As for the passage in _Christabel_, I am not sure we quite understand each other. What I heard through the Patmores (a complete mistake I am sure), was that Coleridge meant Géraldine to prove to be a man bent on the seduction of Christabel, and presumably effecting it. What I inferred (if so) was that Coleridge had intended the line as in first ed.: “And she is to sleep with Christabel!” as leading up too nearly to what he meant to keep back for the present. But the whole thing was a figment. What is assuredly not a figment is, that an idea, such as the elder Patmore referred to, really did exist in the minds of Coleridge’s so-called friends, who after praising the poem beyond measure whilst it was in manuscript, abused it beyond reason or decency when it was printed. My settled conviction is that the _Examiner_ criticism, and _not_ the sudden advent of the idea after the first part was written, was the cause of Coleridge’s adopting the correction which Rossetti mentions. Rossetti called my attention to a letter by Lamb, about which he gathered a good deal of interesting conjecture: There is (given in _Cottle_) an inconceivably sarcastic, galling, and admirable letter from Lamb to Coleridge, regarding which I never could learn how the deuce their friendship recovered from it. Cottle says the only reason he could ever trace for its being written lay in the three parodied sonnets (one being _The House that Jack Built_) which Coleridge published as a skit on the joint volume brought out by himself, Lamb, and Lloyd. The whole thing was always a mystery to me. But I have thought that the passage on division between friends was not improbably written by Coleridge on this occasion. Curiously enough (if so) Lamb, who is said to have objected greatly to the idea of a second part of _Christabel_, thought (on seeing it) that the mistake was redeemed by this very passage. He _may_ have traced its meaning, though, of course, its beauty alone was enough to make him say so. The three satirical sonnets which Rossetti refers to appear not only in _Cottle_ but in a note to the _Biographia Literaria_ They were published first under a fictitious name in _he Monthly Magazine_ They must be understood as almost wholly satirical of three distinct facets of Coleridge’s own manner, for even the sonnet in which occur the words Eve saddens into night, {*} has its counterpart in _The Songs of the Pixies_-- Hence! thou lingerer, light! Eve saddens into night,