Farewell, farewell! but this I tell

Mrs. Barbauld once told me that she admired the Ancient Mariner very much, but that there were two faults in it, -- it was improbable, and had no moral. As for the improbability, I owned that that might admit some question; but as to the want of a moral, I told her that in my own judgment the poem had too much; and that the only, or chief fault, if I might say so, was the obtrusion of the moral sentiment so openly on the reader as a principle or cause of action in a work of such pure imagination. It to have had no more moral than the Arabian Night's tale of the merchant's sitting down to eat dates by the side of a well, and throwing the shells aside, and lo! a genie starts up, and says he must kill the aforesaid merchant, because one of the date shells had, it seems, put out the eye of the genie's son.

Text source: The Table Talk and Omniana, ed. T. Ashe (London: George Bell, 1909), p. 87 (May 31, 1830), online here