The origin thereof was this,--as I now extract it from my earliest literary notebook:-- "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.

"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.