*

Is it the river's roar
Dashed down some rocky descent?" etc.

Or compare _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, I. xii. 5. _seq._ (1812, p.
24)--

"And now she sits in secret bower
In old Lord David's western tower,
And listens to a heavy sound,
That moans the mossy turrets round.
Is it the roar of Teviot's tide,
That chafes against the scaur's red side?
Is it the wind that swings the oaks?
Is it the echo from the rocks?" etc.

Certain lines of Coleridge's did, no doubt, "find themselves" in the
_Siege of Corinth_, having found their way to the younger poet's ear and
fancy before the Lady of the vision was directly and formally introduced
to his notice.]

[pt] {473}_There sate a lady young and bright_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[366] [Contemporary critics fell foul of these lines for various
reasons. The _Critical Review_ (February, 1816, vol. iii. p. 151)
remarks that "the following couplet [i.e. lines 531, 532] reminds us of
the _persiflage_ of Lewis or the pathos of a vulgar ballad;" while the
_Dublin Examiner_ (May, 1816, vol. i. p. 19) directs a double charge
against the founders of the schism and their proselyte: "If the
Cumberland _Lakers_ were not well known to be personages of the most
pious and saintly temperament, we would really have serious
apprehensions lest our noble Poet should come to any harm in consequence
of the envy which the two following lines and a great many others
through the poems, might excite by their successful rivalship of some of
the finest effects of babyism that these Gentlemen can boast."]

[pu] _He would have made it_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[pv] _She who would_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[pw] {474} _The ocean spread before their view_.--[Copy.]

[367] ["And its _thrilling_ glance, etc."--Gifford.]

[368] [Warton (_Observations en the Fairy Queen_, 1807, ii. 131),
commenting on Spenser's famous description of "Una and the Lion" (_Faery
Queene_, Book I. canto iii. stanzas 5, 6, 7), quotes the following
passage from _Seven Champions of Christendom_: "Now, Sabra, I have by
this sufficiently proved thy true virginitie: for it is the nature of a
lion, be he never so furious, not to harme the unspotted virgin, but
humbly to lay his bristled head upon a maiden's lap."

Byron, according to Leigh Hunt (_Lord Byron and some of his
Contemporaries_, 1828, i. 77), could not "see anything" in Spenser, and
was not familiar with the _Fairy Queen_; b