over a most wide and varied range of literature. Indeed, in the region either of abstract thought or of poetry, he seems to have pondered over every book of note one can name, of intellects, for example, so opposite as Boehme and Mill, while in poetry Browning is a delight to him. He has taught himself Greek in order the better to study the New Testament. Conversation with him is a real pleasure. It was difficult to avoid an odd feeling of having got into a fairy tale on being asked for an opinion as to Buddha's heaven-whether it was really annihilation or whether it was conscious absorption in the Deity—as one is nct in the habit of expecting such a subject to be interesting to a London workman. He was well acquainted with all the latest literature on the subject. He was also anxious to know what was thought in India of Madame Lavatsky and Mr. Sinnett. He had a strong opinion about their manifestations himself, observing: "It seemed to me poor stuff; I do not see what the spirit world has to do with cups and dishes."

It was curious to note throughout the evening the inclination of both men and women to talk on grave and deep subjects. In this conversation contrasted with that in an ordinary drawing-room. The reason does not seem hard to find. When a man's business lies in using his brains, recreation must often consist in resting them, but to the man who lives by manual labour, if he thinks at all, thought is a luxury, and his interest in serious questions shows itself in his leisure moments.

This disposition is an aid to intimate knowledge of the people, for they show their real selves. Is not such knowledge one of the most pressing needs of the present day? We stand face to face with the greatest social difficulties; any solution offered in a spirit of class antagonism can scarcely have happy results. But the more various classes know and mix with each other, the more they find of likeness in their wants and in their feelings, and of identity in their real interests, the more they discover how they can work with and for each other. Such a club as this Marylebone one, then, while it gives pleasure to many, and puts the resources of those who have leisure and cultivation at the disposal of those who have less of them, also gives a real if indirect help to the solution of the heavy difficulties around us, by every kindly feeling it excites and by every fragment of knowledge of our fellow-men which it imparts.

CAROLINE HOLROYD.

THE

COLERIDGE AMONG THE

JOURNALISTS.

of contributors whom Daniel Stuart gathered round group him after he had bought The Morning Post was in many ways noteworthy, and his relation with them help us to know something of the literary side of newspaper enterprise in the years just before and after the commencement of the nineteenth century.

Stuart himself, as we have seen, was a remarkable man. Taking charge of The Post when it had a circulation of only 350, and when it was despised even by the few readers whom it supplied with more scurrilous and scandalous gossip than was given in any other paper of the day, he made it, while in his hands, a more successful and influential journal than either The Morning Chronicle was at that time under James Perry or The Times under the first John Walter; and when he left it-to sink again into the disreputable condition from which he had raised it-he secured like fortune for another paper, The Courier, which also was only powerful and profitable while he was its proprietor. In his old age he prided himself, with reason, on the skill with which, as a shrewd man of business, he had so handled two shattered properties as to make them, not only great political authorities and pioneers of a new order of journalism, but also sources of considerable wealth, and he was then inclined to undervalue the help he had received from those who wrote for him; but they found him a good paymaster, according to the scale of pay in vogue at that time, and a generous friend. He was also a man of much literary taste and political tact, and, writing well himself, he gave further evidence of his ability, for which he deserves credit, in taking advantage of so much of the literary skill and political intelligence that were then in the newspaper market.

He was not yet twenty-nine when, in the autumn of 1795, he became proprietor of The Morning Post; and his brother-in-law, James Mackintosh, was only his senior by a year. Mackintosh had just been called to the bar, and-rendered already famous by the "Vindicia Gallica," with which he had rebutted Burke's "Reflections on the French Revolution"—was too staunch an opponent of Pitt's foreign

policy to be in full agreement with the views put forward in The Morning Post. But he and Stuart were fast friends as well as relations, and though his share in the original writing for the paper, being anonymous, cannot now be ascertained, there can be no doubt that it was large. The dignity and vigour of the articles published under the new editorship, must be attributed in great measure to his influence, even when he was not himself the writer. Much of his spare time, however, had to be given to The Oracle, for which he had "superintended the foreign news" since 1789; and of which his other brother-in-law, Peter Stuart, now had charge.1 Perhaps Mackintosh was more helpful to The Morning Post, as an adviser of its editor, supplying him with political information and guiding his policy, than as an actual contributor. It was to him at any rate that Daniel Stuart owed his introduction to at least one of his principal contributors, and through this one to three or four others.

Mackintosh, a widower since the previous April,2 went down to Bristol at Christmas, 1797, on a visit to the Wedgwoods, with whom Coleridge was making a longer stay. The lawyer was much struck by the poet, although, before their residence under the same roof was over, Coleridge quarrelled with Mackintosh, who was a skilful debater, and seems to have taken an unkind pleasure in bringing out his hazy notions on religion and philosophy, and then overwhelming him by his" sharp cut-and-thrust fencing" in argument. While they were still friends, however, Mackintosh wrote up to Stuart asking him to put some work in the way of Coleridge. Stuart arranged to do this, and from the commencement of 1798 Coleridge was engaged to write "pieces of poetry and such trifles" for The Morning Post at a salary of a guinea a week, he being expected, it would seem, to supply, on an average, one poem each week for his guinea.3 The pay was not bad, seeing that most of his contributions were short epigrams and squibs, generally of not more than four or sometimes two lines apiece,1 and

Daniel Stuart in Gentleman's Magazine, July, 1838, p. 24.

