Letters. We will only say that, when completed, it consisted of two connected houses, a larger and a smaller. The larger one-and usually some rooms of the smaller was occupied jointly by the Coleridges and the Southeys; the smaller one, of which the chimneys only are visible in our engraving, by Mr. Jackson, the landlord, and his housekeeper, Mrs. Wilson. In 1809 the landlord died, and Mrs. Coleridge rented and moved into his portion.

Lamb saw through the press this year a third edition of Coleridge's poems. See § 3.

from Southey's letters Sept. 28, 1803 :-"We

We give some extracts during the next few months. purpose setting out for a three days' ramble, as soon as my eyes and Coleridge's flying gout will let us be tolerably comfortable." Nov. 19, 1803:-" Coleridge is now in bed with the lumbago. Never was poor fellow tormented with such pantomimic complaints; his disorders are perpetually shifting, and he is never a week together without some one or other." 1804 :-" Coleridge quacking himself for complaints that would teaze anybody into quackery."

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We have quoted, these passages, to illustrate the condition of Coleridge's health. We may make a digressive remark in this place. Southey's frequent laudatory notices of Coleridge in his letters have a false ring at times to our ear, who find a latent peevishness in others, written to more intimate friends. Coleridge's of him are no better. The two did not quarrel. It would have been too absurd. But they were not well-matched. "Coleridge and I," writes Southey, are the best com

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Greta, which winds round and catches the evening light in the front of the house. In front we have a giant's camp-an encamped army of tent-like mountains.”

panions possible, in almost all moods of mind.""Almost!"

"It is the little rift within the lute."

Since his arrival at Keswick, in 1800, Coleridge has been continually forming plans for going abroad. The West Indies, the Canary Islands, France, Italy, have each in turn been in favour. At length his friend Mr. Stoddart (afterwards Sir John Stoddart) invited him to Malta, and he accepted the invitation. Making a round by Devonshire, we learn, indirectly,' that on March 10 he "dined and punched at Lamb's.' On April 2, 1804, he sailed.

Coleridge is gone for Malta," writes Southey on April 3, "and his departure affects me more than I let be seen."-" Ill he is, certainly, and sorely ill : yet I believe if his mind was as well regulated as mine, the body would be quite as manageable. I am perpetually pained and mortified by thinking what he ought to be."-"The tidings of his death would come upon me more like a stroke of lightning than any evil I have ever yet endured." Το think of that! Yet we somehow like better what Wordsworth writes to Sir George Beaumont iu December:-"We have lately built in our little rocky orchard a little circular hut, lined with moss, like a wren's nest. . . . . Coleridge has never seen it. What a happiness it would be to us to see him here!"-Prose Works, ii. 163. And see the notes to the poem, To William Wordsworth.

Coleridge reached Malta on the 18th, and presently exchanged visits with the Governor, Sir

1

Indirectly.] From an entry to that effect in a book Lamb gave him the same evening. See Literary Remains of S. T. Coleridge, v. ii., 412.

2 If his mind, &c.] One of the shallowest remarks that ever was made.

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Alexander Ball, whom Lord Nelson spoke of as one of his three right arms." An intimacy and mutual respect' sprang up between them. The Governor was, for the moment, without secretary. His secretary had suddenly died, and the new one had not arrived. Coleridge was requested to fill the post in the interim. He did so, with success, and doubtless with much eccentricity, till September, 1805. In a story he relates, years afterwards,Table Talk and Omniana, p. 390,-we find him figuring as a magistrate, to our great amuse

ment.

During these seventeen months his health did not, in the long run, improve. It is probable that his opium-taking grew on him. On February 6, Captain Wordsworth went down, with his ship, the Abergavenny, and Coleridge, on being informed, fell backward, hurting his head, and "kept his bed for a fortnight." 2 In July of the same year Thomas Wedgwood died; and though anxious-needlessly. as it proved, about the effect of his death on Coleridge's pension, the whole of which she received,— Mrs. Coleridge, with great delicacy, kept back the truth from her husband. He did not learn the fact till after his return to England.

