but saw no likeness whatever to the ‘Christabel,’ much less any improper resemblance.” (Letters of Coleridge, ed. by E.H.  Coleridge, Vol.  II, p. 523.) Yet Mr. Lang seems to think that in this matter Scott “showed something of the deficient sense of meum and tuum which marked his freebooting ancestors.” (Sir Walter Scott, p. 36.) Apparently Scott never dreamed that the matter could be looked at in this way.  In Lockhart’s Scott (Vol.  II, pp. 77-8) we find described an occasion on which the two men once met in London, when they were asked, with other poets who were present, to recite from their unpublished writings.  Coleridge complied with the request, but Scott said he had nothing of his own and would repeat some stanzas he had seen in a newspaper.  The poem was criticised adversely in spite of Scott’s protests, till Coleridge lost patience and exclaimed, “Let Mr. Scott alone; I wrote the poem.”  Coleridge’s lines: 

     “The Knight’s bones are dust
      And his good sword rust,
      His soul is with the saints, I trust,”

  are probably much better known as they appear in Ivanhoe,
  incorrectly quoted, than in their proper form.  Scott also added a note
  on Coleridge in this connection. (Ivanhoe, Chapter VIII.)]

[Footnote 258:  But apparently not in any earlier than The Black Dwarf, which was written in 1816, the year in which the poem was published.  It was about 1803 that Scott heard Christabel recited.  See Familiar Letters, Vol.  II, p. 221.]

  [Footnote 259:  Lockhart, Vol.  I, p. 356.]

  [Footnote 260:  Familiar Letters, Vol.  I, p. 315.]

  [Footnote 261:  See Letters to Heber, p. 293; On Imitations of the
  Ancient Ballad; Lockhart, Vol.  III, pp. 56 and 264; Quentin
  Durward, Vol.  II, p. 394.]

  [Footnote 262:  Note in The Abbot.]

  [Footnote 263:  Lockhart, Vol.  III, p. 223.]

  [Footnote 264:  Note in St. Ronan’s Well.  See also the comment on
  Wallenstein in Paul’s Letters, Letter XV.]

  [Footnote 265:  Review of Childe Harold, Canto III, Quarterly,
  October, 1816.]

[Footnote 266:  In 1818 Scott wrote a review of Frankenstein in which it appears that he thought Shelley was the author.  Shelley had sent the book with a note in which he said that it was the work of a friend and he had merely seen it through the press; and Scott took this for the conventional evasion so often resorted to by authors. (See Mr. Lang’s note in his Introduction to the Waverley Novels, p. lxxxvi.) Scott praises the substance and style of the book, and advises the author to cultivate his poetical powers, in words which make it evident that he did not know Shelley as a poet, though Alastor had appeared in 1816.