and the strange lady--are borrowed from Mrs. Radcliffe's "Romance of the
Forest"; and that Bürger's "Lenore," Lewis' "Alonzo," and some of the
Percy ballads contributed a detail here and there. But
_Quellenforschungen_ of this kind are very unimportant. It is more
important to note the superior art with which the poet excites curiosity
and suspends--not simply, like Mrs. Radcliffe, postpones--the
gratification of it to the end, and beyond the end, of the poem. Was
Geraldine really a witch, or did she only seem so to Christabel? The
angry moan of the mastiff bitch and the tongue of flame that shot up as
the lady passed--were they omens, or accidents which popular superstition
interprets into omens? Was the malignant influence which Geraldine
exerted over the maiden supernatural possession, or the fascination of
terror and repugnance? Did she really utter the words of a charm, or did
her sweet bedfellow dream them? And once more, what was that upon her
breast--"that bosom old--that bosom cold"? Was it a wound, or the mark
of a serpent, or some foul and hideous disfigurement--or was it only the
shadows cast by the swinging lamp?

That isolation and remoteness, that preparation of the reader's mind for
the reception of incredible things, which Coleridge secured in "The
Ancient Mariner" by cutting off his hero from all human life amid the
solitude of the tropic sea, he here secured--in a less degree, to be
sure--by the lonely midnight in Sir Leoline's castle. Geraldine and her
victim are the only beings awake except the hooting owls. There is dim
moonlight in the wood, dim firelight in the hall, and in Christabel's
chamber "the silver lamp burns dead and dim."

The second part of the poem was less successful, partly for the reason,
as the reviewers pointed out, that it undertakes the hardest of tasks,
"witchery by daylight." But there were other reasons. Three years had