which had appeared in the Morning POST, and which were known to have
proceeded from the pen of Coleridge. But Fox added an ungenerous
and malicious hint that the writer was at Rome, within the reach of
Bonaparte. The information reached the ears for which it was
uttered, and an order was sent from Paris to compass the arrest of
Coleridge. It was in the year 1806, when the poet was making a tour
in Italy. The news reached him at Naples, through a brother of the
illustrious Humboldt, as Mr. Gillman says--or in a friendly warning
from Prince Jerome Bonaparte, as we have it on the authority of Mr.
Cottle--and the Pope appears to have been reluctant to have a hand
in the business, and, in fact, to have furnished him with a
passport, if not with a carriage for flight, Coleridge eventually
got to Leghorn, where he got a passage by an American ship bound for
England; but his escape coming to the ears of Bonaparte, a look-out
was kept for the ship, and she was chased by a French cruiser, which
threw the captain into such a state of terror that he made Coleridge
throw all his journals and papers overboard (Andrews' History of
Journalism, vol. ii. p. 28).]--

I have often heard him say, "Were I to slacken the reins, I should not
continue three months in power." He unfortunately held the same opinion
respecting every other prerogative of public freedom. The silence he had
imposed in France he wished, if he could, to impose in England. He was
irritated by the calumnies and libels so liberally cast upon him by the
English journals, and especially by one written in French, called
'L'Ambigu', conducted by Peltier, who had been the editor of the 'Actes
des Apotres' in Paris. The 'Ambigu' was constantly teeming with the most
violent attacks on the First Consul and the French nation. Bonaparte
could never, like the English, bring himself to despise newspaper libels,
and he revenged himself by violent articles which he caused to be