[29] An island midway between Malta and Tunis, ceded by Naples to Don Fernandez in 1802.
[30] A description of the cottage at Stowey and its inmates, contained in a letter written by Mr. Richard Reynell (in August, 1797) to his sister at Thorveston, was published in the _Illustrated London News_, April 22, 1893.
[31] Coleridge left Rome with his friend Mr. Russell on Sunday, May 18, 1806. He had received, so he tells us in the _Biographia Literaria_, a secret warning from the Pope that Napoleon, whose animosity had been roused by articles in the _Morning Post_, had ordered his arrest. A similar statement is made in a footnote to a title-page of a proposed reprint of newspaper articles (an anticipation of _Essays on His Own Times_), which was drawn up in 1817. "My essays," he writes, "in the _Morning Post_, during the peace of Amiens, brought my life into jeopardy when I was at Rome. An order for my arrest came from Paris to Rome at twelve at night--by the Pope's goodness I was off by one--and the arrest of all the English took place at six." In a letter to his brother George, which he wrote about six months after he returned to England, he says that he was warned to leave Rome, but does not enter into particulars. It is a well-known fact that Napoleon read the leading articles in the _Morning Post_, and deeply resented their tone and spirit, but whether Coleridge was rightly informed that an order for his arrest had come from Paris, or whether he was warned that, if with other Englishmen he should be arrested, his connection with the _Morning Post_ would come to light, must remain doubtful. Coleridge's _Works_, 1853, iii. 309.
[32] An entry in a note-book, dated June 7, 1806, expresses this at greater length: "O my children! whether, and which of you are dead, whether any and which among you are alive I know not, and were a letter to arrive this moment from Keswick I fear that I should be unable to open it, so deep and black is my despair. O my children! My children! I gave you life once, unconscious of the life I was giving, and you as unconsciously have given life to me." A fortnight later, he ends a similar outburst of despair with a cry for deliverance:--
Come, come thou bleak December wind, And blow the dry leaves from the tree! Flash, like a love-thought thro' me, Death! And take a life that wearies me.