Joseph Priestley, LL.D. (page 278).

“I have read a communication from George III. to one of his ministers, on the subject of the riots in which Priestley’s house was burned. His Majesty says, in his short emphatic way, that the riots must be stopped immediately; that no man’s house must be left in peril; and then he orders the march of certain troops, &c., to restore peace; and concludes with saying that, as the mischief did occur, it was impossible not to be pleased at its having fallen on Priestley rather than another, that he might feel the wickedness of the doctrines of democracy which he was propagating.”—J. W. Croker (MS.).—[Ed.]

Madame de Stael (page 282).

“Madame de Stael was at Mickleham, in Surrey, in 1793, with Talleyrand, Narbonne, Jaucourt, Guibert (who proposed to her), and others. There was not a little scandal about her relations with Narbonne (see Fanny Burney’s Letters). Narbonne’s place was supplied by Benjamin Constant, who had a very great influence over her, as in return she had over him. At Coppet, she found consolation in a young officer of Swiss origin, named Rocca, twenty-three years her junior, whom she married privately in 1811. She had married Baron de Stael in 1786, and in 1797 they separated. He died in 1802; and she in 1817.”—Life of Mad. de Stael, by A. Stevens, 1880.

“On the 28th of January” (says Crabb Robinson in his Diary, 1804), “I first waited on Madame de Stael. I was shown into her bedroom, for which, not knowing Parisian customs, I was unprepared. She was sitting, most decorously, in her bed, and writing. She had her night-cap on, and her face was not made up for the day. It was by no means a captivating spectacle, but I had a very cordial reception, and two bright black eyes smiled benignantly on me. After a warm expression of her pleasure at making my acquaintance, she dismissed me till three o’clock. On my return then I found a very different person——the accomplished Frenchwoman surrounded by admirers, some of whom were themselves distinguished. Among them was the aged Wieland. There was on this, and, I believe, on almost every other, occasion, but one lady among the guests: in this instance Frau von Kalb. Madame de Stael did not affect to conceal her preference for the society of men to that of her own sex.”

Count d’Orsay related of Madame de Stael, whose character was discussed, that one day, being on a sofa with Madame de RÉcamier, one who placed himself between them exclaimed: “Me voilÀ entre la beautÉ et l’esprit!” She replied: “That is the first time I was ever complimented for beauty!” Madame de RÉcamier was thought the handsomest woman in Paris, but was by no means famed for esprit.—Crabb Robinson’s Diary.

“Madame de Stael was a perfect aristocrat, and her sympathies were wholly with the great and prosperous. She saw nothing in England but the luxury, stupidity, and pride of the Tory aristocracy, and the intelligence and magnificence of the Whig aristocracy. The latter talked about truth and liberty and herself, and she supposed it was all as it should be. As to the millions, the people, she never enquired into their situation. She had a horror of the canaille, but anything of sangre azul had a charm for her. When she was dying she said; ‘Let me die in peace; let my last moments be undisturbed’. Yet she ordered the cards of every visitor to be brought to her. Among them was one from the Duc de Richelieu. ‘What!’ exclaimed she, indignantly; ‘what! have you sent away the Duke? Hurry. Fly after him. Bring him back. Tell him that though I die for all the world, I live for him.’”—Bowring’s Autobr. Recollections, pp. 375–6.

Madame de Stael prepared her bons-mots with elaborate care, some being borrowed.... She was ugly, and not of an intellectual ugliness. Her features were coarse, and the ordinary expression rather vulgar. She had an ugly mouth, and one or two irregularly prominent teeth, which perhaps gave her countenance an habitual gaiety. Her eye was full, dark, and expressive; and when she declaimed, which was almost whenever she spoke, she looked eloquent, and one forgot that she was plain. On the whole, she was singularly unfeminine; and if, in conversation, one forgot she was ugly, one forgot also that she was a woman.—J. W. Croker’s Note-Books.—[Ed.]

The Rev. Gilbert Wakefield (page 284).

“It is well known that the French Revolution turned the brains of many of the noblest youths in England. Indeed when such men as Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, caught the infection, no wonder that those who partook of their sensibility, but had a very small portion of their intellect, were carried away. Many were ruined by the errors into which they were betrayed; many also lived to smile at the follies of their youth. ‘I am no more ashamed of having been a Republican,’ said Southey, ‘than I am of having been a child.’ The opinions held led to many political prosecutions, and I naturally had much sympathy with the sufferers. I find in my journal, Feb. 21, 1799 (says Crabb Robinson): ‘An interesting and memorable day. It was the day on which Gilbert Wakefield was convicted of a seditious libel, and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. This he suffered in Dorchester Gaol, which he left only to die. Originally of the Established Church, he became a Unitarian, and Professor at the Hackney College. By profession he was a scholar. His best known work was an edition of Lucretius. He had written against Porson’s edition of the Hecuba of Euripides.’ It is said that Porson was at a dinner-party at which toasts were going round, and a name, accompanied by an appropriate sentence from Shakespeare, was required from each of the guests in succession. Before Porson’s turn came, he had disappeared beneath the table, and was supposed to be insensible to what was going on. This, however, was not the case, for when a toast was required of him, he staggered up and gave: ‘Gilbert Wakefield—what’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?’ Wakefield was a political fanatic. He had the pale complexion and mild features of a Saint, was a most gentle creature in domestic life, and a very amiable man; but when he took part in any religious or political controversy, his pen was dipped in gall. The occasion of the imprisonment before alluded to was a letter in reply to Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, who had written a pamphlet exhorting the people to loyalty. Wakefield asserted that the poor, the labouring classes; could lose nothing by French conquest. Referring to the fable of the Ass and the Trumpeter, he said: ‘Will the enemy make me carry two panniers?’ and declared that, if the French came, they would find him at his post with the illustrious dead.”—[Ed.]

