The roses of the morn yet lingered there When stars began to peep,-nor yet exhaled Fresh dew-drops glittered near the glowworm's lamp, And many a snatch of lark-like melody Birds of the shade trilled forth 'mid plaintive warbling CHAPTER V. "Learning, power, and time, (Too much of all) thus wasting in vain war Was strong to follow the delightful Muse." WITH the letter of Nov. 5, which concludes Chapter III., the biographical sketch left by Mr. Coleridge's late Editor comes to an end, and at the present time I can carry it no further than to add, that in January, 1798, my Father removed with his wife and child, the latter then four months old, to a cottage at Stowey, which was his home for three years; that from that home, in company with Mr. and Miss Wordsworth, he went, in September, 1798, to Germany, and that he spent fourteen months in that country, during which period the Letters called Satyrane's were written. Here, however, at the end of this brief personal record, I may best introduce the remarks which have been made, and details which have been given, respecting Mr. Coleridge's services to The Morning Post and The Courier, spoken of by him in Chapter X. That representation has been excepted against by Mr. Stuart, who was Editor of the former Paper when my Father wrote for it, and half proprietor of the other. The view which he takes of the case he has already made public;1 he seems to be of opinion, that the language used by Mr. Coleridge in this work is calculated to give an impression of the amount of his actual performances on behalf of those papers beyond what the facts warrant; I have not thought it necessary or proper to withdraw that portion of Chapter X. of this work, of which he complains, nor do I see that it must necessarily bear a construction at variance with his own statements: but neither would I republish it, 1 In articles on Mr. Coleridge, the Poet, and his Newspaper writings, &c., in the Gentleman's Magazine of May, June, July, August of 1838. without giving Mr. Stuart's account of matters to which it refers, extracted from letters by him to Mr. Coleridge's late Editor. He writes as follows from Wykkam Park, on the 7th of October, 1835. “In August, 1795, I began to conduct The Morning Post, the sale of which was so low, only 350 per day, that a gentleman at that time made a bet with me that the Paper was actually extinct. "At Christmas, 1797, on the recommendation of Mr. Mackintosh, Coleridge sent me several pieces of poetry; up to the time of his going to Germany, about 12 pieces. Prose writing I never expected from him at that time. He went to Germany in the summer of 1798. "He returned, I believe, about the end of 1799,3 and proposed to me to come to London to reside near me, and write daily for the paper. I took lodgings for him in King Street, Covent Garden. The Morning Post then selling 2,000 daily. Coleridge wrote some things, particularly, I remember, Comments on Lord Grenville's reply to Buonaparte's Overtures of Peace, in January, 1800. But he totally failed in the plan he proposed of writing daily on the daily occurrences." Mr. Stuart then gives three short letters of Mr. C.'s, showing how often he was ill and incapable of writing for the paper, and the beginning of a long one dated Greta Hall, Keswick, 19th July, 1800, in which he promises a second part of Pitt and Buonaparte, but speaks of it as uncertain whether or no he should be able to continue any regular species of employment for Mr. S.'s paper. After noting that Mr. C. left London at the end of his first half year's engagement, Mr. S. brings forward more letters, containing excuses on account of illness, but promising a number of essays; two on the war, as respecting agriculture; one on the raising of rents; one on the riots (corn riots in 1800); and one on the countenance by Government of calumnies on the King;-promising also a second part of Pitt and Buonaparte, which Mr. S. supposes he was constantly dunning for, the Character of Pitt, published in The M. P. early in 1800, having made a great sensation; proposing a letter to Sir F. Burdett on solitary imprisonment, and that all these should be published in pamphlets, after they had been divided into pieces, and published in the M. P., he doubting whether they were of value for a newspaper. Some of these essays appear to have been sent; it is not specified which or how many. But 2 "Short pieces," Mr. Stuart calls them in the Gent.'s Mag. among them was France, an ode, which was first published in the M. P. in the beginning of 1798, and republished in the same Paper some years afterwards, and must have helped to give it a decent poetical reputation, I think. 3 Nov. 27, 1799. 66 Early in 1807," Mr. S. says, "I was confined by a violent fever. Several weeks I was delirious, and to my astonishment, when I recovered, Pitt was out of place, and Horne Tooke in Parliament. I did not resume the conduct of the Paper till the spring. The Paper suffered loss." The next letter, dated May, 1801, Keswick, speaks of ill health, and "the habits of irresolution which are its worst consequences," forbidding him to rely on himself. Mr. S. had solicited him to write, and offered terms, and it appears that he did form a new engagement for the Paper about that time. In a letter of September, 1801, he says, " I am not so blinded by authorship as to believe that what I have done is at all adequate to the money I have received." Mr. Stuart then produces a letter with the postmark Bridgewater, of Jan. 19, 1802. These letters show, he says, that in July and October, 1800, in May, 1801, on the 30th of September, 1801, Coleridge was at Keswick, that in January, 1802, he was at Stowey, that he could not therefore have materially contributed to the success of The Morning Post. "In this last year," says Mr. Stuart, "his Letters to Judge Fletcher, and on Mr. Fox, at Paris, were published." The former were not published till 1814. The six letters appeared in The Courier on Sept. 20th, 29th, Oct. 21st, Nov. 2d, Dec. 3d, 6th, 9th, and 10th. The latter appeared on the 4th and 9th of Nov., 1802. Mr. Stuart speaks of it as a mistake in those who have supposed that the coolness of Fox to Sir James Mackintosh was occasioned by his ascribing this "violent philippic," as Lamb called it, to him (Sir James). "On those to Judge Fletcher," he says, "and many other such essays, as being rather fit for pamphlets than newspapers, I did not set much value. On this subject hear Coleridge himself in a letter dated June 4th, 1811, when he was engaged with Mr. Street. "Freshness of effect belongs to a newspaper, and distinguishes it from a literary book: the former being the Zenith and the latter the Nadir, with a number of intermediate degrees, occupied by pamphlets, magazines, reviews, &c. Besides, in a daily paper, with advertisements proportioned to its large sale, what is deferred must four times in five be extinguished. A newspaper is a market for flowers and vegetables, rather than a granary or conservatory; and the drawer of its Editor a common burial ground, not a catacomb for embalmed mummies, in which the defunct are preserved to serve in after times as medicines for the living." This freshness of effect Coleridge scarcely ever gave to either The Morning Post or the Courier. He was occasionally in London during my time, in The Morning Post it is true, but he never gave the daily bread. He was mostly at Keswick. A few months in 1800, and a few weeks in 1802, that was all the time he * * * * ever wasted on The Morning Post, and as for The Courier, it accepted his proffered services as a favor done to him," &c. "I could give After speaking again of the former paper, he says, 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." 66 "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 |