Mr. Scott, we believe—­who in his engravings has made the ancient mariner an old decrepit man.  That is not the true image; no! he should have been a growthless, decayless being, impassive to time or season, a silent cloud—­the wandering Jew.  The curse of the dead men’s eyes should not have passed away.  But this was, perhaps, too much for any pencil, even if the artist had fully entered into the poet’s idea.  Indeed, it is no subject for painting.  The “Ancient Mariner” displays Mr. Coleridge’s peculiar mastery over the wild and preternatural in a brilliant manner; but in his next poem, “Christabel,” the exercise of his power in this line is still more skilful and singular.  The thing attempted in “Christabel” is the most difficult of execution in the whole field of romance—­witchery by daylight; and the success is complete.  Geraldine, so far as she goes, is perfect.  She is sui generis.  The reader feels the same terror and perplexity that Christabel in vain struggles to express, and the same spell that fascinates her eyes.  Who and what is Geraldine—­whence come, whither going, and what designing?  What did the poet mean to make of her?  What could he have made of her?  Could he have gone on much farther without having had recourse to some of the ordinary shifts of witch tales?  Was she really the daughter of Roland de Vaux, and would the friends have met again and embraced?...

We are not amongst those who wish to have “Christabel” finished.  It cannot be finished.  The poet has spun all he could without snapping.  The theme is too fine and subtle to bear much extension.  It is better as it is, imperfect as a story, but complete as an exquisite production of the imagination, differing in form and colour from the “Ancient Mariner,” yet differing in effect from it only so as the same powerful faculty is directed to the feudal or the mundane phases of the preternatural....

It has been impossible to express, in the few pages to which we are necessarily limited, even a brief opinion upon all those pieces which might seem to call for notice in an estimate of this author’s poetical genius.  We know no writer of modern times whom it would not be easier to characterize in one page than Coleridge in two.  The volumes before us contain so many integral efforts of imagination, that a distinct notice of each is indispensable, if we would form a just conclusion upon the total powers of the man.  Wordsworth, Scott, Moore, Byron, Southey, are incomparably more uniform in the direction of their poetic mind.  But if you look over these volumes for indications of their author’s poetic powers, you find him appearing in at least half a dozen shapes, so different from each other, that it is in vain to attempt to mass them together.  It cannot indeed be said, that he has ever composed what is popularly termed a great poem; but he is great in several lines, and the union of such powers is an essential term in a fair estimate of his genius.