Coleridge, writing to his wife, April 4, 1803, says: "To-day I dine again with Sotheby. He had informed me that ten gentlemen who have met me at his house desired him to solicit me to finish the 'Christabel,' and to permit them to publish it for me; and they engaged that it should be in paper, printing, and decorations the most magnificent thing that had hitherto appeared. Of course I declined it. The lovely lady shan't come to that pass! Many times rather would I have it printed at Soulby's on the true ballad paper. However, it was civil, and Sotheby is very civil to me." It was not until May 8, 1816, that the still unfinished poem of _Christabel_ was offered to Murray, who, upon Byron's recommendation, so Lamb tells us, agreed to take it, paying seventy guineas for it, "until the other poems shall be completed, when the copyright shall revert to the author." _Christabel_ is in two parts. The "three parts yet to come," and which Coleridge in the Preface said he hoped would be finished in the present year, never appeared. _Kubla Khan; Or A Vision In A Dream_ is prefaced by a short introduction. The seventy guineas Coleridge turned over to a needy friend. Murray also gave "£20 for permission to publish the other fragment of a poem, _Kubla Khan_, but which the author should not be restricted from publishing in any other way that he pleased." We may not pass over this book, modest as it is in appearance, without giving a quotation from the voluble Dibdin on the merits of its printer and his press, "The Shakespeare Press." "Trivial as the theme may appear," says he, "there are some very reasonable folks who would prefer an account of this eminent press to the 'History of the Seven Years War:' and I frankly own myself to be of that number. Nor is it--with due deference be it said to William Bulmer & Co.--from the least admiration of the _exterior_ or _interior_ of this printing-office that I take up my pen in behalf of it; but because it has effectually contributed to the promotion of belles-lettres, and national improvement in the matter of puncheon and matrix."