John Thelwall (page 284).

“Coleridge and Southey spoke of Thelwall, calling him merely ‘John’: Southey said: ‘He is a good-hearted man; besides we ought never to forget that he was once as near as possible being hanged, as there is some merit in that’.”—Crabb Robinson’s Diary.—[Ed.]

The following remarkable account of this scientific monster is given in an “Historical Account of the Warrington Academy, an institution in Lancashire,” published in the Monthly Repository, by the Rev. W. Turner, of Wakefield.

“After the departure of Dr. Reinhold Forster, various unsuccessful attempts were made to engage a foreigner in the capacity of teacher of the modern languages—a M. Fantin la Tour, a M. le Maitre, alias Mara, and a Mr. Lewis Guery; but none of them continued for any length of time.... There is great reason to believe that le Maitre, alias Mara, was the infamous Marat.... It is known that he was in England about this time [1774], and published in London “A Philosophical Essay on the connection between the Body and the Soul of Man,” and, somewhere in the country, had a principal hand in printing, in quarto, a work of considerable ability, but of a seditious tendency, entitled—‘The Chains of Slavery: a work wherein the clandestine and villainous Attempts of Princes to ruin Liberty are pointed out, and the dreadful Scenes of Despotism disclosed, etc.; London, sold by J. Almon.... T. Payne, and Richardson and Urquhart, 1774.’ Mara, as his name is spelt in the Minutes of the Academy, very soon left Warrington, whence he went to Oxford, robbed the Ashmolean Museum, escaped to Ireland, was apprehended in Dublin, tried and convicted in Oxford, under the name of le Maitre, and sentenced to the hulks at Woolwich. Here one of his old pupils at Warrington, a native of Bristol, saw him. He was afterwards a Bookseller in Bristol, and failed; was confined in the gaol of that city, but released by the Society there for the relief of prisoners confined for small sums. One of that society, who had previously relieved him in Bristol Gaol, afterwards saw him in the National Assembly in Paris in 1792.”

Grave doubts have, however, been thrown upon the accuracy of the above statement by Henry A. Bright, B.A., in a paper published in the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 8vo, vol. xi., session 1858–9. Yet it was an establishment that might have attracted such a mind as Marat’s. “At Warrington Academy (says Mr. Bright), were collected some of the noblest literati of their day. Here the free thought of the English Presbyterians first began to crystallize into the Unitarian theology which they have since maintained. Here, for a time, was the centre of the liberal politics and the literary taste of the entire county.... The Academy was founded in 1757, and was closed in 1786. It was visited by John Howard, W. Roscoe, T. Pennant, Currie, the biographer of Burns, &c. The first Tutors appointed were Dr. John Taylor of Norwich, Tutor in Divinity, Mr. Holt of Kirkdale, Tutor in Natural Philosophy, Mr. Dyer of London, Tutor in Languages and Polite Literature, whose duties, however, were taken by Mr. (afterwards the Rev. Dr.) Aikin, father of the celebrated Physician and Mrs. Barbauld. Dr. Priestley succeeded Dr. Aikin.”

Dr. Priestley, who is addressed by Coleridge as “Patriot, and Saint, and Sage,” was succeeded by John Reinhold Forster, a German Scholar and Naturalist, who accompanied Captain Cook in his second voyage, Dr. Enfield, author of The Speaker, and the Rev. Gilbert Wakefield, were Tutors. Among the students were Mr. Serjeant Heywood; Archibald Hamilton Rowan, the Irish rebel; the Rev. H. Malthus; Lord Ennismore; Sir James Carnegie of Southesk; Mr. Henry Beaufoy, etc., all strong Whigs. The name of neither Mara nor Le Maitre appears on the Minutes of the Academy.

For the latest contribution to the history of Marat’s sojourn in England we are indebted to the researches of Mr. H. Morse Stephens, of Balliol College, Oxford, who, in his elaborate and painstaking History of the French Revolution (1886), which includes facts unknown to Carlyle and earlier historians, gives the following account of that “arch-destroyer”; but, as he calls him, “a much maligned individual”:—

