Coleridge's Christabel and Byron's Lara

(No. 17. p. 262.).—What Christabel saw is plain enough. The lady was a being like Duessa, a Spenser; a horrible-looking witch, who could, to a certain degree, put on an appearance of beauty. The difference is, that this lady had both forms at once; the one in her face, the other concealed. This is quite plain from the very words of Coleridge. The lifting her over the sill seems to be something like the same superstition that we have in Scott's *Eve of St. John*:— "But I had not had pow'r to come to thy bow'r, If Though had'st not charm'd me so." I have no doubt that Lara is the Corsair; and Ka…