Samuel Taylor Coleridge Malta under the Civil Commissioner, Alexander Ball, a task he performed quite successfully. He lived in San Anton Palace in the village of Attard. However, he gave this up and returned to England in 1806. Dorothy Wordsworth was shocked at his condition upon his return. From 1807 to 1808, Coleridge returned to Malta and then travelled in Sicily and Italy, in the hope that leaving Britain's damp climate would improve his health and thus enable him to reduce his consumption of opium. Thomas De Quincey alleges in his "Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets" that it was during
Robert Southey "The Doctor". He also wrote on political issues, which led to a brief, non-sitting, spell as a Tory Member of Parliament. Robert Southey was born in Wine Street, Bristol, to Robert Southey and Margaret Hill. He was educated at Westminster School, London, (where he was expelled for writing an article in "The Flagellant" attributing the invention of flogging to the Devil) and Balliol College, Oxford. Southey later said of Oxford, "All I learnt was a little swimming ... and a little boating." Experimenting with a writing partnership with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, most notably in their joint composition of "The Fall