2-981-783 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"And the rain poured down from one black cloud - The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", illustrated by Gustave Dore, 1876. 'Gustave Doré...has designed about forty illustrations, which have been engraved on wood...and just published by Messrs. Adams, Hamilton, and Co., and at the Doré Gallery, New Bond-street [London]...Here the spell that had been thrown over the mariner for killing the albatross had begun to break, owing to his having blessed unawares the creatures of the deep; sleep had "slid into his soul;" a troop of angelic spirits invoked by his guardian saint (poetically embodied by the artist in the "black cloud") had brought down the blessed rain to slake his thirst, and are impelling his ship homeward. Mr. Doré is specially felicitous in suggesting the illimitable vastness of the ocean...The book owes much of its beauty and value to the great excellence of the wood-engravings throughout'. From "Illustrated London News", 1876.