After speaking again of the former paper, he says, “I could give many more reasons for its rise than those I gave in my former letter, and among others I would include Coleridge’s occasional writings, though to them I would not set down more than one hundredth part of the cause of success, much as I esteemed his writings and much as I would have given for a regular daily assistance by him. But he never wrote a thing I requested, and, I think I may add, he never wrote a thing I expected. In proof of this he promised me at my earnest and endless request, the character of Buonaparte, which he himself, at first of his own mere motion, had promised; he promised it letter after letter, year after year, for ten years (last for The Courier), yet never wrote it. Could Coleridge and I place ourselves thirty-eight years back, and he be so far a man of business as to write three or four hours a day, there is nothing I would not pay for his assistance. I would take him into partnership,” (which, I think, my Father would have declined,) “and I would enable him to make a large fortune. To write the leading paragraph of a newspaper I would prefer him to Mackintosh, Burke, or any man I ever heard of. His observations not only were confirmed by good sense, but displayed extensive knowledge, deep thought and well-grounded foresight; they were so brilliantly ornamented, so classically delightful. They were the writings of a Scholar, a Gentleman and a Statesman, without personal sarcasm or illiberality of any kind. But when Coleridge wrote in his study without being pressed, he wandered and lost himself. He should always have had the printer’s devil at his elbow with ‘Sir, the printers want copy.’
“So far then with regard to The Morning Post, which I finally left in August, 1803. Throughout the last year, during my most rapid success, Coleridge did not, I believe, write a line for me. Seven months afterwards I find Coleridge at Portsmouth, on his way to Malta.” Mr. Stuart proceeds to state that Mr. C. returned to England in the summer of 1806, that in 1807 he was engaged with his Play at Drury Lane Theatre, early in 1808 gave his lectures at the Royal Institution, at the end of that year began his plan of The Friend, which took him up till towards the end of 1809—in 1811 proposed to write for The Courier on a salary. Mr. Stuart mentions that the Essays on the Spaniards were sent in the end of 1809 by Mr. Coleridge, as some return for sums he had expended on his account, not on his (Mr. Stuart’s) solicitation. He says that Mr. C. wrote in The Courier for his own convenience, his other literary projects having failed, and that he wrote for it against the will of Mr. Street, the Editor, who, in accepting his services, only yielded to his (Mr. S.’s) suggestion. “The Courier,” he says, “required no assistance. It was, and had long been, the evening paper of the highest circulation.” In another letter, dated 7th September 1835, he speaks thus: “The Courier indeed sold 8000 daily for some years, but when Street and I purchased it at a good price in June, 1799, it sold nearly 2000, and had the reputation of selling more. It was the apostasy of The Sun in 1803, Street’s good management, its early intelligence, and the importance of public events, that raised The Courier.” In the same letter he says, “Could Coleridge have written the leading paragraph daily his services would have been invaluable, but an occasional essay or two could produce little effect. It was early and ample accounts of domestic occurrences, as Trials, Executions, etc. etc., exclusively early Irish news; the earliest French news; full Parliamentary Debates; Corn Riots in 1800; Procession proclaiming Peace; the attack on the King by Hatfield at the Theatre; the arrest of Arthur O’Connor, respecting which I was examined at the Privy Council: it was the earliest and fullest accounts of such things as these, while the other papers were negligent, that raised The Morning Post from 350, when I took it in August, 1795, to 4500, when I sold it in August, 1803, and then no other daily morning paper sold above 3000. It was unremitting attention and success in giving the best and earliest accounts of occurrences that made The Morning Post, and not the writings of any one, though good writing is always an important feature. I have known the Paper served more by a minute, picturesque, lively account of the ascension of a balloon than ever it was by any piece of writing. There is a great difference among newspapers in this respect. Most of the Sunday Papers, calling themselves Newspapers, have no news, only political essays, which are read by the working-classes, and which in those papers produce astonishing success.” In other letters he says: “The reputation of the writings of any man, the mere reputation of them, would not serve, or in the very slightest degree serve, any daily newspaper.” “Mackintosh’s reputation as a political writer was then much higher than that of Coleridge, and he was my brother-in-law, known to have written for the Paper, especially during one year (1795–6), and to be on good terms with me, yet I must confess that even to the reputation of his writing for the Paper I never ascribed any part of its success.”
