Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an American naval hero and a mysterious duellist in Malta

Abstract

One of the notable literary projects of our time in the English-speaking world has been the publication of The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge in some 25 volumes by Princeton University Press in the United States and Routledge in the United Kingdom. The latest two volumes appeared in 1990 in the form of an annotated edition of the Table Talk of Coleridge, which contains quite a number of allusions to Malta. In this publication the editor, Professor Carl Woodring, of Columbia University in New York, surmised, in a biographical note (I, 300 n. 6) on the American naval hero, Stephen Decatur, that Coleridge might possibly have been 'intrigued' by an episode in which 'Decatur had acted as second in 1802 in a duel that resulted in the death of the secretary to the Governor of Malta'. The duel, in fact, had taken place in February 1803, more than a year before Coleridge arrived at Malta in a convoy from Portsmouth during the long war against France under Napoleon. The purpose of his journey was to restore his opium-damaged health and seek temporary employment in Malta or Sicily, which then formed part of the independent Kingdom of the Two Sicilies ruled from Naples by King Ferdinand IV many years before Italy became a united country. [excerpt]