of "Christabel" proves detrimental once the
poem issues from the press. As Thomas Peacock observes in "An
Essay on Fashionable Literature" in 1818, Byron's description
of the poem as "wild and singularly
original and beautiful" proves "to be a tid-bit for the
critics, who rung the charges upon it with infinite whim."(2)
Byron's endorsement of the poem was included in an advertisement for "Christabel"
placed by Murray in Morning Chronicle on 25 May 1816. The
comments of the Edinburgh Review--thought to have been written
by William Hazlitt and William Jeffrey--are typical of contemporary
reviewers: |
The advertisement by which
this work was announced to the public, carried in its front a
recommendation from Lord Byron, who, it seems, has somewhere praised
'Christabel' as a 'wild and singularly original poem'. Great as the
noble bard's merits undoubtedly are in poetry, some of his latest
publications dispose us to distrust his authority,
where the question is what ought to meet the
public eye; and the works before us afford an additional proof, that
his judgement on such matters is not absolutely to be relied on.(3) |
