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
Letters of Charles Lamb California. There are very few existing letters addressed to Lamb apart from those sent by his friend Thomas Manning, since Lamb usually destroyed his old correspondence. Lamb wrote his letters in a "bold free hand and a fearless flourish" (his own words), which present no great difficulties to editors, though his spelling and punctuation were sometimes erratic. Lamb's main correspondents were the poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, Thomas Hood, Bernard Barton, Mary Matilda Betham and Bryan Procter; the philosopher and novelist William Godwin; the music critic William Ayrton; the publishers Edward Moxon, William Hone, Charles Ollier, Charles