The Rime of the Ancient Mariner autobiographical portrait of Coleridge himself, comparing the mariner's loneliness with Coleridge's own feelings of loneliness expressed in his letters and journals. In addition to being referred to in several other notable works, due to the popularity of the poem the phrase "albatross around one's neck" has become an English language idiom referring to "a heavy burden of guilt that becomes an obstacle to success". Monty Python's "Albatross Sketch" in which an irascible movie-theatre refreshment vendor tries to sell a single albatross from a tray around his neck, is a parody of Coleridge's description of the Mariner. The phrase "Water, water,
William Wales (astronomer) a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1776. Amongst Wales' pupils at Christ's Hospital were Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb. It has been suggested that Wales' accounts of his journeys might have influenced Coleridge when writing his poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". The writer Leigh Hunt, another of Wales' pupils, remembered him as "a good man, of plain simple manners, with a heavy large person and a benign countenance". He was appointed as Secretary of the Board of Longitude in 1795, serving in that position until his death in 1798. He was nominated by the First Lord