recited it many hundred times to men, women, and children, and always with an electrical effect—­it was bepraised by most of the great Poets of the day—­and for twenty years he was urged to give it to the world.  But alas! no sooner had the Lady Christabel “come out,” than all the rules of good-breeding and politeness were broken through, and the loud laugh of scorn and ridicule from every quarter assailed the ears of the fantastic Hoyden.  But let Mr. Coleridge be consoled.  Mr. Scott and Lord Byron are good-natured enough to admire Christabel, and the Public have not forgotten that his Lordship handed her Ladyship upon the stage.  It is indeed most strange, that Mr., Coleridge is not satisfied with the praise of those he admires,—­but pines away for the commendation of those he contemns.

Having brought down his literary life to the great epoch of the publication of Christabel, he there stops short; and that the world may compare him as he appears at that aera to his former self, when “he set sail from Yarmouth on the morning of the 10th September, 1798, in the Hamburg Packet,” he has republished, from his periodical work the “Friend,” seventy pages of Satyrane’s Letters.  As a specimen of his wit in 1798, our readers may take the following:—­

We were all on the deck, but in a short time I observed marks of
  dismay.  The Lady retired to the cabin in some confusion; and many
  of the faces round me assumed a very doleful and frog-coloured
  appearance; and within an hour the number of those on deck was
  lessened by one half.  I was giddy, but not sick; and the giddiness
  soon went away, but left a feverishness and want of appetite, which I
  attributed, in great measure, to the “saeva mephitis” of the
  bilge-water; and it was certainly not decreased by the exportations
  from the cabin.  However, I was well enough to join the able-bodied
  passengers, one of whom observed, not inaptly, that Momus might have
  discovered an easier way to see a man’s inside than by placing a
  window in his breast.  He needed only have taken a salt-water trip in a
  packet boat.  I am inclined to believe, that a packet is far superior
  to a stage-coach as a means of making men open out to each other!

The importance of his observations during the voyage may be estimated by this one:—­

  At four o’clock I observed a wild duck swimming on the waves,_a single
  solitary wild duck!_ It is not easy to conceive how interesting a
  thing it looked in that round objectless desert of waters!

At the house of Klopstock, brother of the Poet, he saw a portrait of Lessing, which he thus describes to the Public:—­“His eyes were uncommonly like mine! if any thing, rather larger and more prominent!  But the lower part of his face I and his nose—­O what an exquisite expression of elegance and sensibility!” He then gives a long account of his interview with Klopstock the Poet,