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,
Nautical fiction identified "the sea as an archetype of the Sublime in nature: 'of all the objects that I have ever seen, there is none which affects my imagination as much as the sea or ocean' ". Later in this century Samuel Taylor Coleridge's narrative poem "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1798), developed the idea of the ocean as "realm of unspoiled nature and a refuge from the perceived threats of civilization". However, it is Byron "who has taken most of the credit for inventing the nineteenth-century sea, in "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" (1812-16): A distinct sea novel genre, which focuses on representing