Chapter XVII: Daniel Stuart and the Courier

Here[28] 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 of the _Biographia Literaria_. 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;[29] 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 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, without giving Mr. Stuart's account of matters to which it refers, extracted from letters written by him to Mr. Coleridge's late Editor. He writes as follows from Wykham 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.[30] 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,[31] 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,[32] 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.

"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 Sept. 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.[33] 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. 2nd, Dec. 3rd, 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[34] dated June 4th, 1811, when he was engaged with Mr. Street.