“Jean Paul Marat,” says he, “was born at Boudry, near Neufchatel, in Switzerland, on April 13, 1742. His father, who spelt his name ‘Mara,’ was a physician of some ability, and on being exiled from his native island of Sardinia for abandoning the Roman Catholic religion, had taken up his residence in Switzerland; and married a Swiss Protestant. Jean Paul was the eldest of three sons; his next brother settled down as a watchmaker at Geneva, and his youngest brother entered the service of the Empress Catherine, and distinguished himself in the Russian army under the title of the Chevalier de Boudry. Jean Paul was from his childhood of an intensely sensitive and excitable disposition, and also so quick at his books that he became a good classical scholar, and acquainted with most modern languages. As his chief taste, however, seemed to be for natural science, he was intended to follow his father’s profession, and was, at the age of eighteen, sent to study medicine at the University of Bordeaux. He there obtained a thorough knowledge of his profession, but devoted himself particularly to the sciences of optics and electricity. From Bordeaux he went to Paris, where he effected a remarkable cure of a disease of the eyes, which had been abandoned as hopeless both by physicians and quacks, by means of electricity. From Paris he went to Amsterdam, and, finally, to London, where he set up in practice in Church Street, Soho, then one of the most fashionable districts in London. He must soon have formed a good practice, for he stopped in London, with occasional visits to Dublin and Edinburgh, for ten years, and only left it to take up an appointment at the French court. While in London he wrote his first book, and in 1772 and 1773, he published the first two volumes of a philosophical and physiological Essay on Man. The point he discussed was the old problem of the relation between body and mind, and he treated it in a very interesting manner from the physiological point of view. He held some extraordinary theory about the existence of some fluid in the veins which acted on the mind; which, however, does not impair the interest of his inquiries into the cause of dreams, or diminish the respect felt for his wide reading and extensive knowledge both of ancient and modern philosophical and medical authors. He shows a wide knowledge of Latin and Greek literature, and while writing in good English freely quotes French, German, Italian, and Spanish writers. In one part of his book he declared that it was ridiculous for any one to make psychical researches without having some knowledge of anatomy and physiology, and openly attacked HelvÉtius for despising scientific knowledge in his famous De l’Esprit. Voltaire naturally took the side of HelvÉtius, and did the young author the honour of noticing, and very severely criticising, his book. Marat himself translated it into French, and published it at Amsterdam in 1775. His next work was of a political character. He had got mixed up with some of the popular societies in England, which were striving to obtain a thorough reform of the representation of the people in the House of Commons, and, in 1774, published a work, which he entitled The Chains of Slavery. In this book, which is partly historical and partly political, he begs the electors to take more care in the choice of their representatives. It is written in a very declamatory style, and strikes the note of the responsibility of representatives to their constituents, which is the key-note of all his political ideas. The book is published in quarto, and is printed on fine paper, so that it can hardly have been meant to appeal to the populace, but it, nevertheless, procured him the honorary membership of the popular societies of Newcastle and other great northern cities. Subsequently he again returned to his profession, and after publishing a medical tract in 1775, of which no copy is known to exist, he published An Inquiry into the Nature, Cause, and Cure of a singular Disease of the Eyes, in 1776. [See Academy of September 23, 1882.] In this little pamphlet there is no violent language; it describes the disease and the cases he had cured in perfectly simple language, and shows, at least, that he was no mere quack, but a scientific physician. On June 30, 1775, he had, while on a visit to Scotland, received the honorary degree of M.D. from the University of St. Andrews for his eminence as a doctor, and had probably received similar compliments from other Universities, because, on June 24, 1777, Jean Paul Marat, ‘mÉdecin de plusieurs facultÉs d’Angleterre,’ was appointed, for his good character and high reputation as a doctor, physician to the body-guard of the Comte d’Artois, with a salary of a thousand livres a year and allowances. To take up this court appointment he moved to Paris, and soon acquired a large practice there, and the name of ‘physician of the incurables,’ from the number of hopeless cases he was successful in treating. He also moved in the best society about the court, and won the affections of the Marquise de l’Aubespine for saving her life. For some reason or other, most probably because he had obtained a competent fortune, and desired to satisfy his ambition, he resigned his court appointment in 1783, and devoted himself to science. He had long observed the phenomena of Heat, Light, and Electricity, and in the course of the next five years published the result of his experiments, and presented them to the Academy of Sciences. His hard work won him the friendship of Benjamin Franklin, but the violence with which he attacked his adversaries, and his audacity in doubting the conclusions of Newton, prevented him from obtaining a seat in the Academy of Sciences. When he recognised that this hostility to himself prevented due recognition of his work, he determined to win the approbation of the Academy by concealing his name; and his translation of the Optics of Newton, which was covered by the name of M. de BeauzÉe, and published in 1788, was at once crowned by the very Academy which had rejected him.

“His political work during these years was confined to a treatise, in imitation of Beccaria, on the subject of Punishments. The approach of the States-General, however, revived his political enthusiasm, and in the March of 1789, when he believed himself to be dying, he published his Offrande À la Patrie, which was followed in quick succession by a supplement and other pamphlets. Of these, distinctly the most able is the Tableau des Vices de la Constitution Anglaise, which he presented to the Assembly in September, 1789. In it he points out what he had learnt in the popular societies of England, that the English people was by no means so well governed as it was supposed to be; that the influence of the king and the ministry was overwhelming through the extent of patronage, and that the rich there bought seats in the House of Commons as they bought estates.

“Marat then felt that he could not express himself frequently enough in pamphlets, and on September 12 appeared the first number of a journal written entirely by himself, called the Journal du Peuple, which title was changed to that of Ami du Peuple, or The People’s Friend, with the fourth number.