Coleridge left Malta on Sept. 27, 1805, and proceeded, on a government commission, to Sicily. He ascended Mount Etna, while in the island. On Dec. 15 we find him at the foot of Vesuvius. From Naples he went on to Rome. To think we should

1 Respect.] The reader is referred to Coleridge's noble eulogy of Sir Alexander Ball, and his sketch of his life, in the last five essays of The Friend.

2 Fortnight.] The words between commas are Mrs. Coleridge's, to Josiah Wedgwood, Oct. 13, 1805. But she omits to mention the fall, which leaves a false impression.

have no record of these months,-not a song from the land of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus!

"While in Rome," says Gillman (pp. 179-81), "he was actively employed in visiting the great works of art, statues, pictures, buildings, palaces, &c. &c., observations on which he minuted down for publication. Here he became acquainted with the eminent literary men at that time collected there, and here he first saw the great American painter Allston, for whom he always cherished an unfeigned regard. The German poet, Tieck, he then for the first time also saw, and many others of celebrity. To one of them he was mainly indebted for his safety, otherwise he might have terminated his career in the Temple at Paris; for to Buonaparte, through one of his industrious emissaries, Coleridge had become obnoxious, in consequence of an article written by him in the Morning Post. This salutary warning he obtained from the brother of the celebrated traveller, Humboldt, of whom he had inquired whether he could pass through Switzerland and Germany, and return by that route to England. Humboldt1 then informed Coleridge, that having

1 Humboldt.] Baron William Von Humboldt was Prussian Minister at the Papal Court at this time. He seems to have been on familiar terms with Coleridge. The poet relates a curious anecdote in the Table Talk,-Aug. 28, 1833,-to which we content ourselves by referring the reader. He read to Humboldt Wordsworth's Ode, Intimations of Immortality, as he tells us in a note to The Friend (p. 337), in which he thus remarks of Humboldt:-"I know few Englishmen, whom I could compare with him in the extensive knowledge and just appreciation of English literature and its various topics. He listened," adds Coleridge, "to the ode with evident delight, and as evidently not without surprise, and at the close of the recitation exclaimed, and is this the work of a living English poet? I should have attributed it to the age of

6

passed through Paris on his journey to Rome, he had learnt that he, Coleridge, was a marked man, and unsafe when within the reach of Buonaparte he advised him to be more than usually circumspect, and do all in his power to remain unknown. Rather unexpectedly, he had a visit early one morning from a noble Benedictine,1 with a passport signed by the Pope, in order to facilitate his departure. He left him a carriage, and an admonition for instant flight, which was promptly obeyed by Coleridge. Hastening to Leghorn, he discovered an American vessel ready to sail for England, on board of which he embarked. On the voyage she was chased by a French vessel, which so alarmed the American, that he compelled Coleridge to throw his papers overboard, and thus to his great regret, were lost the fruits of his literary labours in Rome."

We give the narrative of Coleridge's escape as we find it in Gillman. Cottle provides a quite different, and very silly version of it. That Coleridge's papers were thrown overboard we find rather hard to believe; but that boxes forwarded from Malta, and containing much valuable material, were irretrievably lost, there is no doubt.

2

Elizabeth, not that I recollect any writer whose style it resembles; but rather with wonder, that so great and original a poet should have escaped my notice.'

1 Benedictine.] "An order for my arrest was sent from Paris, from which danger I was rescued by the kindness of a noble Benedictine, and the gracious connivance of that good old man, the present Pope."-Biographia Literaria, p. 103. This was Pius VII., who had crowned Napoleon in 1804, and who excommunicated him later, in 1809.

Boxes.] Coleridge speaks, in a letter of June, 1807, of "The almost weekly expectation, for the last eight months, of receiving my books, manuscripts, &c., from Malta."-Miss Meteyard's A Group of Englishmen, p. 324.