Hazlitt,
but more probably the editor himself, but whether Hazlitt or Hunt,
he must have been within the circle that found its rallying point at
Highgate, and consequently acquainted with the earliest forms of the
poem. The review is an unfavourable one, and Coleridge is told in it
that he is the dog-in-the-manger of literature, and that his poem is
proof of the fact that he can write better nonsense poetry than any man
in England. The writer is particularly wroth with what he considers
the wilful indefiniteness of the author, and in proof of a charge of
a desire not to let the public into the secret of the poem, and of
a conscious endeavour to mystify the reader, he deliberately accuses
Coleridge of omitting one line of the poem as it was written, which,
if printed, would have proved conclusively that Geraldine had seduced
Christabel after getting drunk with her,--for such sequel is implied if
not openly stated. I told Rossetti of this brutality of criticism, and
he replied:

As for the passage in _Christabel_, I am not sure we quite
understand each other. What I heard through the Patmores (a
complete mistake I am sure), was that Coleridge meant
Geraldine to prove to be a man bent on the seduction of
Christabel, and presumably effecting it. What I inferred (if
so) was that Coleridge had intended the line as in first
ed.: "And she is to sleep with Christabel!" as leading up
too nearly to what he meant to keep back for the present.
But the whole thing was a figment.

What is assuredly not a figment is, that an idea, such as the elder
Patmore referred to, really did exist in the minds of Coleridge's
so-called friends, who after praising the poem beyond measure whilst
it was in manuscript, abused it beyond reason or decency when it was
printed. My settled conviction is that the _Examiner_ criticism, and
_not_ the sudden advent of the idea after the first part was written,
was the cause of Coleridge's adopting the correction which Rossetti
mentions.

Rossetti called my attention to a letter by Lamb, about which he
gathered a good deal of interesting conjecture:

There is (given in _Cottle_) an inconceivably sarcastic,
galling, and admirable letter from Lamb to Coleridge,
regarding which I never could learn how the deuce their
friendship recovered from it. Cottle says the only reason he
could ever trace for its being written lay in the three
p