“To understand the man, it is necessary to get rid of preconceived ideas. Suspicious and irritable, excitable and sensitive to an extreme, he attacked everybody, and attacked them all with unaccustomed violence; but with all this, he was in private life a highly educated gentleman. The extent of his attainments appears from his numerous works, and it must be remembered that he could not for years have been a fashionable physician and held a court appointment without being perfectly polite and well-bred. His faults arose from his irritable and suspicious nature, and years of persecution made him half-insane towards the end of his life; but in September, 1789, he was in perfect possession of his senses, and the very popularity of his journal showed how congenial his gospel of suspicion was to the Parisians.”—[Ed.]

Jean Paul Marat’s Sister.

The Right Hon. J. W. Croker, in a letter to John Winter Jones, dated 23rd October, 1854, says that Colin, who had been Marat’s printer or publisher, “introduced him to Marat’s sister, who was as like her brother, he said—and as from all pictures and busts I readily believed—as ‘deux gouttes d’eau’. She was very small, very ugly, very sharp, and a great politician. Her ostensible livelihood was making watch-springs, but she told me she was pretty easy in her circumstances, and I either gathered from her, or saw cause to suspect, that she had some secret charitable help.”—[Ed.]

LarÉveillÈre-Lepaux (page 283).

LarÉveillÈre-Lepaux left orders in his will that his Memoirs were to be printed and published. His heirs were not proud of the part the Director had played, so, after complying with the terms of his will and printing the Memoirs, they destroyed the whole issue at once; and the only copy extant is the one which, in accordance with the law of France, was sent to the BibliothÈque Nationale at Paris.

These (Gr. “Lovers of Gods and Men”) were a sect of Deists which appeared in France amid the confusion and disorder of the first Revolution. While the State was indifferent to all forms of Religion, and the Republican Directory was afraid of the Christianity which prevailed in the Church, a felt consciousness of the necessity of some religion led many to adopt a form of worship adapted to Natural Religion.

“This Sect” (says Southey, in the Quarterly Review, vol. xxviii.) “began with more circumstances in their favour than ever occurred to facilitate the establishment of a religion or of a sect. Many persons of considerable influence and reputation engaged in the project with zeal, and it was patronised by La RÉveillÈre LÊpaux, one of the Directory.... His motives for putting himself at the head of the Theophilanthropists are said to have been twofold: if the scheme succeeded, he intended to become their High Priest; and he hated Christianity. Through his means the Theophilanthropists obtained a decree from the Government giving them a right of holding their meetings in the Churches, as national buildings, which were open to any religion, but belonged to none.

“Nearly twenty Churches in Paris were taken possession of; but by occupying so many, they injured themselves.... They took up too extended a position, and had neither numbers nor means answerable to the scale upon which they set out.... Their Service began at noon, and lasted about an hour and a half. It was, they said, a worship for those who had no other, and a moral society for those who had. The Ritual consisted of Prayers, Hymns original or selected from the best French Poets, readings from their Manual, and Discourses. The Hymns were, in general, judicious, and set to good music, and the Prayers well composed; but had their books been stript of all that they had borrowed from the Gospel, and from the works of Christian writers, they would have been meagre indeed. In one part of the Service there was a short pause, during which the congregation were expected to consider each in silence what his own conduct had been since the last of these meetings. A basket of fruit or flowers, according to the season, was placed upon the altar, as a mark of acknowledgment for the bounties of the Creator; and over the altar was the inscription, Nous croyons À l’existence de Dieu, et À l’immortalitÉ de l’Âme.... La RÉveillÈre, in a speech at the Institute, declaiming against Christianity, as being opposed to the liberty of mankind, expressed his wish that a form of religion were adopted, which should have only a couple of articles. He wished also for a religion without priests; and this, it was pleasantly observed, would be like a Directory without a Director.

“This was the Creed of the Theophilanthropists. And on each side of it, the following sentences were inscribed in their temples, to take place of the Decalogue:—

“At Marriage the bride and bridegroom were to be coupled with ribands, or garlands of flowers, the ends of which were to be held on each side by the elders of their respective families. The Bride received a ring from her husband, and a medal of union from the head of the family. There was a rite also for infants.... When a member died, the other members of the Society were invited to place a flower upon the urn, and pray the Creator to receive the deceased into his bosom. The Decades and National Holidays were observed by these Anti-Christians, and they had four Holidays of their own, for Socrates, St. Vincent de Paule, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Washington,—oddly assorted names! Two of them, however, stand well together in this kalendar, for the one, who was a Christian, established the Foundling Hospital at Paris; and the other, who was a sentimentalist, a philosopher, and a Theophilanthropist, sent his own children to it....

“La RÉveillÈre used to take praise to himself for having, in his Directorial character, humbled the Pope and the great Turk. The Anti-Christian language of the Directory, and its persecution of the Clergy, are imputed to him; so far his colleagues were willing to go with him; but his zeal for Deism they regarded as ridiculous.... In the way of pecuniary aid, he could obtain little:—beaucoup d’argent was what the Directory were accustomed to demand, not to give....

