[Coleridge set sail from Portsmouth in the “Speedwell” on 9th or 10th April 1804. He wrote to J. Tobin on the 10th (Anima Poetae, p. 68):

Letter 130. To J. Tobin

Men who habitually enjoy robust health have, too generally, the trick, and a very cruel one it is, of imagining that they discover the secret of all their acquaintances’ ill health in some malpractice or other; and, sometimes, by gravely asserting this, here, there, and everywhere (as who likes his penetration hid under a bushel?), they not only do all they can, without intending it, to deprive the poor sufferer of that sympathy which is always a comfort and, in some degree, a support to human nature, but, likewise, too often implant serious alarm and uneasiness in the minds of the person’s relatives and his nearest and dearest connections. Indeed (but that I have known its inutility, that I should be ridiculously sinning against my own law which I was propounding, and that those who are most fond of advising are the least able to hear advice from others, as the passion to command makes men disobedient) I should often have been on the point of advising you against the two-fold rage of advising and of discussing character, both the one and the other of which infallibly generates presumption and blindness to our own faults. Nay! more particularly where, from whatever cause, there exists a slowness to understand or an aptitude to mishear and consequently misunderstand what has been said, it too often renders an otherwise truly good man a mischief-maker to an extent of which he is but little aware. Our friends’ reputation should be a religion to us, and when it is lightly sacrificed to what self-adulation calls a love of telling the truth (in reality a lust of talking something seasoned with the cayenne and capsicum of personality), depend upon it, something in the heart is warped or warping, more or less according to the greater or lesser power of the counteracting causes. I confess to you, that being exceedingly low and heart-fallen, I should have almost sunk under the operation of reproof and admonition (the whole too, in my conviction, grounded on utter mistake) at the moment I was quitting, perhaps for ever! my dear country and all that makes it so dear—but the high esteem which I cherish towards you, and my sense of your integrity and the reality of your attachment and concern blows upon me refreshingly as the sea-breeze on the tropic islander. Show me anyone made better by blunt advice, and I may abate of my dislike to it, but I have experienced the good effects of the contrary in Wordsworth’s conduct toward me; and, in Poole and others, have witnessed enough of its ill-effects to be convinced that it does little else but harm both to the adviser and the advisee.[1]

There is some dubiety as to whether the J. Tobin to whom the above letter was addressed is John Tobin, the dramatist, or his brother James. But Coleridge had taken up quarters with either of the brothers in London before sailing for Malta (Dykes Campbell’s Life, p. 141); and the letter is Coleridge’s parting shot for his host’s over solicitous advice.

On 16th April he was off Oporto, and wrote a description of the place, as seen from the sea, for Southey (Letters, 469). The “Speedwell” was convoyed by the “Leviathan,” man-of-war of 74 guns. Lisbon and the rest of the Portuguese coast are described by Coleridge, and on 19th April the “Speedwell” reached Gibraltar, where Coleridge landed and scrambled on the rocks among the monkeys, “our poor relations.” In his note-books he describes more fully the scene around the Rock of Gibraltar with its multitude and discordant complexity of associations—the Pillars of Hercules, Calpe, and Abyla, the realms of Masinissa, Jugurtha, and Syphax; Spain, Gibraltar, the Dey of Algiers, dusky Moor, and black African. “At its feet mighty ramparts establishing themselves in the sea, with their huge artillery, hollow trunks of iron where Death and Thunder sleep,” and “the abiding things of Nature, great, calm, majestic, and one!” (Letters, pp. 478–9; Anima Poetae, pp. 70, 74.)

In the voyage between Gibraltar and Malta they were frequently in long dead calms—“every rope of the whole ship reflected in the bright soft blue sea”—an Ancient Mariner touch. They reached Valetta on 18th May, where Coleridge was the guest of John Stoddart (afterwards Sir John Stoddart), Attorney-General for Malta. Sir Alexander Ball was then governor of the Island, and was greatly pleased with Coleridge’s conversation and manners, and appointed him his private secretary. The public secretary of the Island dying suddenly in January 1805, Coleridge was made interim Government secretary until the new nominee should arrive. He held the office for eight months, from 18th January to 6th September (Letters, 494); and he acquitted himself well as a business man in the post. What De Quincey says to the contrary is a tissue of unfounded conjectures. Dykes Campbell, one of Coleridge’s most painstaking biographers, admits that there is nothing to show that Coleridge did not perform the routine work of office well.

