He covered his tracks to some extent by referring several times to "the author," although the joint authorship was well known to him. While severe in most of his strictures on Wordsworth, Southey reserved his special malice for _The Ancient Mariner_. He called it "a Dutch attempt at German sublimity"; and in a letter written to William Taylor on September 5, 1798--probably while he was writing his discreditable critique--he characterized the poem as "the clumsiest attempt at German sublimity I ever saw." Southey's responsibility for the article became known to Cottle, who communicated the fact to the poets on their return a year later. Wordsworth declared that "if Southey could not conscientiously have spoken differently of the volume, he ought to have declined the task of reviewing it." Coleridge indited an epigram, _To a Critic_, and let the matter drop. Shortly afterwards he showed his renewed good-will by aiding Southey in preparing the second _Annual Anthology_ (1800). The subsequent reviews of the _Lyrical Ballads_ adopted the tone of the _Critical_ (then recognized as the leading review) and internal evidence shows that they did not hesitate to borrow ideas from Southey's article. The _Analytical Review_ also saw German extravagances in _The Ancient Mariner_; the _Monthly_ borrowed Southey's figure of the Italian and Flemish painters, and called _The Ancient Mariner_ "the strangest story of a cock and bull that we ever saw on paper ... a rhapsody of unintelligible wildness and incoherence." The belated review in the _British Critic_ was probably written by Coleridge's friend, Rev. Francis Wrangham, and was somewhat more appreciative than the rest. For further details, consult Mr. Thomas Hutchinson's reprint (1898) of the _Lyrical Ballads_, pp. (xiii-xxviii). Despite the unfavorable reviews, the Ballads reached a fourth edition in 1805 (besides an American edition in 1802), thus achieving the popularity alluded to by Jeffrey at the beginning of our next review. _Poems_ (1807) Wordsworth's fourth publication, the _Poems_ (1807), included most of the pieces written after the first appearance of the _Lyrical Ballads_. It was likewise his first venture subsequent to the founding of the _Edinburgh Review_. Jeffrey had assailed the theories of the "Lake Poets" (and, incidentally, coined that unfortunate term) in the first number of the _Review_, in an article on Southey's _Thalaba_, and three years later (1805), in criticizing _Madoc_, he again expressed his views on the subject. Now came the first opportunity to deal with the recognized leader of the "Lakers"--the poet whose work most clearly illustrated the poetic theories that Jeffrey deemed pernicious.