services. Stuart was a dunderheaded person, but he had the faculty of perceiving on which side his bread was buttered. Coleridge thought him a generous friend, and often applied to him in his extremity. He applied to him at this crisis of 1811. Stuart's partner, Street, was editor of The Courier at this time. Street was an incapable journalist who made up for professional shortcomings by the skill he had at catching a nod from lord this and lord that. In his hands The Courier degenerated to a very tool of ministers, and lick-spittle of people in power. The paper was odious to the people, and odious to Coleridge, but, nevertheless, the poor bankrupt journalist—who might have been at the head of The Morning Post, the leading paper of the hour, if his lust of money had been a match for his love of letters-went meekly to Stuart and his partner, and begged employment. Street had no belief in Coleridge; perhaps he was too stupid to recognize his abilities, probably he was too shrewd not to be jealous of any footing that might be gained by a man who was infinitely his superior. But Coleridge's ambition was modest enough and to spare. What did he ask? He asked to be allowed to attend at The Courier office from nine o'clock in the morning until two in the afternoon, to condense the police, parliamentary, and similiar reports that had appeared in the other newspapers, and to write an occasional Note on the affairs of the day. By much artful show of modesty-there is nothing like the pinch of poverty for making the most artless nature artfulColeridge induced Street to consent. He was too eager for employment to make any stipulation as to terms, and he began his work forthwith. Rising about six every morning, he breakfasted, and got into the stage at Hammersmith at twenty minutes past seven, arriving in the Strand at half-past eight. This daily coaching to and fro involved a grievous outlay of eighteen shillings a week, and Coleridge's earnings were probably about as large as those of a third-rate clerk. To save nine shillings a week he walked home every night from the Strand to Hammersmith. His wages were received in irregular sums of £5, and £10, as his necessities required. He worked on; he was so poor that he begged Stuart to let him have his old copies of the day's papers when he had done with them. But his cup of humiliation was still not full. Street, like the nincompoop he was, filled the paper with any trivial news of the day to the exclusion of the articles that Coleridge's spirit, not yet wholly crushed, prompted him to write. These articles fell day after day into a chaos of other papers that lay buried beyond resurrection in the editor's drawer. Coleridge could be beaten down no longer. A rupture arose out of an article that had been so altered at the bidding of a minister that it was scarcely recognizable to its author as his own. Coleridge left The Courier, but not until his poverty had compelled him to undergo a long period of torture.1 In 1811-12 Coleridge delivered before the London Philosophical Society a series of seventeen lectures on Shakespeare and Milton. These lectures were in part preserved by the shorthand notes-long lost, and recovered after forty years-of Payne Collier. They The story of Coleridge's connection with The Courier is now told for the first time. (For authorities see Coleridge's letters to Stuart.) were greatly successful. There were usually about a hundred and fifty hearers, and among them were Byron, Lamb, Rogers, and Crabb Robinson. Coleridge possessed nearly every qualification that ensures success on the platform-a deep voice, deliberation, and extraordinary powers of extemporaneous speech. He had his vices as a lecturer, and chief of these was the vice of digression. When he was announced to lecture on the Nurse in "Romeo and Juliet," he discoursed with infinite circumlocution on parental love, and provoked from Lamb this pertinent comment : "Not so bad-he was to give us a lecture on the Nurse, and he has given us one in the manner of the Nurse." The course ended with éclat on January 27, 1812, the hall being crowded, and the lecture brilliant. Coleridge must have earned a substantial sum by these lectures. He required all he got to eke out the wages of his appointment as condenser of reports. In 1813 better luck came to him. The play "Osorio," written at Sheridan's suggestion in 1797, lay for ten years at Drury Lane. The manager gave it no better attention than to make it the subject of a stupid joke. "Coleridge sent me a play, and in one scene (a cavern) the water was said to drip, drip, drip-in fact it was all dripping." Sheridan's régime at the national theatre was succeeded by that of a committee, of which Lord Byron, the reigning poetic favourite, was a member. Byron induced the new management to accept Coleridge's play, and it was brought out under the title of "Remorse." The play was warmly received, and had a long run of twenty nights. Coleridge's earnings were large for those times, probably two or three hundred pounds. Encouraged by this success, and prompted by Byron's advice, Coleridge tried his hand at drama once more. He wrote "Zapolya," in 1814-15, but it was declined both at Drury Lane and at Covent Garden. It had no parts for Miss O'Neil or Mr. Kean. In this year, 1813, Coleridge went down to Bristol with the intention of re-delivering, under the management of his old friend, Joseph Cottle, the series of lectures which had been given with such acceptance before the London Philosophical Society. He did not repeat his success. Remaining at Bristol until the middle of 1814, he made more than one attempt at a course of lectures. It is not recorded that he broke faith with his audiences, except in the case of an opening lecture, of which Cottle tells a silly and incredible story on hearsay. His health was utterly broken. So shattered were his nerves that he could not take up a glass of water without spilling it, though one hand supported the other. It was a relapse to the condition of the winter 1807-8, and it was due to the same cause -the drug, the drug, always the accursed drug! He was in the toils of his temptation, and his genial and generous nature grew suspicious and morose. He set traps to defeat his weakness. A man was engaged to follow him about the streets of Bristol in order to prevent him from buying laudanum at any chemist's shop that he might pass. He despised himself for his 1 Byron's advice was accompanied by the substantial benefit of the loan, early in 1815, of a hundred pounds. infirmity; he spent long nights in agonizing prayer for forgiveness in respect of the talents he abused. Then came the craving of the appetite to defeat remorse and overcome fortitude. "Before God," he cries, "I have but one voice-Mercy, mercy! woe is me. Pray for me that I may not pass such another night as the last. While I am awake and retain my reasoning powers the pang is gnawing, but I am, except for a fitful moment or two, tranquil; it is the howling wilderness of sleep that I dread." It was a terrible conflict. No struggle more awful ever played a part in the life of any man. That fearful conflict day by day, night by night, between remorse and appetite-the heartrending appeals for mercy and forgiveness for genius wasted, the anguish of powerlessness, the sense of extinguished vigour, the thought of what might have been, and is not, and never can be these are depths of suffering that we may not and should not sound. In such an awful crisis of all that is best in it and all that is worst, the naked soul should stand before God alone. "Life's ocean, breaking round thy senses' shore, In 1814 Coleridge went to Calne, where his friend Morgan was now living in reduced circumstances. He was to pay two pounds ten shillings a week for board, lodgings, and etceteras. At Calne he wrote the "Biographia Literaria." He came back to London in 1816, and took lodgings at a chemist's laboratory in Norfolk Street. 'Nature who conducts every creature, by instinct, to its end," says Lamb, "might |
