arodied sonnets (one being _The House that Jack Built_)
which Coleridge published as a skit on the joint volume
brought out by himself, Lamb, and Lloyd. The whole thing was
always a mystery to me. But I have thought that the passage
on division between friends was not improbably written by
Coleridge on this occasion. Curiously enough (if so) Lamb,
who is said to have objected greatly to the idea of a second
part of _Christabel_, thought (on seeing it) that the
mistake was redeemed by this very passage. He _may_ have
traced its meaning, though, of course, its beauty alone was
enough to make him say so.

The three satirical sonnets which Rossetti refers to appear not only in
_Cottle_ but in a note to the _Biographia Literaria_ They were published
first under a fictitious name in _he Monthly Magazine_ They must be
understood as almost wholly satirical of three distinct facets of
Coleridge's own manner, for even the sonnet in which occur the words

Eve saddens into night, {*}

has its counterpart in _The Songs of the Pixies_--

Hence! thou lingerer, light!
Eve saddens into night,

and nearly all the phrases satirised are borrowed from Coleridge's
own poetry, not from that of Lamb or Lloyd. Nevertheless, Cottle was
doubtless right as to the fact that Lamb took offence at Coleridge's
conduct on this account, and Rossetti almost certainly made a good shot
at the truth when he attributed to the rupture thereupon ensuing the
passage on severed friendship. The sonnet on _The House that Jack Built_
is the finest of the three as a satire.

* So in the Biographia Literaria; in Cottle, "Eve darkens
into night."

Indeed, the figure used therein as an equipoise to "the hindward charms"
satirises perfectly the style of writing characterised by inflated
thought and imagery. It may be doubted if there exists anything more
comical; but each of the companion sonnets is good in its way. The
egotism, which was a constant reproach urged by _The Edinburgh_ critics
and by the "Cockney Poets" against the poets of the Lake School, is
splendidly hit off in the first sonnet; the low and creeping meanness,
or say, simpleness, as contrasted with simplicity, of thought and
expression, which was stealing into Wordsworth's work at that period,
is equally cleverly ridiculed in the second sonnet. In reproducing the
sonnets, Coleridge claims only to have satirised types. As