This wish had arisen from a consciousness of
the defects of the Poem, and from a knowledge that many persons had
been much displeased with it. The Poem of my Friend has indeed great
defects; first, that the principal person has no distinct character,
either in his profession of Mariner, or as a human being who having
been long under the controul of supernatural impressions might be
supposed himself to partake of something supernatural: secondly,
that he does not act, but is continually acted upon: thirdly, that
the events having no necessary connection do not produce each other;
and lastly, that the imagery is somewhat too laboriously accumulated.
Yet the Poem contains many delicate touches of passion, and indeed
the passion is every where true to nature; a great number of the
stanzas present beautiful images, and are expressed with unusual
felicity of language; and the versification, though the metre is
itself unfit for long poems, is harmonious and artfully varied,
exhibiting the utmost powers of that metre, and every variety of
which it is capable. It therefore appeared to me that these several
merits (the first of which, namely that of the passion, is of the
highest kind,) gave to the Poem a value which is not often possessed
by better Poems.
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