At the same time Byron paid so noble a tribute to Coleridge's talent, and to his poem of "Christabel," by inserting a note on the subject in his preface to the "Siege of Corinth," that Coleridge's editor took this note as the epigraph. "Christabel!--I won't have any one," he said, "sneer at 'Christabel;' it is a fine wild poem." In 1816 he wrote from Venice to Moore:-- "I hear that the E.R. has cut up Coleridge's 'Christabel,' and declared against me for praising it. I praised it, firstly, because I thought well of it; secondly, because Coleridge was in great distress, and after doing what little I could for him in essentials, I thought that the public avowal of my good opinion might help him further, at least with the booksellers. I am very sorry that J---- has attacked him, because, poor fellow, it will hurt him in mind and pocket. As for me, he's welcome--I shall never think less of Jeffrey for any thing he may say against me or mine in future." At Genoa he declared, in a memorandum, that Crabbe and Coleridge were pre-eminent in point of power and talent. At Pisa he blamed those who refused to see in "Christabel" a work of rare merit, notwithstanding the knowledge which he had of Coleridge's ingratitude to him; and refused to believe that W. Scott did not admire the poem, "for we all owe Coleridge a great deal," said he, "and even Scott himself." And Medwin adds: "Lord Byron thinks Coleridge's poem very fine. He paraphrased and imitated one passage. He considers the idea excellent, and enters into it." And speaking of Coleridge's psychological poem, he said: "What perfect harmony! 'Kubla Khan' delights me." SHELLEY. If Shelley did not find a place in the triangle, it is only because he was not yet known, except by the eccentricities of his conduct as a boy. But so soon as Byron was able to appreciate his genius, he lavished praises upon the poet and the man, while he blamed his metaphysics. In all his letters we find proofs of his affectionate regard for Shelley; and during his last days in Greece, he said to Finlay,--"Shelley was really a most extraordinary genius; but those who know him only from his works, know but half his merits: it was from his thoughts and his conversation poor Shelley ought to be judged. He was romance itself in his manners and his style of thinking." "You were all mistaken," he wrote from Pisa to Murray, "about Shelley, who was, without exception, the best and least selfish man I ever knew." And when he learned his death, he wrote to Moore:--"There is thus another man gone, about whom the world was ill-naturedly, and ignorantly, and brutally mistaken. It will, perhaps, do him justice now, when he can be no better for it."