the name out of the incidents of the opening passages of the poem.
The beautiful thing, not more from its beauty than its suggestiveness,
suited his purpose exactly. Rossetti replied:

Resuming the thread of my letter, I come to the question of
the name Christabel, viz.:--as to whether it is to be found
earlier than Coleridge. I have now realized afresh what I
knew long ago, viz.:--that in the grossly garbled ballad of
_Syr Cauline_, in Percy's _Reliques_, there is a Ladye
Chrystabelle, but as every stanza in which her name appears
would seem certainly to be Percy's own work, I suspect him
to be the inventor of the name, which is assuredly a much
better invention than any of the stanzas; and from this
wretched source Coleridge probably enriched the sphere of
symbolic nomenclature. However, a genuine source may turn
up, but the name does not sound to me like a real one. As to
a German origin, I do not know that language, but would not
the second syllable be there the one accented? This seems to
render the name shapeless and improbable.

I mentioned an idea that once possessed me despotically. It was that
where Coleridge says

Her silken robe and inner vest
Dropt to her feet, and full in view
Behold! her bosom and half her side--
A sight to dream of and not to tell,. . .
Shield the Lady Christabel!

he meant ultimately to show _eyes_ in the _bosom_ of the witch. I
fancied that if the poet had worked out this idea in the second part,
or in his never-compassed continuation, he must have electrified his
readers. The first part of the poem is of course immeasurably superior
in witchery to the second, despite two grand things in the latter--the
passage on the severance of early friendships, and the conclusion;
although the dexterity of hand (not to speak of the essential spirit of
enchantment) which is everywhere present in the first part, and nowhere
dominant in the second, exhibits itself not a little in the marvellous
passage in which Geraldine bewitches Christabel. Touching some jocose
allusion by Rossetti to the necessity which lay upon me to startle
the world with a continuation of the poem based upon the lines of my
conjectural scheme, I asked him if he knew that a continuation was
actually published in Coleridge's own paper, _The Morning Post_. It
appeared about 1820, and was satirical of course--hitting off many