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
inserted in the 'Moniteur'. He directed M. Otto to remonstrate, in an
official note, against a system of calumny which he believed to be
authorised by the English Government. Besides this official proceeding
he applied personally to Mr. Addington, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
requesting him to procure the adoption of legislative measures against
the licentious writings complained of; and, to take the earliest
opportunity of satisfying his hatred against the liberty of the press,
the First Consul seized the moment of signing the preliminaries to make
this request.

Mr. Addington wrote a long answer to the First Consul, which I translated
for him. The English Minister refuted, with great force, all the
arguments which B