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respect as kind and attentive to me as possible,' he writes, and, so far, he is quite satisfied of the wisdom of leaving England and its inward distractions.' This was written on July 6th1 to Stuart, to whom he sends 'some Sibylline Leaves which he wrote for Sir A. B., who has sent them home to the ministry.' They will give you,' he adds, my ideas on the importance of the island,' and Stuart may publish them, 'only not in the same words.' He considers himself a sort of diplomatic understrapper hidden under the Governor's robes,' so that Stuart must be discreet. Early in August, the demon of restlessness drove him to Sicily, with the intention of returning to Malta in the late autumn. He accordingly left Malta under convoy of Major Adye (who was carrying despatches to Gibraltar),2 for Syracuse, where he remained till the beginning of November.3 Sir Alexander Ball proposed to make some use of Coleridge in Sicily. On the 24th August he wrote thus to the English representative at Syracuse, Mr. Leckie: You have admirably described the leading features of my friend Coleridge, whose company will be a delightful feast to your mind. We must prevail on him to draw up a political paper on the revenue and resources of Sicily, with the few advantages which His Sicilian Majesty derives from it, and the danger he is in of having it seized by the French. We should then propose to H.M. to transfer it to Great Britain upon condition that she shall pay him annually the amount of the present revenue. In a letter to Stuart, dated Syracuse, Oct. 22, 1804,' Coleridge writes: 'I leave the publication of THE PACQUET which is waiting convoy at Malta for you to your own opinion. If the information appear new or valuable to you, and the letters themselves entertaining, etc., publish them; only do not sell the copyright of more than the right of two editions to the booksellers.' What this pacquet' may have been, I do not know. It probably never reached Stuart. Coleridge adds that he has drawn on Stuart for £30 to the order of Stoddart. By the 22nd November Coleridge was back in Malta, occupying a 'garret in the Treasury,' and acting as private secretary to Sir Alex. Ball. In a despatch 4 of Jan. 2, 1805, to the Secretary of State, the Governor, in referring to a commission issued by him to Captain Leake, R.A., to proceed to the Black Sea to buy oxen, etc., says that he takes with him a Mr. Coleridge'—an intimation which shows that there was good foundation for certain rumours which reached Coleridge's friends, probably through Stoddart's letters.5 But a better appointment prevented the ci-devant Watchman' from aiding the prosecution of Pitt's wicked wars in the character of Assistant-Commissary. On the 18th January, Mr. Alex.

* The whole letter, which is unprinted, is very curious. Ball proposes for Sicily just what in our own time has been done with Cyprus.

1 Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 41. A letter to the same effect was written to Sir G. Beaumont on Aug. 1 (see Mem. of Coleorton, i. 70). In neither is Stoddart mentioned.

2 Major Adye also undertook to forward a series of letters which Coleridge says he had written to Beaumont, but these were destroyed at Gibraltar among Adye's papers on his death by the plague, four days after his arrival (Letter to Stuart in Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 47). 3 Coleridge frequently alluded to his 'ascents of Etna,' but it is improbable that he went much higher than the village of Nicolosi, mentioned in a note to Table Talk, July 25, 1831.

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4 The extract from the official copy of the despatch in the archives at Malta was kindly procured for me by a friend there.

5' Coleridge is confidential secretary to Sir A. Ball, and has been taking some pains to set the country right as to Neapolitan politics, in the hope of saving Sicily from the French. He is going with Capt. into Greece, and up

the Black Sea to purchase corn of the Government. Odd, but pleasant enough, if he would but learn to be contented in that state of life into which it has pleased God to call him-a maxim which I have long thought the best in the Catechism' (Southey to Rickman, Feb. 16, 1805, in Life and Corr. ii. 315). See also A Group of Englishmen, p. 305.

