that it must have required all De Quincey's consummate ingenuity as a
mischief-maker to detect any discrepancy between the two.

In the autumn of 1797, records Wordsworth in the MS. notes which he
left behind him, "Mr. Coleridge, my sister, and myself started from
Alfoxden pretty late in the afternoon with a view to visit Linton and
the Valley of Stones near to it; and as our united funds were very
small, we agreed to defray the expense of the tour by writing a poem to
be sent to the _New Monthly Magazine_. Accordingly we set off, and
proceeded along the Quantock Hills towards Watchet; and in the course
of this walk was planned the poem of the _Ancient Mariner_,
founded on a dream, as Mr. Coleridge said, of his friend Mr.
Cruikshank. Much the greatest part of the story was Mr. Coleridge's
invention, but certain parts I suggested; for example, some crime was
to be committed which should bring upon the Old Navigator, as Coleridge
afterwards delighted to call him, the spectral persecution, as a
consequence of that crime and his own wanderings. I had been reading in
Shelvocke's _Voyages_, a day or two before, that while doubling
Cape Horn they frequently saw albatrosses in that latitude, the largest
sort of sea-fowl, some extending their wings twelve or thirteen feet.
'Suppose,' said I, 'you represent him as having killed one of these
birds on entering the South Sea, and that the tutelary spirits of these
regions take upon them to avenge the crime.' The incident was thought
fit for the purpose, and adopted accordingly. I also suggested the
navigation of the ship by the dead men, but do not recollect that I had
anything more to do with the scheme of the poem. The gloss with which
it was subsequently accompanied was not thought of by either of us at
the time, at least not a hint of it was given to me, and I have no
doubt it was a gratuitous afterthought. We began the composition
together on that to me memorable evening. I furnished two or three