It does not appear from Mr. Stuart how many essays in all Mr. Coleridge contributed to The Morning Post and The Courier. Mr. C. himself mentions several in the tenth chapter of the Biographia Literaria. All these have been copied, and will be republished hereafter.[35] I happen to possess also his contributions to The Courier in 1811. They are numerous, though not daily; which I have now no means of ascertaining. The Critique on Bertram first appeared in that Paper, I believe in 1816. Mr. Stuart admits that some of the poems published by Mr. C. in The Morning Post before his going to Germany made a “great impression:” that on Mr. C.’s proposing “personally on the spot and by daily exertion to assist him in the conduct of the Paper,” he “grasped at the engagement,” and “no doubt solicited” him “in the most earnest manner to enter upon it;” that his “writings produced a greater effect in The Morning Post than any others.” In his letter of September 19, 1835, Mr. S. says “The most remarkable things Coleridge published in The Morning Post were The Devil’s Thoughts and the Character of Pitt. Each of these made a sensation, which any writings unconnected with the news of the day rarely did.” Elsewhere he says, “Several hundred sheets extra were sold by them, and the paper was in demand for days and weeks afterwards. Coleridge promised a pair of portraits, Pitt and Buonaparte. I could not walk a hundred yards in the streets but I was stopped by inquiries, ‘When shall we have Buonaparte?’ One of the most eager of these inquirers was Dr. Moore, author of Zeluco.” In the letter mentioned just above he says “At one time Coleridge engaged to write daily for The Courier on the news of the day, and he did attend very regularly and wrote; but as it was in the spring, when the Paper was overwhelmed with debates and advertisements (and Street always preferring news, and a short notice of it in a leading paragraph to any writing however brilliant,) little or nothing that he wrote was inserted from want of room. Of this he repeatedly complained to me, saying that he would not continue to receive a salary without rendering services. I answered, ‘Wait till Parliament is up; we shall then have ample room, and shall be obliged to you for all you can give us.’ When Parliament rose Coleridge disappeared, or at least discontinued his services.”
The time here spoken of was in June, 1811. In April he had proposed to Mr. Stuart a particular plan of writing for The Courier, and on May 5, he writes to that gentleman, that he had stated and particularized this proposal to Mr. Street, and “found a full and in all appearance a warm assent.” Mr. Street, he says, “expressed himself highly pleased both at the thought of my assistance in general, and with the specific plan of assistance. There was no doubt, he said, that it would be of great service to the Paper.”
Mr. Stuart has been offended by Mr. Coleridge’s saying that he “employed the prime and manhood of his intellect in these labours,” namely for the Papers; that they “added nothing to his fortune or reputation;” that the “industry of the week supplied the necessities of the week.” This he has considered as a reproach to himself, and an unjust one. It was not—Mr. Stuart himself saw that it was not—so intended; Mr. Coleridge’s only object was to show that he had not altogether suffered his talents to “rust away without any efficient exertion for his own good or that of his fellow-creatures;” that he had laboured more than would appear from the number and size of the books he had produced, and in whatever he wrote had aimed not merely to supply his own temporal wants, but to benefit his readers by bringing high principles in view. “For, while cabbage-stalks rot on dunghills,” says he, in a letter[36] to the late Editor of The Morning Post, “I will never write what, or for what, I do not think right. All that prudence can justify is not to write what at certain times one may yet think.” But Mr. Stuart thought that the Public would draw inferences from Mr. C.’s language injurious to himself, though it was not meant of him; and hence he gave the details which I have thought it right to bring forward. I have no doubt that Mr. Coleridge had an exaggerated impression of the amount of his labours for The Morning Post and The Courier, and that when he said that he had raised the sale of the former from a low number to 7000 daily, he mistook the sale of the latter, which, Mr. Stuart admits, may have been 7000 per day in 1811, when he wrote for it constantly, with that of The Morning Post, which never sold above 4500. Mr. Stuart says truly “Coleridge had a defective memory, from want of interest in common things;” and of this he brings forward a strong instance. I