Coleridge's political papers in Malta

Abstract

Coleridge's first political paper in Malta as under-secretary to Sir Alexander Ball, the Civil Commissioner (in effect, the first British Governor of Malta) during the war with France under Bonaparte, has become the subject of confusion leading to a long chain of errors affecting two other political papers. The confusion is in the latest edition of Coleridge's Essays on His Own Times in the Collected Works of Coleridge. For the editor, Professor David Erdman, has stated that apparently no copy of Coleridge's first political paper survives, whereas a version of it, dated 7 July 1804, in Ball's hand and with his signature, is in his unpublished correspondence with Nelson in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. An earlier version, dated 3 July 1804, which was undoubtedly the basis of Coleridge's paper, survives in the Melville Papers in the Scottish Record Office at Edinburgh.3 This version, hitherto unknown, is complemented by a letter of 20 June 1804 from Ball to Lord Melville in the same set of papers. Melville (alias Henry Dundas) was the First Lord of the Admiralty in the Tory ministry formed by William Pitt in place of one under Henry Addington the day before Coleridge's arrival at Malta on 18 May 1804 for his health and in the hope of obtaining temporary employment from Ball.