appointed. By this arrangement the governor and the public service in
all likelihood profited more than the provisional secretary; for
Coleridge's literary abilities proved very serviceable in the
department of diplomatic correspondence. The dignities of the office,
Mr. Gillman tells us, no doubt on Coleridge's own authority, "he never
attempted to support; he was greatly annoyed at what he thought its
unnecessary parade, and he petitioned Sir Alexander Ball to be relieved
from it." The purely mechanical duties of the post, too, appear to have
troubled him. He complains, in one of the journals which he kept during
this period, of having been "for months past incessantly employed in
official tasks, subscribing, examining, administering oaths, auditing,
etc." On the whole it would seem that the burden of his secretarial
employment, though doubtless it would have been found light enough by
any one accustomed to public business, was rather a weariness to the
flesh than a distraction to the mind; while in the meantime a new
symptom of disorder--a difficulty of breathing, to which he was always
afterwards subject--began to manifest itself in his case. Probably he
was glad enough--relieved, in more than one sense of the word--when, in
the autumn of 1805, the new secretary arrived at Malta to take his
place.

On 27th September Coleridge quitted the island on his homeward
journey _via_ Italy, stopping for a short time at Syracuse on his
way. At Naples, which he reached on the 15th of December, he made a
longer stay, and in Rome his sojourn lasted some months. Unfortunately,
for a reason which will presently appear, there remains no written
record of his impressions of the Eternal City; and though Mr. Gillman
assures us that the gap is "partly filled by his own verbal account,
repeated at various times to the writer of this memoir," the public of
to-day is only indebted to "the writer of this memoir" for the not very