Macaulay, the Public Secretary, died somewhat suddenly, and Coleridge received the acting appointment, pending the absence of Mr. E. T. Chapman, for whom the office was destined. The full salary attached to it was £1200, and in accordance with custom Coleridge was promised the half, £600 a year. It is vastly amusing to think of him having the honour to be the obedient humble servant' of the infamous Castlereagh,' who at this time happened to be the Secretary of State for War and Colonies. But few traces of Coleridge's official life remain at Malta, for some years ago the records of the Chief Secretary's office previous to 1851 were burnt. A collection of State papers, however, which was printed not long ago, contains a good many documents signed or countersigned by 'S. T. Coleridge, Pub. Sec. to H. M. Civ. Commissr.'; and the mere routine work must have been very considerable, for there lies before me a highly unimportant document— 'Affidavit of the Paymaster of the Maltese Artillery,' sworn before, and signed by Coleridge as Public Secretary, on March 13, 1805.1 In a letter to Stuart (May 1, 1805) he complains of overwork, and wishes to Heaven he had never accepted his office as Public Secretary, or the former one of Private Secretary, as, even in a pecuniary point of view, he might have gained twice as much and improved his reputation.' He adds: I have the title and the palace of the Public Secretary, but not half the salary, though I had promise of the whole. But the promises of one in office are what every one knows them to be, and Sir A. B. behaves to me with real personal fondness, and with almost fatherly attention.' In this letter, as in one of April 27th,2 Coleridge bewails the irregularity of the opportunities of communication. He gets few letters, and his own go to the fishes. It is, he believes, a judgment on him for former 'indolence and procrastination' that now when all his gratification is in writing letters to England, he has seldom a chance of despatching them. On April 27th it is his intention to return home overland by Naples, Ancona, and Trieste, etc., on or about the 2nd of next month.' On May Day his heart is almost broken' that he cannot go by this convoy; Chapman has not arrived to relieve him, and he may not come till July. He begs Stuart to write to Mrs. Coleridge and say that his constitution is, he hopes, improved by the abode here, but that accidents, partly by an excess of official labour and anxiety, partly from distress of mind at his not hearing from his friends, and knowledge that they could not have heard from him, etc. etc. etc., has produced an alteration in him for the worse,' and that he hopes to get away, homewards, by the end of May. In February the Wordsworths lost their sailor brother, John, to whom Coleridge was much attached, and when the news reached Malta, Coleridge was so much affected that, as he wrote to his wife, he kept his bed for a fortnight.' The fear of similar consequences prompted Mrs. Coleridge to refrain from informing him of the death of his friend, Thomas Wedgwood, which took place in July 1805.3 In the same letter Mrs. Coleridge says that she has received one from her husband of July 21, informing her that he cannot leave until Mr. Chapman arrives; he is unhappy in the extreme, not having received above three or four letters from home during his residence in the island. I myself have only had four from him.' Mr. Chapman arrived on Sep. 6, and Coleridge left Malta on the 21st. He went to Rome in company with a gentleman, unnamed, who paid all expenses, meaning to stay only a fortnight, and then return for the winter to Naples,

1 He seems also to have acted as a magistrate. See the amusing story in the additional 'Omniana'

in Lit. Remains, 1836, i. 335.

2 Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 46.

3 Mrs. S. T. C. to J. Wedgwood, Oct. 13, 1805, in A Group of Englishmen, p. 303, an admirably expressed letter.

He

where he left most of his clothes and all his letters of credit, manuscripts, etc. had not been ten days in Rome when the French torrent rolled down on Naples,' and return thither, or receipt of anything thence, were equally impossible.1 This shows that Coleridge must have lingered long at Naples. We know that he was there at the end of October when the news of Trafalgar reached the city; Gillman quotes 2 an entry from his diary there, dated Dec. 15th; the French entered Naples early in February 1806, so that Coleridge cannot have arrived at Rome much before the end of January. He remained until the 18th of May-the second anniversary of his

arrival at Malta.

Of his doings in Rome we know little or nothing. Soon after reaching England he wrote thus to Stuart: If I recover a steady though imperfect health, I perhaps should have no reason to regret my long absence; not even my perilous detention in Italy; for by my regular attention to the best of the good things in Rome, and associating almost wholly with the artists of acknowledged highest reputation, I acquired more insight into the Fine Arts in three months than I could have done in England in twenty years.' He made many new acquaintances -among others Baron W. von Humboldt 4 (then Prussian Minister at the Papal Court) and Ludwig Tieck 5—and one friend, Washington Allston, the American painter. Of his leaving Rome and Italy, of the reasons which led to it, and of the manner of it, Coleridge is reported to have given several accounts not altogether consistent.7 The only points common to them all are that he was warned to get away from Rome and Italy as quickly as possible, because Napoleon had ordered his arrest for having, years before, written certain articles in the Morning Post; and that he instantly fled to an Italian port, whence he found passage to England. The details attributed to him, besides being inconsistent, are mostly trivial, and probably owe much of both qualities to their reporters. It is not improbable that Napoleon ordered the arrest of the English in Italy; possible, even, that he marked Coleridge down particularly; and the poet may have been warned, and his escape assisted, by influential acquaintances; but we know nothing of the circumstances from Coleridge directly. He certainly did not go direct to Leghorn and sail directly, or go to Leghorn and skulk about incognito until he secured a passage -as is variously alleged. He probably went direct to Leghorn,8 and, after arranging for a passage in an American vessel, left again; but at all events he wrote a letter to W. Allston (then at Rome) on June 19 from some town unnamed, where

