s found in the canal. The way in which the incident was
treated, and the spiritualising of the character, might furnish hints
for contrasting the imaginative influences, which I have endeavoured to
throw over common life, with Crabbe's matter-of-fact style of handling
subjects of the same kind. This is not spoken to his disparagement, far
from it; but to direct the attention of thoughtful readers into whose
hands these notes may fall, to a comparison that may enlarge the circle
of their sensibilities, and tend to produce in them a catholic judgment.

36. *_We are Seven_. [X.] _The Ancient Mariner and Coleridge, &c. &c._
&c.&c.

Written at Alfoxden in the spring of 1798, under circumstances somewhat
remarkable. The little girl who is the heroine, I met within the area of
Goderich Castle in the year 1793. Having left the Isle of Wight, and
crost Salisbury Plain, as mentioned in the preface to 'Guilt and
Sorrow,' I proceeded by Bristol up the Wye, and so on to N. Wales to the
Vale of Clwydd, where I spent my summer under the roof of the father of
my friend, Robert Jones.

In reference to this poem, I will here mention one of the most
remarkable facts in my own poetic history, and that of Mr. Coleridge. In
the spring of the year 1798, he, my sister, and myself, started from
Alfoxden pretty late in the afternoon, with a view to visit Linton, and
the Valley of Stones near to it; and as our united funds were very
small, we agreed to defray the expense of the tour by writing a poem, to
be sent to the _New Monthly Magazine_, set up by Phillips, the
bookseller, and edited by Dr. Aikin. Accordingly we set off, and
proceeded, along the Quantock Hills, towards Watchet; and in the course
of this walk was planned the poem of the 'Ancient Mariner,' founded on a
dream, as Mr. Coleridge said, of his friend Mr. Cruikshank. Much the
greatest part of the story was Mr. Coleridge's invention; but certain
parts I myself suggested; for example, some crime was to be committed
which would bring upon the Old Navigator, as Coleridge afterwards
delighted to call him, the spectral persecution, as a consequence of
that crime and his own wanderings. I had been reading in Shelvocke's
_Voyages_, a day or two before, that, while doubling Cape Horn, they
frequently saw albatrosses in that latitude, the largest sort of
sea-fowl, some extending their wings twelve or thirteen feet. 'Suppose,'
said I, 'you represent him as having killed one of these birds on