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Geraldine and other Poems,
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In August 1838 I was at Dover, and from a library read for the first time Coleridge's Christabel; it was the original edition, before the author's afterward improvements.
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Being much taken with the poem, the thought struck me to continue it to a probable issue, especially as I wanted a leading subject for a new volume of miscellaneous verse. The notion was barren till I got to Heine Bay a fortnight after, and then I put pen to paper and finished the tale. It occupied me about eight days, an innocent fact which divers dull Zoili have been much offended withal, seeing that Coleridge had thought proper to bring out his two Parts at a sixteen years' interval; a matter doubtless attributable either to accident or indolence,--for to imagine that he was diligently polishing his verses the whole time (as some blockheads will have it) would indeed be a verification of the _parturiunt montes_ theory. The fact is, these things are done at a heat, as every poet knows. Pegasus is a racer, not a cart-horse; Euterpe trips it like the hare, while dogged criticism is the tortoise, &c. The book had a fair success, both here and in America, and has been many times reprinted. Critiques of course were various, for and against; the shuttlecock of fame requires conflicting battledores: but, as I now again quote from that early notebook,
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It is amusing to notice, and instructive also to any young author who may chance to see this, how thoroughly opposite many of the reviews are, some extolling what others vilify; it just tends to keep a sensible man of his own opinion, unmoved by such seemingly unreasonable praise or censure. When Coleridge first published Christabel (intrinsically a most melodious and sweet performance) it was positively hooted by the critics; see in particular the _Edinburgh Review_. Coleridge left behind him a very much improved and enlarged version of the poem, which I did not see till years after I had written the sequel to it: my Geraldine was composed for an addition to Christabel, as originally issued. Another note of mine, in reply to a critic of _The Atlas_, runs thus:--
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Nobody who has not tried it can imagine the difficulties of intellectual imitation: it is to think with another's mind, to speak with another's tongue: I acknowledge freely that I never was satisfied with Geraldine as a mere continuation of a story, but as an independent poem, I will yet be the champion of my child, and think with _The Eclectic_ that I have succeeded as well as possible: as honest Pickwick says, 'And let my enemies make the most of it.' At this time of day it is not worth my while by any modern replies to attempt to quench such long extinct volcanoes as 'The Conservative' and 'The Torch,' nor to reproduce sundry glorifications of the new poet and his verses from many other notices, long or short, duly pasted down for future generations in my Archive-book. As to critical verdicts in this case, black and white are not more contradictory: _e.g._, let _Blackwood_ be contrasted with the _Monthly Review_, or the _Church of England Quarterly_ with the _Weekly True Sun_, &c. &c.
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Edition of my Prose and Poetry complete, &c.; but in the past and present, the subscription system per Mudie and Smith, buying up whole editions at cost price whereby to satiate the reading public, starves at once both author and publisher, and makes impossible these expensive crown octavo editions,
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Some of the beat smaller pieces in my
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Geraldine and other Poems