Coleridge, when he wrote to Cottle offering him the _Lyrical Ballads_, affirms that “the volumes offered to you are, to a certain degree, _one work in kind_” {104a} (_Reminiscences_, p. 179); and Wordsworth declares, “I should not, however, have requested this assistance, had I not believed that the poems of my Friend would in a great measure _have the same tendency as my own_, {104b} and that though there would be found a difference, there would be found no discordance in the colours of our style; as our opinions on the subject of poetry do almost entirely coincide” (Preface to _Lyrical Ballads_, 1800). It is a point carefully to be borne in mind that we have the explicit and contemporary authority of both poets that their aim was the same. There are difficulties in the way of believing that _The Ancient Mariner_ was written for the _Lyrical Ballads_. It was planned in 1797 and was originally intended for a magazine. Nevertheless, it may be asserted that the purpose of _The Ancient Mariner_ and of _Christabel_ (which was originally intended for the _Ballads_) was, as their author said, _truth_, living truth. He was the last man in the world to care for a story simply as a chain of events with no significance, and in these poems the supernatural, by interpenetration with human emotions, comes closer to us than an event of daily life. In return the emotions themselves, by means of the supernatural expression, gain intensity. The texture is so subtly interwoven that it is difficult to illustrate the point by example, but take the following lines:— “Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea! And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony. The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I. * * * * The self-same moment I could pray: And from my neck so free The Albatross fell off, and sank Like lead into the sea. * * * * And the hay was white with silent light Till rising from the same, Full many shapes, that shadows were, In crimson colours came. A little distance from the prow Those crimson shadows were: I turned my eyes upon the deck— Oh, Christ! what saw I there! Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat, And, by the holy rood! A man all light, a seraph-man, On every corse there stood.” Coleridge’s marginal gloss to these last stanzas is “The angelic spirits leave the dead bodies, and appear in their own forms of light.” Once more from _Christabel_:—