While in Malta Coleridge duly entered in his note-books his impressions of his surroundings and he records his dreamy introspections of the night watches (Anima Poetae). But Coleridge did not spend all his time in Malta. Dykes Campbell informs us that “early in August, the demon of restlessness drove him to Sicily” (Life, p. 145), which may be rather interpreted that the proximity of the land of Theocritus was irresistible. He was away from the middle of August to 7th November 1804. He twice ascended Etna; and, although Dykes Campbell doubts his having attained to the summit, according to his own account he looked down the crater (Cottle’s Rem., 318; Letter, No. 133). Very few of Coleridge’s letters written in Malta are extant; on account of the precariousness of the mode of despatch in a time of war some of them never reached their destination.

In the Spring of 1805 Coleridge was regretting that he had accepted the Public Secretaryship, saying that his profits would be much less than if he had employed his time and efforts in his own literary pursuits (Letters, 491), another way of grumbling against occupations inferior to the pursuit of the Permanent. To Daniel Stuart he writes on 20th April 1805: “In my letter, which will accompany this, I have detailed my health and all that relates to me. In case, however, that letter should not arrive, I will simply say, that till within the last two months or ten weeks my health had improved to the utmost of my hopes, though not without some intrusion of sickness; but latterly the loss of my letters to England, the almost entire non-arrival of letters from England, not a single one from Mrs. Coleridge, or Southey, or you; and only one from the Wordsworths, and that dated September 1804! my consequent heart-saddening anxieties, and still, still more, the depths which Captain John Wordsworth’s[2] death sunk into my heart, and which I heard abruptly, and in the very painfullest way possible in a public company—all these joined to my disappointment in my expectation of returning to England by this convoy, and the quantity and variety of my public occupations from eight o’clock in the morning to five in the afternoon, having besides the most anxious duty of writing public letters and memorials which belongs to my talents rather than to my pro-tempore office; these and some other causes that I cannot mention relative to my affairs in England, have produced a sad change indeed on my health; but, however, I hope all will be well. It is my present intention to return home by Naples, Ancona, Trieste, etc., on or about the second of next month” (Letters, 494–5). To his wife he says, on 21 July 1805: “I have been hoping and expecting to get away for England for five months past, and Mr. Chapman[3] not arriving, Sir Alexander’s importunities have always overpowered me, though my gloom has increased at each disappointment. I am determined, however, to go in less than a month. My office, as Public Secretary, the next civil dignitary to the Governor, is a very, very busy one, and not to involve myself in the responsibility of the Treasurer I have but half the salary. I oftentimes subscribe my name 150 times a day—and administer half as many oaths—besides which I have the public memorials to write, and, worse than all, constant matters of irritation. Sir A. Ball is indeed exceedingly kind to me” (Letters, 496–7).

Coleridge did not return by the proposed route of Naples, Ancona, Trieste, to be continued, to avoid Napoleon’s power, by Vienna, Berlin, Embden, and Denmark (Letters, 492). He went, on the contrary, straight to Naples in company with a gentleman unnamed (Dykes Campbell’s Life, 149). Here he remained till the end of January 1806; and then proceeded to Rome, where he associated with the artists resident in the Papal capital. He made the acquaintance of Baron W. von Humboldt, then Prussian Minister at the Papal Court; Ludwig Tieck, the German translator of Shakespeare; Washington Allston, the best American painter of his day; Canova, and Washington Irving; (Flagg’s Life of Allston, 61).

Various accounts have been given about what Coleridge said regarding his sojourn in Italy and his flight from it. Gillman (179–181), Cottle (Rem., 310–313), and Caroline Fox (Journals), all differing as to particulars. Flagg, the writer of the Life of Allston, says: “He had intended to go by Switzerland and Germany, but being somewhat apprehensive of danger on account of the movements of the French troops, took the precautions to ask the advice of Ambassador von Humboldt; he advised Coleridge to avoid Bonaparte, who was meditating the seizure of his person, and had already sent to Rome an order for his arrest, which was withheld from execution by the connivance of the good old Pope, Pius VII, who sent him a passport, and counselled his immediate flight by way of Leghorn. Accordingly he hastened to that port, where he found an American vessel ready to sail for England, and embarked. On the voyage they were chased by a French sail; the captain, becoming alarmed, commanded Coleridge to throw his papers, including his notes on Rome, overboard” (Life of Allston, p. 61). This agrees substantially with what Coleridge says in the Biographia Literaria, Chapter X. Cottle works the matter up into a romance in his own facetious way; and the other re-narrators mistake the facts somewhat. Caroline Fox, for instance, locates the embarkation from Genoa, saying: “On reaching Genoa, he so delighted an American by his conversation, who had never heard anything like it since he left Niagara, that at all risks, and with many subtleties, he got him on board, and brought him safe to England” (Journals, I, 123).[4]]