2 Of his late wife, Stuart's sister, Mackintosh said in a letter to a friend: "I met a woman who, by the tender management of my weaknesses, gradually corrected the most pernicious of them. She gently reclaimed me from dissipation. She propped my weak and irresolute nature. She urged my indolence to all the exertions that have been useful or creditable to me, and she was perpetually at hand to admonish my heedlessness and improvidence."-R, J. Mackintosh, Life of Sir James Mackintosh, vol. i. p. 91.

Gentleman's Magazine, May, 1838, p. 485.

Such of them as his daughter could trace, and as were not included by Coleridge himself in his collected poems, are printed in Essays on His Own Times, which also gives most of the prose contributions to The Morning Post and The Courier. With a very few exceptions, all these were, of course, anonymous.

m' imshed ten or a dozen in the course of E: saret stendidly, however, with his famous “war conge' 'Em Famine and Sangmer." which, having been written DUCT II ITOL VIS med mur and first published in The Morning I te va af januar 170 and caused some excitement and Txa ime mig is dison Pi-letters four do form us imme—as me person var had let loose the three malevolent frs se VIL off van Sangizer said, for instance:

Et ce i salt, and unicked my den,

Ant I have tema the biod since then

VIX Bre: thousand men.

Another poem, work is gainer many times over, was "The Recansado' write a Ferary, 2007, and afterwards styled "France, an Odel' which vibra the fih sun, appeared in The Post of the 16th of Apt 17på with a predice in which Stuart said: "The Slowing excellent ode is in mison with the feelings of every friend to liberty and foe to oppression of who, admiring the French Revolution, detes and deplore the conduct of France towards Switzerland. It is very story to find so zealous and steady an advocate for freedom as Mr. Coleridge concur with us in condemning the conduct of France towards the Swiss cantons. The poem itself is written with great energy. The second, third, and fourth stanzas contain some of the most vigorous lines we have ever read." Those readers of The Morning Fest who did not discover sedition and blasphemy in them shared Stuart's admiration of "The Recantation" and of "Fire, Famine, and Slaughter;" but Stuart complained that he did not get more of the same sort, and that part of what he did get was not to his liking. One piece, which he refused to publish, was an ungenerous attack on the man who had befriended Coleridge. "Mackintosh," said Stuart, "had had one of his front teeth broken, and the stump was black. The poem described a hungry pert Scotchman, with little learning but much brass, with a black tooth in front, indicative of the blackness of his heart."

Coleridge was only twenty-five when he began to write for The Morning Post; but he had already followed up his first contribution, in 1793, to The Morning Chronicle, by sending other poems to Perry, and had done more important work for The Critical Review and The Monthly Magazine, besides making, in The Watchman, a luckless experiment at editing and publishing a weekly paper or magazine on his own account; and he was now glad of all the money

Gentleman's Magazine, May, 1838, p. 486.

he could earn, though not inclined or able to earn it in businesslike ways. During part of 1798, according to Stuart, "Coleridge attended not at all to his engagement with me, but went about the country on other pursuits." His friend, Southey, supplied the deficiency, however; and when Coleridge went to Germany with Wordsworth and Wordsworth's sister, in September, Southey continued to write verse for The Morning Post, drawing the same salary of a guinea a week for his own use.1 In the autumn of 1799, Coleridge returned to England, and soon after that he entered upon a more important engagement with Stuart.

There has been much controversy about this engagement, its nature and duration, and from admirers of Coleridge there has been much condemnation of Stuart for his treatment of the poet; but the facts, so far as we know them, if fairly looked at, reflect no blame on either party. Coleridge was a profound thinker, a brilliant talker, and an excellent writer of prose as well as of poetry, but he was not suited for a journalist, bound to supply, at fixed times and at regular intervals, so much "copy" as was required from him; and we need not be surprised at his soon breaking down in the uncongenial work that he had undertaken, partly because he wanted to earn money, and partly because, before trial, he thought the work. would be agreeable to him. Nor is it strange that Stuart should have been disappointed at the failure of an arrangement from which, when it was begun, he had evidently expected much advantage both to himself and to the friend whom he honestly desired to serve, and did serve very generously so far as he could, and whom, it is plain, that he all along very highly esteemed for his many excellent qualities, although he soon found, and was repeatedly reminded, that his friend was a difficult man to deal with.

Immediately after Coleridge's return from Germany, he resumed the writing of occasional poems for The Morning Post, one short poem of his being published on August 29, and his next contribution being the first draft of "The Devil's Thoughts," which was afterwards considerably altered. Other verse followed, and in December it was decided that Coleridge, as Stuart said, should "give up his whole time and services to The Morning Post," and receive in return Stuart's "largest salary." What that salary was we are not told, but as Coleridge, who was quite satisfied with it, stated that at that date £350 a year was all he cared to earn, and as the Wedgwoods then allowed him a pension of £150 a year, which he sent to his wife, we may assume that it was not less than about £4 a week, 1 Gentleman's Magazine, May, 1838, p. 487.