think my Father’s example and experience go to prove that Newspaper reading must ever be more or less injurious to the public mind; high and careful writing for the daily journal will never answer: who could furnish noble views and a refined moral commentary on public events and occurrences every day of the week, or even every other day, and obtain a proportionate recompense? On the other hand, a coarse or low sort of writing on the important subjects, with which the journal deals, must do mischief. No one will deny that the character of Mr. C.’s articles was such as he has described; he would naturally be more alive to marks of the impression made by what he wrote in particular than any one else, even the Editor; and men are apt to judge of their labours by intensity as much as by quantity. He perhaps expended more thought on some of those essays, of which Mr. Street and even Mr. Stuart thought lightly, than would have served to furnish a large amount of ordinary serviceable matter. Mr. Stuart observes, “He never had a prime and manhood of intellect in the sense in which he speaks of it in the Lit. Biography. He had indeed the great mind, the great powers, but he could not use them for the press with regularity and vigour.[37] He was always ill.” This may have been true; yet it was during what ought to have been the best years of his life that he wrote for the Papers, and doubtless what he did produce helped to exhaust his scanty stock of bodily power, and to prevent him from writing as many books as he might have done, had circumstances permitted him to use his pen, not for procuring “the necessities of the week,” but in the manner most congenial to his own mind, and ultimately most useful to the public. “Such things as The Morning Post and money,” says Mr. S., in The Gentleman’s Magazine, “never settled upon his mind.” I believe that such things unsettled his mind, and made him, as the lampooner said, with a somewhat different allusion, “Like to a man on double business bound, who both neglects.” This was a trouble to himself and all connected with him. Le ciel nous vend toujours les biens qu’il nous prodigue, may be applied to my poor Father emphatically.
In regard to the remuneration he received, I do not bring forward the particulars given by Mr. Stuart of his liberal dealing with Mr. Coleridge, simply because the rehearsal of them would be tedious, and could answer no end. Such details may be superseded by the general declaration, that I believe my Father to have received from Mr. Stuart far more than the market value of his contributions to the Papers which that gentleman was concerned in. Mr. Stuart says that he “paid at the time as highly as such writings were paid for,” and to Mr. Coleridge’s satisfaction, which my Father’s own letters certainly testify; and concludes the account of sums advanced by him to Mr. C., when he was not writing for the paper, by saying that he had “at least £700 of him beside many acts of kindness.” A considerable part of this was spent on stamps and paper for The Friend; two hundred of it was given after the publication of the Biographia Literaria.
Mr. Coleridge expressed his esteem for Mr. Stuart and sense of his kindness very strongly in letters to himself, but not more strongly than to others. He speaks of him in a letter written about the beginning of 1809, addressed to a gentleman of the Quaker persuasion at Leeds, as “a man of the most consummate knowledge of the world, managed by a thorough strong and sound judgment, and rendered innocuous by a good heart”—as a “most wise, disinterested, kind, and constant friend.” In a letter to my Mother, written on his return from Malta, he says, “Stuart is a friend, and a friend indeed.”
I have thought it right to bring forward these particulars,—(I and those equally concerned with myself)—not only out of a regard to truth and openness, that the language of this work respecting The Morning Post and The Courier may not be interpreted in any way contrary to fact, which, I think, it need not be; but also in gratitude to a man who was serviceable and friendly to my Father during many years of his life; who appreciated his merits as a prose writer when they were not generally known and acknowledged; and by whose aid his principal prose work, The Friend, was brought before the public. I do not complain in the least of his stating the facts of my Father’s newspaper writings; in the manner in which this was done—as was pointed out at the time—there was something to complain of. Let me add that I consider his representation of my Father’s feelings on certain occasions altogether incredible, and deeply regret these pieces of bad construing, dictated by resentment, in one who was once so truly his friend.
