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The Moral of the Ancient Mariner Reconsidered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Elizabeth Nitchie
Elizabeth Nitchie*
Affiliation:
Goucher College
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Extract

Few lines written by Coleridge are more familiar than those near the end of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner:

He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things, both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , September 1933 , pp. 867 - 876
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1933

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References

1 The most recent affirmation is that by Newton P. Stallknecht: “The Moral of the Ancient Mariner,” PMLA, xlvii, 559–569. For a discussion of his theory, see below.

2 The Letters of Charles Lamb, ed. by Alfred Ainger (L.: Macmillan, 1904), i, 237–238.

3 “Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Mr. Lowes,” PMLA, XLIII (1928), 582–592.

4 The Road to Xanadu (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1927), p. 302.

5 Ibid., p. 298.

6 Ibid., p. 299.

7 Ibid., p. 300.

8 “Coleridge,” Hours in a Library (new ed., New York and London: Putnam, [1894]), iv, 355.

9 “Coleridge and the Moderns,” Bookman, lxx (1929), 120.

10 “Literary and Lake Reminiscences,” Chap. ii, in The Collected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, ed. by David Masson (Edinburgh: Black, 1889), ii, 145.

11 Collected Works, ed. by A. R. Waller & Arnold Glover (London: Dent, 1903), viii, 14.

12 “Lectures on the English Poets” viii, Works, v, 166.

13 Letter to Wordsworth, Jan., 1801, in Letters, i, 177.

14 Op. cit., p. 307.

15 Ibid., p. 303.

16 Second Series, xxix, 204.

17 lxxxviii, 34.

18 Op. cit., p. 303.

19 Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature (6 vols., N.Y.: Macmillan, 1905), iv, 78.

20 “From Necessity to Transcendentalism in Coleridge,” PMLA, xxxv (1920), 1–59.

21 Op. cit., pp. 16–17.

22 Ibid., p. 19.

23 “On Coleridge's Ancient Mariner,” MLN, xxxiv (1919), 311–313.

24 Theology in the English Poets (8th ed., London: Kegan Paul, 1896), p. 92.

25 Samuel Taylor Coleridge (London: Jonathan Cape, [1926]), pp. 166–167.

26 PMLA, xlvii (1932), 559–569.

27 Op. cit., p. 566.

28 Ibid., pp. 566–567.

29 Coleridge's later philosophical ideas involved a recognition of the influence of “providences” upon the noumenon, the action, leading to something analogous to spiritual regeneration, upon the will “by the will of others, nay even by nature, by the breeze, the sunshine, by the tender life and freshness of the sensation of convalescence, by shocks of sickness” (see Muirhead, John H., Coleridge as Philosopher [New York: Macmillan, 1930], pp. 249–250), and of the result of regeneration as a state in which “the person is capable of a quickening intercommunion with the Divine Spirit.” (Aids to Reflection: Aphorisms on that which is indeed Spiritual Religion.)

30 Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1848), p. 123 n.

31 Ibid., pp. 255–256.

32 Coleridge, the Sublime Somnambulist, tr. by M. V. Nugent (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1929), p. 138.

33 A Survey of English Literature, 1780–1830 (London: Edwin Arnold, 1912), ii, 103.

34 Lowes, op. cit., p. 302 n.

36 March 15, 1799, Letters, i, 112.