“Their Service at Paris was numerously attended while it was a new spectacle, and the subject of conversation; but more than two-thirds of the persons thus assembled were idlers. But this concourse soon abated; there was nothing attractive in the ceremonies, nothing to impose upon the imagination or the senses. A propagandist reported from Montreuil that the readings and orations had been heard by an audience avide de morale, but he had observed with pain that the matÉriel of the worship was not what it should have been.... It was got up at Bourges in better style; the orator there officiated in a white sash ornamented with blue flowers, before an altar upon which an orange tree was placed: and at the fÊte des Époux, the Theophilanthropists carried two pigeons in procession, as an emblem of conjugal tenderness, and placed them upon the altar of the country!”

[The literary association of Lamb with Coleridge and Southey [says Sir T. N. Talfourd, in his life of Lamb,] drew upon him the hostility of the young scorners of The Anti-Jacobin, who, luxuriating in boyish pride and aristocratic patronage, tossed the arrows of their wit against all charged with innovation, whether in politics or poetry, and cared little whom they wounded. No one could be more innocent than Lamb of political heresy; no one more strongly opposed to new theories in morality—which he always regarded with disgust. The very first number of The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine [this was, however, a new work, by different hands, but imbued with the same spirit as The Anti-Jacobin] was adorned by a caricature of Gillray’s, in which Coleridge and Southey were introduced with asses’ heads, and Lloyd and Lamb as toad and frog. In the number of July, 1798 [of the original Anti-Jacobin] appeared the well-known poem of New Morality, in which all the prominent objects of the hatred of these champions of religion and order were introduced as offering homage to Lepaux, a French charlatan,—of whose existence Lamb had never even heard. Not content with thus confounding persons of the most opposite opinions and the most various characters in one common libel, the party returned to the charge in their number for September [of The Anti-Jacobin Review], and denounced the young poets in a parody on the Ode to the Passions, under the title of The Anarchists. They are reprinted in the present volume.—Ed.]

[The cause of Coleridge, Southey, Lloyd, and Lamb, being thus satirized as persons of the same politics, was the conjoint publication of their works. In the spring of 1796, Coleridge published vol. i. of his Juvenile Poems, including three Sonnets by Lamb; in May, 1797, there appeared a new edition, with many poems by Lloyd and Lamb. The Fall of Robespierre, an historic drama, was published Sept. 22, 1794: the first act written by Coleridge, the second and third by Southey. It is not difficult to understand why Coleridge was so severely attacked by the Government writers. In 1795, at the early age of 23, he delivered, at Bristol, some public lectures, reflecting in warm terms on the measures of Pitt. Three of them were published at Bristol at the end of 1795—the first two together, with the title of Conciones ad Populum; the third as The Plot Discovered. The eloquent passage in conclusion of the first of these addresses was written by Southey. That he was considered by ministers a dangerous character is proved by his having been for some months watched by a Government spy while residing at Stowey, providing for his scanty maintenance by writing verses for The Morning Post. It was his fortune also to excite the ire of Buonaparte, by his anti-gallican writings in the same paper; and a benevolent intimation of his danger by Baron von Humboldt and Cardinal Fesch alone prevented his being arrested while in Italy. (See p. 284.)

Southey thus alludes to the attack upon him (by Gillray, in his famous caricature), in a letter addressed to C. W. W. Wynn, dated Hereford, August 15, 1798:—“I have seen myself Bedfordized, and it has been a subject of much amusement. Holcroft’s likeness is admirably preserved. I know not what poor Lamb has done to be croaking there. What I think the worst part of The Anti-Jacobin abuse is the lumping together men of such opposite principles; this was stupid. We should have all been welcoming the Director, not the Theophilanthrope. The conductors of The Anti-Jacobin will have much to answer for in thus inflaming the animosities of this country. They are labouring to produce the deadly hatred of Irish faction; perhaps to produce the same end. Such an address as you mention might probably be of great use; that I could assist you in it is less certain. I do not feel myself at all calculated for anything that requires methodical reasoning; and though you and I should agree in the main object of the pamphlet, our opinions are at root different. The old systems of government, I think, must fall; but in this country the immediate danger is on the other hand,—from an unconstitutional and unlimited power. Burleigh saw how a Parliament might be employed against the people, and Montesquieu prophesied the fall of English liberty when the Legislature should become corrupt. You will not agree with me in thinking his prophecy fulfilled. Violent men there undoubtedly are among the democrats, as they are always called; but is there any one among them whom the ministerialists will allow to be moderate?” The Anti-Jacobin certainly speaks the sentiments of Government.’—Ed.]

Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey (page 284).

[“The passionate verdicts given, both pro and con, in reference to Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, may now be looked back upon with some wonder, but all three had made themselves obnoxious to the charge of renegadism. Wordsworth had accepted the office of stamp-distributor from Lord Lonsdale; Southey, after attempting to suppress his demagogical drama of Wat Tyler, became a violent Tory, bringing a hot partisanship into the ranks to which he fled; and Coleridge, a Tom-Paineite in politics and a preaching Unitarian, ended by adopting all the doctrines of orthodoxy.”—Sir John Bowring.—Ed.]

Edmund Burke (page 286).

