Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb heard Coleridge recite "Christabel" in the early months of 1800, and after leaving Coleridge's Grasmere cottage with a now-lost transcription of the poem (probably consisting of Part I only), hesoon discovered that his copy was incomplete. The civil tone of Lamb's first request for the lines on 16-7 April 1800 becomes insistent--as six weeks pass without receiving the missing lines from Coleridge:

"I wish you would advert to a letter I sent you at Grassmere about Christabel &--comply with my request contained therein--."(1)

Lamb writes again of "Christabel" when he hears that the poem is headed to press in 1816. He notes in a letter to William Wordsworth on 26 April 1816 that Coleridge "is printing Xtabel by Ld Byron's recommendation to Murray, with what he calls a vision, Kubla Khan--which said vision he repeats so enchantingly that it irradiates and brings heaven and Elysian bowers into my parlour while he recites it."(2) Lamb's enthusiasm for "Christabel," however, is dampened once the poem appears in print.Writing to her sister Mary Shelley on 29 July 1816, Fanny Godwin reports that "Lamb says that ['Christabel'] ought never to have been published; that no one understands it."(3) Lamb's view that the poem is only fit--like the "enchanting" "Kubla Khan"--for "parlour publication" is at odds with his enthusiasm for the manuscript "Christabel" and his printed comments on the poem.

Lamb is thought to have penned a review of "Christabel" for theTimes on 20 May 1816 --probably at the invitation of then-editor John Stoddart.(4) The date of the review is noteworthy: it predates the release of "Christabel" from the print house by five days. Moreover, that a review of the poem appeared in the Times is--as Lamb remarks--remarkable in itself. The Times overlooked its standard editorial policy: "It is not often that we venture to notice the poetical compositions of the day."(5)

The notice that Lamb pays "Christabel" in the Times is characterized by fawning praise and personal reminiscence: "Christabel" is "a singular monument of genius," and is "a work of indisputable originality forming almost a class by itself." Lamb's praise for the poem is forward- and backward- looking. The two Parts of the printed poem, he suggests, are "valuable with reference to the three others yet to come." Although he is interested in the future "Christabel," Lamb is equally absorbed by the history and process of the poem's composition: "[it] is well known to many of Mr. Coleridge's friends, that Christabel, as it now stands, has remained, with scarcely the variation of a line, ever since the year 1800." But Lamb soon catches himself, realizing that he has been recounting nostalgically the poem's manuscript history: "Hitherto [I] have been speaking of this poem as if it were well known to our readers."(6)

The comments that Lamb offers on the 1816 printed text are brief and uncritical. His review combines a paraphrase of the poem's plot with his own sentimental reaction to the story; his comments on the bedroom scene in Part I are typical of the tone and style of his review: "Geraldine lying down by the side of Christabel, ...[utters a] spell over her, [that] makes the reader thrill with undefinable horror."(7)

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Notes

1. The Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, ed. Edwin W. Marr, 3 vols. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), 1: 200, 202n, 216; Lamb's emphasis. As Jack Stillinger has suggested, Lamb's copy--based on the particular lines he requested from Coleridge (1-21 and 39-54)--was probably missing the first and third pages Coleridge and Textual Instability: The Multiple Versions of the Major Poems (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 86. (back)
2. The Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, 3: 215. (back)
3. Edward Dowden, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 2 vols. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1886), 1: 41. (back)
4. There is almost unanimous consensus among twentieth-century critics that Lamb penned the Times piece. David Erdman, Lewis M. Schwartz, Donald H. Reiman, and J. R. de J. Jackson argue persuasively for Lamb while Oskar Wellens suggests John Payne Collier. See, respectively: "A New Discovery: The First Review of 'Christabel'" Texas Studies in English 37 (1958), 53-60 ; The Romantics Reviewed, Part A: The Lake Poets, ed. Donald H. Reiman, 2 vols. (New York: Garland, 1972), 2: 890; Coleridge: The Critical Heritage, ed. J.R. de J. Jackson, 2 vols. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970-91), 2: 246; and "John Payne Collier: The Man Behind the Unsigned Times Review of 'Christabel'" Wordsworth Circle 13 (1982), 68-69. I concur with the opinion that points to Lamb as the most likely candidate. (back)
5. The Romantics Reviewed, 2: 891. (back)
6. The Romantics Reviewed, 2: 891. (back)
7. The Romantics Reviewed, 2: 891. (back)