In 1803, when bad health was the chief source of trouble, a volume of the earlier poems was reprinted with the editorial aid of Lamb. In 1804, Coleridge joined William and Mary Wordsworth on their Scottish tour, but did not remain with them for long. He left them for a solitary walking tour in the Highlands, apparently seeking in vain to tire himself so completely that drugs should cease to be a necessity. There is unfortunately no reason to believe that the device was successful. By mid-September he was back at Greta Hall, where Robert Southey and his wife were now installed. Southey, methodical, hard-working and temperate, was not likely to side with his brother of the pen in the controversies that made the household unhappy. Further residence in that house, the home that had so many outside attractions, was becoming impossible, and Coleridge started for the south, only to fall ill at Dove Cottage, where he stopped on the way. Recovered, he went for a while to London, thence to the Beaumonts' place at Dunmow in Essex. In town again, he sat for his portrait to Northcote, one that seems to present an accurate picture enough of his strength and weakness, "the heaven-eyes and flabby irresoluteness of mien." In April left England for Malta armed with letters to the Civil Commissioner, Vice-Admiral Ball, and, _mirabile dictu_, a pocket full of money. He had £100 lent by his patient and admiring friend William Wordsworth, whose position had improved by the return of the money borrowed from his father, in years long past, by the head of the Lonsdale family, and he had prevailed upon his conscience to accept a gift of £100 from Sir George Beaumont. His fellow-passengers on board the _Speedwell_ were but two, one of them the "unconscionably fat woman who would have wanted elbow-room on Salisbury Plain." Mrs. Coleridge remained at Greta Hall in the company of her sister and brother-in-law, dependent for her support upon the continued charity of the Wedgwoods, but it may be noticed that her husband corresponded with her while he was abroad. When the ill-matched pair were not under the same roof they could be good friends. The years so briefly summarised here show Coleridge at his best as a poet and at his worst as a man, sometimes kindled by the fire of genius, sometimes so degraded that he is dangerously near the ranks of the begging-letter writer. He is only saved from the contempt of his critics because he was at least sincere in his belief that the lack of pence alone stood between him and the mental tranquillity that would enable him to enrich the world with a masterpiece.