SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
Born October 21, 1772. Died July 25, 1834.
The poetical fame of Coleridge rests principally upon The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and Christabel, both of which are so well known that it is quite unnecessary to reprint them, especially as Messrs. Ward, Lock & Co. have recently published a very cheap and handy edition of the miscellaneous poems of Coleridge, containing the above, as well as some other poems which, being less known, have not given rise to so many parodies.
——:o:——
THE ANCIENT MARINER.
This weird poem was founded on a strange dream which a friend of Coleridge had, who fancied he saw a skeleton ship, with figures in it. Wordsworth wrote a few lines of it, and the idea of shooting an albatross appears to have been his. As Coleridge himself informs us, it was planned and partly composed during a walk with Wordsworth and his sister, in the autumn of 1797. It was first published in 1798, in a volume entitled “Lyrical Ballads, with a few other Poems,” Bristol, 1798. It is the opening poem of the volume, and is quaintly styled “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere,” in seven parts. Most of the other poems in the volume were written by Wordsworth. The first version contained a stanza (the eleventh in Part III.) which has been omitted from all subsequent reprints:
“His bones were black with many a crack,