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 Lovell Robert Lovell Robert Lovell (1771–1796) was an English poet. He was born in Bristol, the son of a wealthy Quaker, and probably followed some business. He estranged himself from his original circle by marrying, in 1794, Mary Fricker, a girl of much beauty and some talent, who had gone on the stage. He made Robert Southey's acquaintance, and Southey became engaged to his sister-in-law, Edith; this was before Samuel Taylor Coleridge's visit to Bristol in August 1794. Lovell introduced the two poets to their patron Joseph Cottle, and shortly Coleridge was betrothed to a third sister, Sara Fricker, whom he