1 Letter to Stuart, '[London] Aug. 18, 1806.' Its narrative stops abruptly at the point above (Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 56).

2 Life, p. 179.

3 Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 60. Gillman (Life, p. 179) makes a statement much to the same effect.

4 In The Friend (1818, etc., Sect. II. Essay xi.) Coleridge says he then read to him Wordsworth's Ode on the Intimation of Immortality. This poem was not completed until 1806; but some incomplete draft of it may have been sent to him at Malta. See also an allusion to Humboldt in Table Talk, Aug. 28, 1833.

5 He renewed acquaintance with Tieck in London in 1817.

6 He painted a full-length portrait of Cole

ridge at Rome; but left it with other of his effects at Leghorn. As nothing has been heard of it since, it may never have been recovered. The same painter's portrait of Coleridge, now in the National Portrait Gallery, was taken at Bristol in 1814.

7 Gillman, Life, pp. 179-181; Cottle's Rem. pp. 310-313; and (through John Sterling) in Caroline Fox's Journals.

8 'Coleridge has been daily expected since the 1st of May last year. The last accounts were dated in the May of this-he was then at Leghorn, about to embark for England' (Unprinted portion of letter of Southey to Cottle, Aug. 11, 1806, in Life and Corr. iii. 51). See also Southey's letter to Danvers (Letters of R. S. i. 377).

he had then been for more than a fortnight: 'I have been dangerously ill for the last fortnight . . . about ten days ago when rising from my bed I had a manifest stroke of palsy. . . . Enough of it-continual vexations and preyings upon the spirit. I gave life to my children, and they have repeatedly given it to me, for, by the Maker of all things, but for them I would try my chance. But they pluck out the wing-feathers from the mind. I have not recovered the sense of my side or my hand, but have recovered the use. I am harassed by local and partial fevers. This day at noon we set off for Leghorn. . . . Heaven knows whether Leghorn may not be blockaded. However, we go thither, and shall go to England in an American ship. . . . On my arrival at Pisa . . . I will write a letter to you, for this I do not consider as a letter. Nothing can surpass Mr. Russell's kindness and tenderheartedness to me.'1

IX. RETURN TO ENGLAND-LECTURES--THE FRIEND

When Coleridge's ship arrived at the quarantine ground off Portsmouth on the 11th August, he was ill, and possibly for that reason wrote to no one. Mr. Russell, however, wrote to his own friends at Exeter, who wrote to the Coleridges at Ottery, who wrote to Mrs. Coleridge--the news reaching her on the 15th. Coleridge arrived in London on the 17th, and on the following day, having taken up his quarters with Lamb, wrote to Stuart and to Wordsworth. In both letters 2 he described himself as much better since he landed, but in neither did he say anything about going home. He did not write to Wedgwood for ten months, and when he did, he described himself as having arrived from Italy ill, penniless, and worse than homeless.' Almost his first words to Stuart were, I am literally afraid, even to cowardice, to ask for any person, or of any person.' Spite of the friendliest and most unquestioning welcome from all most dear to him, it was the saddest of homecomings, for the very sympathy held out with both hands induced only a bitter, hopeless feeling of remorse-a

Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain ;—

And genius given, and knowledge won in vain ;—

of broken promises,—promises to friends and promises to himself; and above all, sense of a will paralysed-dead perhaps, killed by his own hand.

Wordsworth, whose family had outgrown Dove Cottage, was then looking for a house close to Keswick, that he might be near Coleridge, should Coleridge decide on living at Greta Hall. He would do nothing until he saw his friend-for no answer came to his repeated inquiries by letter. Coleridge seems soon to have left Lamb's chambers for a room at the Courier office (348 Strand), and to have settled down as assistant to Stuart and to his editor, Street. He had been sent for by Lord Howick (Foreign Secretary), but had been repulsed by the hall porter, and doubted whether the letter on the state of affairs in the Mediterranean which he had left had ever reached his Lordship. A few days after Fox's death (Sep. 13) he promised Stuart a full and severe critique' of that statesman's latest views.