“Adair told me a great many things about Burke, and Fox, and Fitzpatrick, and all the eminent men of that time with whom he lived when he was young. He said... that Fitzpatrick was the most agreeable of them all, but Hare the most brilliant. Burke’s conversation was delightful, so luminous and instructive. He was very passionate; and Adair said that the first time he ever saw him he unluckily asked him some question about the wild parts of Ireland, when Burke broke out: ‘You are a fool and a blockhead. There are no wild parts in Ireland.’... There was an attempt to bring about a reconciliation between him and Fox, and a meeting for that purpose took place of all the leading men, at Burlington House. Burke was on the point of yielding when his son suddenly made his appearance unbidden, and, on being told what was going on, he said: ‘My father shall be no party to such a compromise,’ took Burke aside, and persuaded him to reject the overtures. That son Adair described as the most disagreeable, violent, and wrong-headed of men, but the idol of his father, who used to say that he united all his own talents and acquirements with those of Fox and everybody else, &c.”—See The Greville Memoirs, i. 136–7.—[Ed.]

[The following remarkable passage occurs in a pamphlet written by Tom Paine, entitled: Thomas Paine to the People of England, on the Invasion of England; Philadelphia, printed at the Temple of Reason Press, Arch Street, 1804.

“The original plan, formed in the time of the Directory (but now much more extensive) was to build one thousand boats, each sixty feet long, sixteen feet broad, to draw about two feet water, to carry a twenty-four or thirty-six pounder in the head and a field-piece in the stern, to be run out as soon as they touched ground. Each boat was to carry a hundred men, making in the whole one hundred thousand, and to row with twenty or twenty-five oars on a side. Bonaparte was appointed to the command, and by an agreement between him and me, I was to accompany him, as the intention of the expedition was to give the people of England an opportunity of forming a government for themselves, and thereby bring about peace.”—Ed.]

THE COURIER.

The Courier, in the time of the war, was the great paper; it obtained a large circulation, and consequently exercised considerable influence. It was started by John Parry in 1792, and he carried it on for some years with tolerable success, till he was ruined in 1799 by a government prosecution for a libel on the Emperor of Russia. It was bought by Daniel Stuart, who left The Morning Post for The Courier in 1803. During three years, says he, at the time of the overthrow of Buonaparte, The Courier, by the able management of Peter Street, who was editor and half-proprietor, sold steadily upwards of 8000 per day; during one fortnight it sold upwards of 10,000 daily. At the end of 1809, S. T. Coleridge contributed to it some Essays on the Spaniards; and in 1811 he wrote for it on a salary. At this time the paper was much under ministerial direction. From about the year 1818 till 1829 The Courier was conducted by W. Mudford, with whom William Stewart was a proprietor. After 1819 D. Stuart took no interest in it, and parted with his last share in it in 1822. After the year 1825, James Stuart, a Scotch gentleman of great talent and respectability—the same that unfortunately killed Sir Alexander Boswell in a duel, and was author of Travels in the United States—became editor. True to his principles, he gave in this capacity every support in his power to the Whig or Liberal party. He was appointed by Lord Melbourne to the situation of Factory Inspector, which he held till his death, at the age of 74, in 1849. When Jas. Stuart obtained his factory appointment, Sam. Laman Blanchard became editor. The paper having become, like other evening papers, less profitable than of old, the proprietors sold it to the party they had so long opposed. It took Tory politics; Laman Blanchard, of course, resigned; and a few short years were sufficient to destroy a journal which had once been the most valuable newspaper property in England. Its last number appeared 6th July, 1842.

It is a curious, but not creditable, circumstance that The Courier was in the habit of re-printing, from year to year, without acknowledgment, the able leading articles from The Liverpool Courier, written by the Rev. Richard Watson, secretary to the Wesleyan Missionary Society, by whom, in conjunction with his friend, Mr. Kaye, this newspaper was established upon loyal and constitutional principles.

“The Courier, in 1814, was supplied by R. Peel, Lord Palmerston, and J. W. Croker, with political squibs and lyrics, resembling in general features The Anti-Jacobin and The Rolliad. The verses are chiefly parodies of Moore’s Irish Melodies, or of Byron’s songs, and are far above the ordinary level of such compositions.... The various pieces were collected and published in 1815, under the title of The New Whig Guide.”—Croker Papers, vol. i., p. 58.

This statement contains several inaccuracies. The pieces forming The New Whig Guide were first collected and published in 1819, and not in 1815, for Byron’s Fare thee well was not written till April, 1816. The parody on it was entitled The Leader’s Lament. By the Right Hon. George Ponsonby. A. Hayward says in his review of The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, in The Edinburgh Review, 1858—that “Canning has been traditionally credited with the parody of Moore’s. Believe me, if all those endearing young charms, the gentleman addressed being a distinguished commoner afterwards ennobled (the first Lord Methuen), who was far from meriting the character [of a foolish fop] thereby fastened on him”. The other parodies were by John Calcraft, the Hon. W. H. Lyttelton, Dudley North, M.P., Kirkman Finlay, M.P. for Glasgow, &c. Mr. Methuen, in return, wrote many clever squibs and parodies against the Tories, which were collected, under the title of The New Tory Guide, and reproduced, like its rivals in 1819. “Talking of The Morning Chronicle,” says T. Moore (Diary, 19th March, 1831), “Paul Methuen told us he was the author of almost all those about The Rat Club; which are certainly some of the best.”

THE STAR.

