the dead men's eyes should
not have passed away. But this was, perhaps, too much for any pencil,
even if the artist had fully entered into the poet's idea. Indeed, it is
no subject for painting. The "Ancient Mariner" displays Mr. Coleridge's
peculiar mastery over the wild and preternatural in a brilliant manner;
but in his next poem, "Christabel," the exercise of his power in this
line is still more skilful and singular. The thing attempted in
"Christabel" is the most difficult of execution in the whole field of
romance--witchery by daylight; and the success is complete. Geraldine,
so far as she goes, is perfect. She is _sui generis_. The reader feels
the same terror and perplexity that Christabel in vain struggles to
express, and the same spell that fascinates her eyes. Who and what is
Geraldine--whence come, whither going, and what designing? What did the
poet mean to make of her? What could he have made of her? Could he have
gone on much farther without having had recourse to some of the ordinary
shifts of witch tales? Was she really the daughter of Roland de Vaux,
and would the friends have met again and embraced?...

We are not amongst those who wish to have "Christabel" finished. It
cannot be finished. The poet has spun all he could without snapping. The
theme is too fine and subtle to bear much extension. It is better as it
is, imperfect as a story, but complete as an exquisite production of the
imagination, differing in form and colour from the "Ancient Mariner,"
yet differing in effect from it only so as the same powerful faculty is
directed to the feudal or the mundane phases of the preternatural....

It has been impossible to express, in the few pages to which we are
necessarily limited, even a brief opinion upon all those pieces which
might seem to call for notice in an estimate of this author's poetical
genius. We know no writer of modern times whom it would not be easier to
characterize in one page than Coleridge in two. The volumes before us
contain so many integral efforts of imagination, that a distinct notice
of each is indispensable, if we would form a just conclusion upon the
total powers of the man. Wordsworth, Scott, Moore, Byron, Southey, are
incomparably more uniform in the direction of their poetic mind. But if
you look over these volumes for indications of their author's poetic
powers, you find him appearing in at least half a dozen shapes, so
different from each other, that it is in vain to at