These instances of close observation of natural phenomena could be multiplied did space permit, the poem is full of them, only in the line "the furrow followed free" may he be held to have fallen into error. Yet this excellence has, after all, but a small concern with the poetic worth of the work, and it is astonishing to find that its music rang harshly in the ears of contemporary criticism, though its awesome and fantastic beauty moves the English-speaking world to this day. One lady (Mrs. Barbauld) told Coleridge that, while she liked the "Ancient Mariner," she had to find two faults. In the first place, the story was improbable, and secondly, it had no moral! Wordsworth himself had his doubts about it, and Southey somewhat obscurely called it "a Dutch attempt at German sublimity," for which quintessential criticism Charles Lamb took him to task. Looking back upon the life and work of Coleridge, we know that his "Ancient Mariner" reaches the high-water mark of his poetic achievement in narrative verse, and that it will endure when the greater part of his writing, whether in verse or prose, has been forgotten--remembered not only on account of its beauty as a complete work of art, but on account of the irresistible music of many of the stanzas. It stands for the fruit of the supremely inspired hours of a greatly gifted man. "Christabel," another poem that has gained Coleridge a host of admirers, is, unfortunately, incomplete. In the ponderous preface to the first edition (John Murray, 1816), Coleridge explains that he wrote the first part at Nether Stowey in 1797, and the second part at Keswick three years later. "Since then his powers have been in a state of suspended animation, but he hopes to embody in verse the three parts yet to come in the course of the present year." Twelve or thirteen years later, Coleridge was still full of the thought of completion, but he omits the pious hope from the preface to the 1834 edition--he knew by then that inspiration had long been dead. Yet the failure to complete galled him through many years after the poem was laid aside. We find him writing to Allsop in 1821: "Of my poetic works, I would fain finish 'Christabel.'" In later years, when he was living with Gillman, he described the story as it was to have been told in verse, but Wordsworth told the late Lord Chief Justice Coleridge that he did not know anything about the plan of completion, and does not think Coleridge had one. In his _Table Talk_ Coleridge himself remarks that the presence of worries and the absence of good music kept him from completing "Christabel," which was received with marked favour by the limited public of its day, three editions being called for in one year. He did not realise, when he spoke to his nephew, that his gifts had passed from one form of expression to another.