The Rime of the Ancient Mariner a salvation story. The poem's structure is multi-layered text based on Coleridge's interest in Higher Criticism. "Like the Iliad or Paradise Lost or any great historical product, the "Rime" is a work of transhistorical rather than so-called universal significance. This verbal distinction is important because it calls attention to a real one. Like The Divine Comedy or any other poem, the "Rime" is not valued or used always or everywhere or by everyone in the same way or for the same reasons." George Whalley, in his 1946–47 essay, "The Mariner and the Albatross", suggests that the Ancient Mariner is an
Kubla Khan these wonderful lines as the voice of Poesy itself." Critics at the end of the 19th century favoured the poem and placed it as one of Coleridge's best works. When discussing "Christabel", "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Kubla Khan", an anonymous reviewer in the October 1893 "The Church Quarterly Review" claimed, "In these poems Coleridge achieves a mastery of language and rhythm which is nowhere else conspicuously evident in him." In 1895, Andrew Lang reviewed the "Letters of Coleridge" in addition to Coleridge's "Kubla Khan", "Christabel" and "Rime of the Ancient Mariner", saying: "all these poems are 'miraculous;' all