e exclusively appropriated the name of
imagination," and which blends "the idea with the image" and "the sense
of novelty and freshness with old and familiar objects" will be felt as
the poem is studied.

Wordsworth related in after years that the suggestion for the poem came
from a dream of a phantom ship told to Coleridge by a friend, and that
he (Wordsworth) proposed the shooting of the albatross, the revenge of
the "tutelary spirits," and the "navigation of the ship by the dead
men," and contributed the fourth stanza of the poem and the last two
lines of the first stanza of Part IV. He had been reading Shelvocke's
"Voyages," a book in which he had found a description of albatrosses as
they are seen in far southern waters. Other reading that may have
suggested some of the scenery is described in the "Notes" to the Globe
edition of Coleridge's poems. There are also passages and situations in
the last two acts of Wordsworth's play, "The Borderers," which Coleridge
read with great admiration in the summer of 1797, that have evident
kinship with "The Ancient Mariner," and Wordsworth's "Peter Bell"
(composed at Alfoxden, but printed many years later) suggests what the
story might have become if Coleridge instead of Wordsworth had withdrawn
from collaboration.

"CHRISTABEL" AND "KUBLA KHAN"

"Christabel" and "Kubla Khan" were first printed in 1816, in a pamphlet
along with "The Pains of Sleep," a sort of contrast to "Kubla Khan"
composed in 1803. In the Preface to this pamphlet Coleridge informs us
that the first part of "Christabel" was written at Stowey in 1797 and
the second part at Keswick, Cumberland, in 1800. The poem was intended
originally for the "Lyrical Ballads," and it was with the hope of
finishing it for the second edition that Coleridge took it up again in
the fall of 1800. There is a good deal of uncertainty as to just how
much of the work was done at that time. In two letters of that period he
speaks of it as "running up to 1300 lines," and "swelled into a poem of
1400 lines," so that it is no longer suitable for the "Lyrical Ballads";
but hardly half of this amount was printed in the 1816 pamphlet or has
ever been found since. One suspects that already in 1800 dreams and
projects had begun to be confounded with performance. In the latter of
the two letters mentioned above he relates how his "verse-making
faculties returned" to him, after long and unsuccessful struggles with
"barrenness" and dee