Coleridge research reveals Malta dilemma

20 September 2007

Malta's Grand Harbour, which was regulated by Colerdige

Papers uncovered by a BU Professor shed new light on Samuel Taylor Coleridge's political life in Malta.

BU Professor Barry Hough is returning to Malta to study newly discovered documents about the life of Britain's greatest ever romantic poet.

The documents, uncovered for the first time, relate to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his time as Public Secretary in Malta on the eve of the Battle of Trafalgar. They show that Coleridge – famous for writing 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' and 'Kubla Khan' – prepared to manipulate Maltese public opinion in order to promote British Imperial goals.

He was an influential political journalist, whose fierce criticism of the administration of William Pitt the Younger is believed to have brought down that administration.

But now, papers uncovered BU Law Professor Barry Hough and his team show that his time on the island was blighted with incompetence and ineffectiveness.

Romanticist scholars have long-believed that the records of Coleridge’s period in Malta were destroyed in the 1870s. However, now the team – led by Professor Hough – has discovered extensive archives that paint the real picture of the poet and philosopher’s time there.

Coleridge went to Malta to escape the wet climate of the Lake District and to cure his opium addiction.

The team is returning to Malta to continue studying the papers with a view to presenting them to a wider audience as the missing piece of the jigsaw of Coleridge’s life.

Coleridge, who founded the Romantic Movement with his close friend Wordsworth, went to Malta to escape the wet climate of the Lake District, and to cure his opium addiction.

He arrived there in May 1804 and by January the following year had been appointed Public Secretary – a close aide to the governor, whose role was to advise on and implement new laws, and head the civil service.

“We found a lot of material in Malta that related to Coleridge’s activities – and you can look at the laws he passed and make a pretty good guess at his effectiveness as an administrator, and that is entirely new,” said Professor Hough.

“Coleridge was there in 1805 and left a month before Trafalgar so he was at the heart of British military endeavour in the Mediterranean Sea. The British administration at that time is blighted with mistakes and ineptitude, and Coleridge was a part of it.

“He was a broken man forced into exile away from his family and beloved Lake District, in the Mediterranean, on his own, not a trained administrator facing all the complexities of a new colony.”

Professor Hough’s team found that as well as drafting and implementing laws, Coleridge was behind a propaganda campaign of misleading information fed to the local population to help maintain order.

“This work places Coleridge – it helps to understand his political theory and it contextualises him," Profrssor Hough continued."He was an active propagandist, struggling administrator and someone prepared to mislead the Maltese in the British interests.”