The Star, the first London daily Evening Newspaper, was started in 1788 by Peter Stuart, brother to Daniel Stuart, of The Morning Post. Its first editor was Andrew Macdonald, author of Vimonda, a tragedy, and other works: and after him another Scottish poet, John Mayne, author of The Siller Gun, was editor. Robert Burns was offered an engagement to write poetry for it, at the rate of one guinea an article per week. The arrangement was not completed. It was to Peter Stuart that Burns addressed his “Poem, written to a gentleman who had sent him a Newspaper, and offered to continue it free of expense”. The facetious Bob Allen, of whom Charles Lamb has such pleasant reminiscences, was for many years a contributor to this paper. Subsequently, Dr. A. Tilloch, editor of The Philosophical Magazine, was for many years editor of The Star. After Oct. 15, 1831, The Star became incorporated with The Albion newspaper, under the title of The Albion and Evening Star.

The Star was during many years the leading newspaper on the Whig side, Campbell the poet being one of its writers after 1804, when he was engaged at a salary of four guineas a week. The clear profits of this paper in 1820 were said, on apparently good authority, to amount to £6000.

THE MORNING CHRONICLE.

The Morning Chronicle was, with one exception (The Public Ledger, which started in 1760), the oldest of the daily papers up to the period of its discontinuance March 19, 1862. The latest number in the British Museum is dated Dec. 31, 1861.

It was established on Whig principles, 28th June, 1769, by William Woodfall, who carried it on with great success till 1789.

Woodfall, in addition to other talents requisite to the success of a newspaper, possessed two, which were of essential service to it, namely, his prodigious memory, which enabled him to report Parliamentary Debates without the aid of notes, and the excellence of his Theatrical Criticisms, which, as Mr. Fox Bourne, in his copious and valuable work on English Newspapers, 2 vols., 8vo., 1887—one to which the editor of the present publication has been under frequent obligations—says, “are a neglected mine of wealth for students of Theatrical History”.

On Woodfall’s death, in 1803, it was sold to James Perry, who borrowed £500 from Ransome & Co., the bankers, and some more from Bellamy, the wine merchant—who was also caterer and doorkeeper to the House of Commons—and entered into partnership with a Charterhouse schoolmaster named Gray, who had just received a legacy of £500. With that joint capital, the two bought The Chronicle, the Duke of Norfolk making Perry a present of a house in the Strand, which he converted into a new publishing office. A few other influential Whigs, also, contributed a further sum, which, as the late Sir Robert Adair, who is so often satirized in The Anti-Jacobin, and who was a subscriber to the fund, informed the editor of the present work, was £300.

Perry was on good terms with his contributors, and made The Morning Chronicle a more prosperous and influential journal than had ever before been known in England. Gray provided the heavy articles, Perry those of lighter sort; and after Gray’s death, which happened when he had been part proprietor for only a few years, other writers were employed, among them Jas. Mackintosh and Sheridan, and in later times T. Campbell and T. Moore, who contributed verse, and John Campbell, then a young barrister, who was the Theatrical Critic, and was still so in 1810. T. Campbell, on coming to London in 1802, was engaged as a political writer, but this not being his forte, he, with great judgment, confined himself to poetical pieces, among which were Ye Mariners of England, and The Exile of Erin. Perry had another and equally famous contributor. In Sept., 1793, S. T. Coleridge, then aged nineteen, “sent a poem of a few lines to Perry, soliciting a loan of a guinea for a distressed author,” which prayer was immediately granted. In 1796, he accepted an offer of Perry’s to write in it, but the arrangement was never carried out. In later years, Coleridge wrote some other poems for The Morning Chronicle, and his friend Charles Lamb was an occasional writer of prose for it.

Perry continued as the general manager of the paper till his death on 6th Dec., 1821; but before this he had left much of the editing to others, his first assistant after Gray’s death being Robert Spankie, ultimately attorney-general of Bengal. The next was John Black, who had joined him in 1810; and upon him, when Perry died, the entire management devolved.

After Perry’s death the paper was purchased for £42,000, by William Clement, by whom it was held till 1834, when it was sold to Sir John Easthope for £16,500.

In 1843, John Black was dismissed to make way for Andrew Doyle, who had been Foreign Editor, and had married Sir John’s daughter. Black died in 1855.

On 26th July, 1847, Sir John Easthope, who had been carrying on the paper at a loss for some time, sold it to the Duke of Newcastle, W. E. Gladstone, Sidney Herbert, and other influential Peelites. Its new Editor was John Douglas Cook, who had for some time been one of the reporters of The Times, and who gathered round him a brilliant staff of contributors, including George Sydney Smythe, afterwards Lord Strangford, Gilbert Venables, Abraham Hayward, William Vernon Harcourt, and Thackeray. Its business manager was William Delane, the father of the clever young editor of The Times, John Thaddeus Delane.

The Chronicle lingered on as a would-be Peelite organ till the autumn of 1854, when by a curious arrangement, the paper, with all its plant, was sold to Serjeant Glover, for £7500, on the understanding that, if he continued to support in it the Peelite policy, he should have the money back with interest, being paid £3000 a year for three years. That contract soon fell through, as Glover preferred to draw a subsidy from Louis Napoleon, and to make other experiments. At the close of 1854, the circulation of The Morning Chronicle averaged only about 2500, while that of The Morning Post was about 3000, that of The Morning Herald about 3500, that of The Daily News about 5300, that of The Morning Advertiser about 6600, and that of The Times about 55,000.

