my brother Peter by ill-informed, but honourably-meaning, Doctor Currie ; I find in that circumstance an apology or a public justification of my own conduct to Coleridge, in explanation of the misstatements of the ill-informed Mr. H. Coleridge and Mr. Gillman. At the time of the Star in the years 1789 and 1790, my brother Peter engaged Mr. Macdonald, a Scotch poet, author of the play of 'Vimonda,' an accomplished literary gentleman, with a large family, in very distressed circumstances. My brother rendered him important pecuniary services. But his poems attracted so much notice, that the Morning Post tempted him, after a time, by a large salary, to leave my brother. Burns might have had such an engagement. It would surely have been a more honourable one than that of an Excise gauger?

I think I have already shown that with my purse I was liberal to Coleridge to excess. A circumstance has occurred to my mind, which, still more conclusively, negatives Mr. Henry Coleridge's assertion, on his uncle's authority, that Coleridge raised the Morning Post in one year from a low number to 7000. The last time Coleridge wrote for that paper was in the autumn of 1802, and it was well known that he wrote for it, and what it was he wrote. I recollect a conversation at that time with Mr. Perry, of the Morning Chronicle, in the smoking room of the House of Commons, in which Perry described Coleridge's writings as poetry in prose. The Morning Herald and the Times, then leading papers, were neglected, and the Morning Post by vigilance and activity rose rapidly. Advertisements flowed in beyond bounds. I encouraged the small miscellaneous advertisements in the front page, preferring them to any others, upon the rule that the more numerous the customers, the more independent and permanent the custom. Besides; numerous and various advertisements interest numerous and various readers, looking out for employment, servants, sales, and purchases, &c. &c. Advertisements act and re-act. They attract readers, promote circulation, and circulation attracts advertisements. The Daily Advertiser, which sold to the public for two-pence halfpenny, after paying a stamp duty of three halfpence, GENT. MAG. VOL. X.

never had more than half a column of news; it never noticed Parliament, but it had the best Foreign Intelligence before the French Revolution. The Daily Advertiser lost by its publication, but it gained largely by its advertisements, with which it was crammed full. Shares in it sold by auction at twenty years' purchase. I recollect my brother Peter saying, that on proposing to a tradesman to take shares in a new paper, he was answered with a sneer and a shake of the head,-"Ah! none of you can touch the Daily." It was the paper of business filled with miscellaneous advertisements, conducted at little expense, very profitable, and taken in by all public-houses, coffee-houses, &c., but by scarcely any private families. It fell in a day by the scheme of Grant, a printer, which made all publicans proprietors of a rival, the Morning Advertiser, the profits going to a publicans' Benefit Society, and they of course took in their own paper; an example of the danger of dependence on any class. Soon after I joined the Morning Post in the autumn of 1795, Christie, the auctioneer, left it on account of its low sale, and left a blank, a ruinous proclamation of decline. But in 1802, he came to me again, praying for re-admission. At that time particular newspapers were known to possess particular classes of advertisements: the Morning Post, horses and carriages; the Public Ledger, shipping and sales of wholesale foreign merchandise; the Morning Herald and Times, auctioneers; the Morning Chronicle, books. All papers had all sorts of advertisements, it is true, but some were more remarkable than others for a particular class; and Mr. Perry, who aimed at making the Morning Chronicle a very literary paper, took pains to produce a striking display of book advertisements.

will not have them dribbled out, a few at a time, as the days of sale approach. The journals have of late years adopted the same rule with the same design. They keep back advertisements, fill up with pamphlets and other stuff unnecessary to a newspaper, and then come out with a swarm of advertisements in a double sheet to astonish their readers, and strike them with high ideas of the extent of their circulation which attracts so many advertisers. The meagre days are forgotten; the days of swarm are remembered.

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The booksellers and others crowded to the Morning Post when its circulation and character raised it above all its competitors. Each was desirous of having his cloud of advertisements inserted at once in the front page. would not drive away the short miscellaneous advertisements by allowing space to be monopolized by any class. When a very long advertisement of a column or two came, I charged enormously high, that it might be taken away without the parties being able to say it was refused admission. I accommodated the booksellers as well as I could with a few new and pressing advertisements at a time. That would not do; they would have the cloud: then, said I, there is no place for the cloud but the last page, where the auctioneers already enjoy that privilege. The booksellers were affronted, indignant; the last page! To obtain the accommodation refused by the Morning Post, they set up a morning paper "The British Press ;" and to oppose the Courier, an evening one"The Globe." Possessed of general influence among literary men, could there be a doubt of success?

