There is little that is common to the inspired bard of _Tintern Abbey_,
the _Immortality Ode_ and the nobler _Sonnets_, and the unsophisticated
scribe of _Peter Bell_ and _The Idiot Boy_. Like Browning, he wrote too
much to write well at all times, and if both poets were capable of the
sublimest flights, they likewise descended to unimagined depths; but the
fault of Wordsworth was perhaps the greater, because his bathos was the
result of a deliberate and persistent attempt to enrich English poetry
with prosaically versified incidents drawn at length from homely rural
life.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
The first part of Coleridge's _Christabel_ was written in 1797 during
the brief period of inspiration that also gave us _The Ancient Mariner_
and _Kubla Khan_--in short, that small group of exquisite poems which in
themselves suffice to place Coleridge in the front rank of English
poets. The second part was written in 1800, after the author's return
from Germany. The fragment circulated widely in manuscript among
literary men, bewitched Scott and Byron into imitating its fascinating
rhythms, and, at Byron's suggestion, was finally published by Murray in
1816 with _Kubla Khan_ and _The Pains of Sleep_.
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