Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin / Comprising the Celebrated Political and Satirical Poems, of the Rt. Hons. G. Canning, John Hookham Frere, W. Pitt, the Marquis Wellesley, G. Ellis, W. Gifford, the Earl of Carlisle, and Others.

by Unknown

THE MORNING POST.

The Morning Post, the next daily paper in order of date to The Chronicle, first appeared in 1772, and was probably projected by John Bell. Three years subsequently the Rev. Henry Bate (who took in 1784 the name of Dudley, and was created a baronet in 1816) joined it, and was connected with it till the end of 1780, when he quarrelled with his colleagues, and set up The Morning Herald, the first number of which appeared on Nov. 1 in the same year. In June, 1781, he was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for an atrocious libel on the Duke of Richmond. He was (says Horace Walpole, in his Journal of the Reign of George III.), the worst of all the scandalous libellers that had appeared, both on private persons as well as public. His life was dissolute, and he had fought more than one duel. Yet Lord Sandwich had procured for him a good Crown living, and he was believed to be pensioned by the Court. He died in 1824.

After Bate, as editor, came the Rev. W. Jackman (or Jackson)—an equally discreditable clergyman,—and he was succeeded by John Taylor (author of Monsieur Tonson), for whom Peter Pindar (Dr. John Wolcot) wrote whimsical verses.

In 1792, Mr. Tattersall was the responsible proprietor, who, knowing more about horses and sport than about the elegancies of literature, Dr. Wolcot continued to be the chief writer; and who, besides his clever verses, gave much information upon affairs of the prize-ring and kindred amusements. In 1795, Tattersall sold the entire copyright, with house and printing materials, for £600. The circulation then was only 350 daily.

The purchaser was Mr. Daniel Stuart; and Mr. Christie, the auctioneer, was also a proprietor. Previous to this time, Robert Burns was applied to, to supply poetry, but none was ever sent. Daniel Stuart was not twenty-nine when he bought The Morning Post; and James (afterwards Sir Jas.) Mackintosh, who was his brother-in-law, and was a regular contributor, was his senior only by a year.

After 1790, the same Andrew Macdonald, who had been editor of The Star, furnished poems, as did Wordsworth, Southey, C. Lloyd, and other verse writers. At the commencement of 1798, S. T. Coleridge—then only twenty-five—was engaged to contribute poetry. The Odes, Fire, Famine, and Slaughter; France; Dejection; and that on The Departing Year; with twenty or thirty other pieces, since included in his Poetical Works, among which was Love—one of the most popular poems of this age—were first published in The Morning Post. To these must be added the first draught of The Devil’s Thoughts, a piece afterwards much altered. About 1800, the paper was supplied with some excellent pieces, in prose, including Fashionable Intelligence, short pungent articles, and jokes, by Charles Lamb.

In 1798 its sale was over 2000; and so well had Daniel Stuart managed his property—being exceedingly well served by his principal assistant, George Lane—that when he left The Morning Post for The Courier, in 1803, the circulation amounted to 4,500. It, therefore, stood higher in point of sale than any other morning paper, the order in respect of numbers from high to low being this: Morning Post, Morning Herald, Morning Advertiser, Times. The amount received for it was about £25,000. According to John Taylor, editor of The Sun, in his Records of my Life, The Morning Post was afterwards purchased by Government to silence attacks on the Prince Regent.

Much of the success of The Morning Post was undoubtedly owing to the writings of Coleridge. He afterwards declared that he had wasted the prime and manhood of his intellect in writing for The Morning Post and Courier. Among his contributions to the former (March 19, 1800) was his famous character of William Pitt. The last time he wrote in it was in August, 1802.

A very competent judge, Thomas De Quincey, thus alludes to Coleridge’s political writings:—“Worlds of fine thinking,” he says of the daily press, “lie buried in that vast abyss, never to be disentombed, or restored to human admiration. Like the sea, it has swallowed treasures without end, that no diving-bell will bring up again. But nowhere throughout its shoreless magazines of wealth does there lie such a bed of pearls, confounded with the rubbish and ‘purgamenta’ of ages, as in the political papers of Coleridge. No more appreciable monument could be raised to the memory of Coleridge, than a re-publication of his Essays in The Morning Post, but still more of those afterwards published in The Courier.” These have since been reprinted under the title of Essays on his own Times.