As it is common in such cases, they took from me my chief assistant, George Lane; supposing that, having got him, they got the Morning Post, and that I was nobody. Mr. Lane, as he owned, was indebted to me for all he knew of newspapers. At first he was slow and feeble, but his language was always that of a scholar and a gentleman, rather tame, but free from anything low, scurrilous, or violent. After several years of instruction by me-I may say, education-he had become a valuable parliamentary reporter, a judicious theatrical critic, a ready translator, and

the best writer of jeux d'esprit, short paragraphs of three or four lines, I ever had. With poetry and light paragraphs I endeavoured to make the paper cheerfully entertaining, not filled entirely with ferocious politics. One of Lane's paragraphs I well remember. Theatrical ladies and others were publishing their memoirs. Lane said they would not give a portrait, but a bust. Legat, the eminent engraver, came to me in raptures and pointed out the merits of the paragraph during an hour's expressions of admiration. Lane had little knowledge of politics and little turn for political writing; but he was a valuable assistant. He resided near the office, was ready and willing, at all hours, to go any where, and report any thing, and he could do every thing. Sometimes I even entrusted the last duties of the paper, the putting it to press, to him: an important and hazardous office, in the discharge of which he was growing more and more into my confidence. Of the corn riots in 1800, he and others gave long accounts in leaded large type, while the Times and Herald had only a few lines in obscure corners, in black. The procession proclaiming peace, the ascent of balloons, a great fire, a boxing match, a law trial-in all such occurrences the Morning Post outstripped its competitors, and its success was rapid. Lane was my chief assistant, and no wonder the boɔksellers thought they had got the Morning Post when they got Lane. But they never thought of Coleridge!!! though he, as we are told, raised the paper in one year from a low number to 7000 daily! and though it was well known he did write, and what he did write, as Perry's remarks to me in the House of Commons two months before Lane was taken away prove. Coleridge's last writings in the Morning Post appeared in the autumn of 1802 a few months afterwards the booksellers set up a rival journal and took from me my chief assistant, but they never thought of Coleridge; no offer, or hint of a wish was made to him. And yet the booksellers were very "knowing persons," particularly knowing on such subjects as newspapers and authors.* Long before I

*Sir Richard Phillips was the most active of the booksellers on the occasion,

knew him, Coleridge had published volumes. I recollect his telling me of his offering a collection of poems to a bookseller in the west end, who recommended him to write some warm love pieces as the most saleable. Coleridge did not follow the advice, though much distressed for money at the time, and spoke of it with indignation. I can add nothing stronger to show that Coleridge did not produce any great effect on the Morning Post, than the choice the booksellers made of Lane and their neglect of Coleridge. Neither can I add any thing to his own letters in your last Magazine, Mr. Urban, to shew that, as far as money went, he was much overpaid for any thing he ever did for me. It was not between us a question of profit and loss. I regarded him as a man of extraordinary endowments, shipwrecked by habits, a baby in worldly affairs; and I had a pleasure in assisting him. I inserted in the last Magazine Coleridge's letter about 801. between him and Wordsworth. never paid or gave Wordsworth any money for services. What that letter alluded to, I cannot tell. I published it to shew the confusion of Coleridge's memory on money affairs. He never

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thought of money except when a necessity for it occurred, and then he applied to the readiest quarter, often to me; and such applications never failed, except twice; once when Mr. Street, as half-proprietor of the Courier, must have paid half the 50%. mentioned in the last letter in your last Magazine; and once when Coleridge resided with Mr. Morgan, near Chippenham, I being at the time far from London and much engaged. Coleridge never kept money a day. When he received a sum, it went to pay debts; it was dispersed as if it were a troublesome encumbrance, about which he could not bear to have his. mind disturbed.

This subject leads me to an important feature in his character. When he went to Germany, the Antijacobin publications accused him of deserting his wife and children. In his " Literary Biography" he alludes to these charges. He never deserted them in the sense

and Mr. Lane, a few months ago, was conducting a daily newspaper. I desire nothing to be taken on my single assertion.

which the words imply. On the contrary, he always spoke of them to me with esteem, affection, and anxiety. He allowed to them the greatest part of his income, but that was sometimes insufficient for their comfortable subsistence, and he himself was usually more distressed for money than they were. This is the impression made upon me : Coleridge could not endure the cares of a family. Money was often required, and hints were as often given that he might earn abundance by his writings. In excuse for his retiring from his family, then at Keswick, he said to me one day, among other things, that he was worried about domestic affairs: that he was perpetually teased, among other things, about the cow; the cow this and the cow that, he making two syllables of the word (kee-ow); the kee-ow was unwell; the kee-ow was going to calve, &c. he pronouncing the word peevishly. He never liked what may be called tavern or large dinner parties. small quiet domestic circle, that he enjoyed; to be in a family where he could read and think and write, and walk and wander, both in body and mind, without care or calls of duty. I at times passed successive days with him when we were alone, and I never heard a sentiment or a word from him, either on morals or religion, that was not of a mild, honourable, a charitable kind, such as would have become any clergyman. He regretted that the Church of England did not yield a little to include in its bosom many of the Dissenters, who differed slightly from it; but he was full of horror at the thoughts of Catholic ascendancy, the evil consequences of which he pointed out by reference to principles, and still more by reference to history.

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**Thus, then, I have disposed of the two assertions that Coleridge made the fortune of the Morning Post and was insufficiently rewarded. In your next number, Mr. Urban, I will give some anecdotes of him highly honourable to his memory, and in themselves of public interest.