The last number of The Morning Chronicle appeared March 19, 1862, when what at one time had been the most influential journal in the country altogether ceased to exist.

Of this paper Sheridan speaks in The Critic, and to it Byron addressed a Familiar Epistle. For its columns W. Hazlitt wrote some of the finest criticisms in our own or any other language. Some of the early Sketches by Boz appeared in it, but they were really commenced in the old Monthly Magazine. Dickens’s father was one of the staff. Hazlitt also contributed to it Parliamentary Reports, as at a later period did C. Dickens.

Among other distinguished writers in The Morning Chronicle were Lord Brougham, the Duke of Sussex, David Ricardo, Cyrus Redding, Albany Fonblanque, James and John Stuart Mill, John Payne Collier, Eyre Evans Crowe, Charles Buller, Lord Holland, Joseph Parkes, Michael Joseph Quin, George Hogarth, James Fraser, W. Hazlitt, secundus, Lord Melbourne, W. Johnson Fox, Henry Mayhew, Lord Palmerston, A. B. Reach, Alex. and Charles Mackay, Tom Taylor.

THE MORNING POST.

The Morning Post, the next daily paper in order of date to The Chronicle, first appeared in 1772, and was probably projected by John Bell. Three years subsequently the Rev. Henry Bate (who took in 1784 the name of Dudley, and was created a baronet in 1816) joined it, and was connected with it till the end of 1780, when he quarrelled with his colleagues, and set up The Morning Herald, the first number of which appeared on Nov. 1 in the same year. In June, 1781, he was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for an atrocious libel on the Duke of Richmond. He was (says Horace Walpole, in his Journal of the Reign of George III.), the worst of all the scandalous libellers that had appeared, both on private persons as well as public. His life was dissolute, and he had fought more than one duel. Yet Lord Sandwich had procured for him a good Crown living, and he was believed to be pensioned by the Court. He died in 1824.

After Bate, as editor, came the Rev. W. Jackman (or Jackson)—an equally discreditable clergyman,—and he was succeeded by John Taylor (author of Monsieur Tonson), for whom Peter Pindar (Dr. John Wolcot) wrote whimsical verses.

In 1792, Mr. Tattersall was the responsible proprietor, who, knowing more about horses and sport than about the elegancies of literature, Dr. Wolcot continued to be the chief writer; and who, besides his clever verses, gave much information upon affairs of the prize-ring and kindred amusements. In 1795, Tattersall sold the entire copyright, with house and printing materials, for £600. The circulation then was only 350 daily.

The purchaser was Mr. Daniel Stuart; and Mr. Christie, the auctioneer, was also a proprietor. Previous to this time, Robert Burns was applied to, to supply poetry, but none was ever sent. Daniel Stuart was not twenty-nine when he bought The Morning Post; and James (afterwards Sir Jas.) Mackintosh, who was his brother-in-law, and was a regular contributor, was his senior only by a year.

After 1790, the same Andrew Macdonald, who had been editor of The Star, furnished poems, as did Wordsworth, Southey, C. Lloyd, and other verse writers. At the commencement of 1798, S. T. Coleridge—then only twenty-five—was engaged to contribute poetry. The Odes, Fire, Famine, and Slaughter; France; Dejection; and that on The Departing Year; with twenty or thirty other pieces, since included in his Poetical Works, among which was Love—one of the most popular poems of this age—were first published in The Morning Post. To these must be added the first draught of The Devil’s Thoughts, a piece afterwards much altered. About 1800, the paper was supplied with some excellent pieces, in prose, including Fashionable Intelligence, short pungent articles, and jokes, by Charles Lamb.

In 1798 its sale was over 2000; and so well had Daniel Stuart managed his property—being exceedingly well served by his principal assistant, George Lane—that when he left The Morning Post for The Courier, in 1803, the circulation amounted to 4,500. It, therefore, stood higher in point of sale than any other morning paper, the order in respect of numbers from high to low being this: Morning Post, Morning Herald, Morning Advertiser, Times. The amount received for it was about £25,000. According to John Taylor, editor of The Sun, in his Records of my Life, The Morning Post was afterwards purchased by Government to silence attacks on the Prince Regent.

Much of the success of The Morning Post was undoubtedly owing to the writings of Coleridge. He afterwards declared that he had wasted the prime and manhood of his intellect in writing for The Morning Post and Courier. Among his contributions to the former (March 19, 1800) was his famous character of William Pitt. The last time he wrote in it was in August, 1802.

A very competent judge, Thomas De Quincey, thus alludes to Coleridge’s political writings:—“Worlds of fine thinking,” he says of the daily press, “lie buried in that vast abyss, never to be disentombed, or restored to human admiration. Like the sea, it has swallowed treasures without end, that no diving-bell will bring up again. But nowhere throughout its shoreless magazines of wealth does there lie such a bed of pearls, confounded with the rubbish and ‘purgamenta’ of ages, as in the political papers of Coleridge. No more appreciable monument could be raised to the memory of Coleridge, than a re-publication of his Essays in The Morning Post, but still more of those afterwards published in The Courier.” These have since been reprinted under the title of Essays on his own Times.