PREFACE
The first part of the following poem was written in the
year 1797, at Stowey, in the county of Somerset. The
second part, after my return from Germany, in the year
1800, at Keswick, Cumberland. It is probable that if the
poem had been finished at either of the former periods, or
if even the first and second part had been published in the
year 1800, the impression of its originality would have been
much greater than I dare at present expect. But for this
I have only my own indolence to blame. The dates are
mentioned for the exclusive purpose of precluding charges of
plagiarism or servile imitation from myself. For there is
amongst us a set of critics, who seem to hold, that every
possible thought and image is traditional; who have no
notion that there are such things as fountains in the world,
small as well as great; and who would therefore charitably
derive every rill they behold flowing, from a perforation
made in some other man's tank. I am confident, however,
that as far as the present poem is concerned, the celebrated
poets whose writings I might be suspected of having
imitated, either in particular passages, or in the tone and
the spirit of the whole, would be among the first to vindicate
me from the charge, and who, on any striking coincidence,
would permit me to address them in this doggerel version
of two monkish Latin hexameters.
'Tis mine and it is likewise yours;
But an if this will not do;
Let it be mine, good friend! for I
Am the poorer of the two.
I have only to add that the metre of Christabel is not,
properly speaking, irregular, though it may seem so from its
being founded on a new principle: namely, that of counting
in each line the accents, not the syllables. Though the latter
may vary from seven to twelve, yet in each line the accents
will be found to be only four. Nevertheless, this occasional
variation in number of syllables is not introduced wantonly,
for for the mere ends of convenience, but in correspondence
with some transition in the nature of the imagery or passion.
