aint beauty of its own, in its mention of "the creatures of the
calm"; its citation of "the learned Jew Josephus and the Platonic
Constantinopilitan, Michael Psellus," as authorities on invisible
spirits; and in passages like that Dantesque one which tells how the
mariner "in his loneliness and fixedness yearneth towards the journeying
moon, and the stars that still sojourn, yet still move onwards; and
everywhere the blue sky belongs to them, and is their appointed rest, and
their native country, and their own natural homes, which they enter
unannounced, as lords that are certainly expected, and yet there is a
silent joy at their arrival."

In "The Ancient Mariner" there are present in the highest degree the
mystery, indefiniteness, and strangeness which are the marks of romantic
art. The period is not strictly mediaeval, for mariners in the Middle
Ages did not sail to the south polar regions or lie becalmed in the
equatorial seas. But the whole atmosphere of the poem is mediaeval. The
Catholic idea of penance or expiation is the moral theme enwrought with
the story. The hermit who shrives the mariner, and the little vesper
bell which biddeth him to prayer are Catholic touches, and so are the
numerous pious oaths and ejaculations;

"By him who died on cross":

"Heaven's mother send us grace":

"The very deep did rot. O Christ
That ever this should be!"

The albatross is hung about the mariner's neck instead of the crucifix,
and drops off only when he blesses the creatures of the calm and is able
to pray. The sleep which refreshes him is sent by "Mary Queen" from
heaven. The cross-bow with which he shoots the bird is a mediaeval
property. The loud bassoon and the bride's garden bower and the
procession of merry minstrels who go nodding their heads before her are
straight out of the old land of balladry. One cannot fancy the wedding
guest dressed otherwise than in doublet and hose, and perhaps wearing
those marvellous pointed shoes and hanging sleeves which are shown in
miniature paintings of the fifteenth century. And it is thus that
illustrators of the poem have depicted him. Place is equally indefinite
with time. What port the ill-fated ship cleared from we do not know or
seek to know; only the use of the word _kirk_ implies that it was
somewhere in "the north countree"--the proper home of ballad poetry.

Coleridge's romances were very differently conceived from Scott's. He
wove them out o