1 This letter was partly and incorrectly printed in Scribner's Mag. for Jan. 1892. The publishers most kindly sent me a corrected and completed transcript, from which I quote. With other letters of Coleridge, it appears in the Life of Allston just published. Mr. Russell was

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an artist, an Exeter man, and Coleridge's fellowpassenger from Leghorn to England.

2 Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 54; Mem. of Coleorton, i. 157. These are the main authorities for this period.

kindness' has rendered possible.1 I do not doubt the perfect sincerity with which this letter was written, but in view of the events which followed, it can only be read with a pang. Of the use to which De Quincey's gift was put by Coleridge, nothing, I believe, is known. One hopes that part went to repay Wordsworth's loan of £100 made in 1804; and there must have been plenty of debts to absorb the remainderlebts for laudanum among others; but, at all events, soon afterwards it was all gone, for in April 1808, when borrowing £100 from Stuart, in a great hurry, Coleridge uses words which imply that Stuart has been paying his expenses as well as giving him a lodging.2 Coleridge left Stowey for Bristol about the 12th September. On the 11th he had written a long letter to Davy 3 in reply to an urgent message regarding the proposed lectures. He is better, and his will acquiring some degree of strength and power of reaction.' 'I have received such manifest benefit from horse exercise, and gradual abandonment of fermented, and total abstinence from spirituous, liquors, and by being alone with Poole, and the renewal of old times, by wandering about my dear old walks of Quantock and Alfoxden, that I have seriously set about composition with a view to ascertain whether I can conscientiously undertake what I so very much wish, a series of Lectures at the Royal Institution.' He has, however, changed his mind as to the subject. If he lectures, it will not be on Taste,' but on the Principles of Poetry,' and he will not give a single lecture till he has in fair writing at least one-half of the whole course, for as to trusting anything to immediate effect, he shrinks from it as from guilt, and guilt in him it would be.' He concludes by asking Davy to await his final decision, at the end of the month. During the months September-November, which Coleridge spent in Bristol, he seems to have given himself up very much to talk about religion, surprising his friends there with the change which had taken place in his beliefs. A long and deeply interesting letter 4 printed by Cottle shows that he was no longer a Unitarian-he probably never was one, out-and-out-but a fully-developed Trinitarian. In a letter 5 to Poole from 6 Keswick, Dec. 28, 1807,' Mrs. Coleridge says that when her husband joined her at Bristol, in such excellent health and improved looks, she thought of days "lang syne," and hoped and prayed it might continue.' 'Alas!' (she adds), 'in three or four days it was all over. He said he must go to town immediately, about the Lectures, yet he stayed three weeks without another word about removing, and I durst not speak lest it should disarrange him. Mr. De Quincey, who was a frequent visitor to C. in College Street, proposed accompanying me and the children into Cumberland. . . . Towards the end of October, accordingly, I packed up everything, C.'s things (as I thought, for London) and our own, and left Bristol.6

1 S. T. C. to Cottle (n.d.), Rem. p. 342.

2 Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 74.

3 Frag. Rem. p. 99.

I have not seen the

4 Rem. pp. 314-325. original, but it was, no doubt, carefully revised by Cottle before printing. The reports of conversations on these topics are more completely given in Cottle's Early Recoll. ii. 99-124. These are, even more than the letter, open to the suspicion of severe editing. Southey wrote thus to W. Taylor, July 11, 1808: 'Had Middleton been now at Norwich, it is possible that you might have seen Coleridge there, for M. called upon him in London. It has been his humour for [some] time past to think, or rather to call. the

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Trinity a philosophical and most important Truth, and he is very much delighted with Middleton's work on the subject. Dr. Sayers would not find him now the warm Hartleyan that he has been ; Hartley was ousted by Berkeley, Berkeley by Spinoza, and Spinoza by Plato; when last I saw him Jacob Behmen had some chance of coming in. The truth is that he plays with systems, and any nonsense will serve him for a text from which he can deduce something new and surprising (Mem. of W. T. i. 215).

5 T. Poole and his Friends, ii. 202-204.

6 For De Quincey's account of the journey, see Works (1863, ii. 128); art. 'William Words worth.'

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