My Father certainly does not assert, as Mr. Stuart represents him as having asserted in the Literary Biography, that he “made the fortunes of The Morning Post and The Courier, and was inadequately paid.” He speaks of his writings as having been in furtherance of Government. I have no doubt he thought that they were serviceable to Government and to his country, and that while they brought upon him the enmity of the anti-ministerial and Buonapartean party, and every possible hindrance to his literary career which the most hostile and contemptuous criticism of a leading journal could effect, they were unrewarded in any other quarter. There was truth in one half of Hazlitt’s sarcasm, “his politics turned—but not to account.” “From Government, or the friends of Government!” says Mr. Stuart, “Why, Coleridge was attacking Pitt and Lord Grenville in 1800, who were at the head of the Government. In 1801, when the Addingtons came into power, he wrote little or nothing in The Morning Post; in the autumn of 1802 he wrote one or two able essays against Buonaparte in relation to the Peace of Amiens, and he published in that paper, at that time, a letter or two to Judge Fletcher.” This last sentence is a double mistake, as I have already shown. “At that time the newspaper press generally condemned the conduct of Buonaparte in the severest manner: and no part of it more severely than The Morning Post by my own writings. Cobbett attacked Fox, etc., but The Morning Post was the most distinguished on this subject, and the increase of its circulation was great. The qualified opposition to Government was not given to Pitt’s ministry, but to Addington’s. To Pitt The Morning Post was always, in my time, decidedly opposed. I supported Addington against Buonaparte, during the Peace of Amiens, with all my power, and in the summer of 1803 Mr. Estcourt came to me with a message of thanks from the prime minister, Mr. A. offering anything I wished. I declined the offer. It was not till the summer of 1804, a year after I had finally left The Morning Post that, in The Courier, I supported Pitt against Buonaparte, on the same grounds I had supported Mr. Addington, Pitt having become again prime minister, to protect Lord Melville against the fifth clause. Coleridge confuses things. The qualified support of the ministry, he alludes to, applies wholly to The Courier.” I do not see the material discrepancy between this statement and my Father’s, when he says that The Morning Post was “anti-ministerial, indeed, but with far greater earnestness and zeal, both anti-jacobin and anti-gallican,” and that it proved a far more useful ally to the Government in its most important objects, in consequence of its being generally considered moderately anti-ministerial, than if it had been the avowed eulogist of Mr. Pitt; “that the rapid increase in the sale of The Morning Post is a pledge that genuine impartiality with a respectable portion of literary talent will secure the success of a newspaper without ministerial patronage,” and that from “the commencement of the Addington administration” whatever he himself had written “in The Morning Post or Courier was in defence of Government.” In the preceding paragraph he argues that neither Mr. Percival nor “the present administration” pursued the plans of Mr. Pitt.
In what degree my Father’s writings contributed to the reputation and success of The Morning Post cannot at this distance of time be precisely settled. It must indeed be difficult to say what occasions success in such enterprises, if Mr. Stuart’s own brother could attribute that of The Morning Post to Sir James Mackintosh, “though with less reason even than if he had ascribed it to Coleridge.” The long story told to show that booksellers were not aware of Mr. C.’s having produced any effect on the paper, and when they set up a rival journal, never cared to obtain his services, but eagerly secured those of Mr. Stuart’s assistant, George Lane, does not quite decide the question; for booksellers, though, as Mr. Stuart says, “knowing men” in such matters, are not omniscient even in what concerns their own business. If the anti-gallican policy of The Morning Post “increased its circulation,” I cannot but think that the influence of my Father’s writings,[38] though not numerous, and indirectly of his intercourse with the Editor,—who rates his conversational powers as highly as it is usual to rate them—in directing the tone and determining the principles of the paper, must have served it materially. I believe him to have been the anti-gallican spirit that governed The Morning Post, though he may not have performed as much of the letter as he fancied.