him," he continues, "that I would not give up the country and the lazy
reading of old folios for two thousand times two thousand pounds,--in
short, that beyond L350 a year I considered money as a real evil."
Startlingly liberal as this offer will appear to the journalist, it
seems really to have been made. For, writing long afterwards to Mr.
Nelson Coleridge, Mr. Stuart says: "Could Coleridge and I place
ourselves thirty years back, and he be so far a man of business as to
write three or four hours a day, there is nothing I would not pay for
his assistance. I would take him into partnership, and I would enable
him to make a large fortune." Nor is there any reason to think that the
bargain would have been a bad one for the proprietor from the strictly
commercial point of view. Coleridge in later years may no doubt have
overrated the effect of his own contributions on the circulation of the
_Morning Post_, but it must have been beyond question considerable,
and would in all likelihood have become far greater if he could have
been induced to devote himself more closely to the work of journalism.
For the fact is--and it is a fact for which the current conception of
Coleridge's intellectual character does not altogether prepare one--that
he was a workman of the very first order of excellence in this curious
craft. The faculties which go to the attainment of such excellence are
not perhaps among the highest distinctions of the human mind, but, such
as they are, they are specific and well marked; they are by no means the
necessary accompaniments even of the most conspicuous literary power,
and they are likely rather to suffer than to profit by association with
great subtlety of intellect or wide philosophic grasp. It is not to the
advantage of the journalist, as such, that he should see too many
things at a time, or too far into any one thing, and even the gifts of
an active imagination and an abundant vocabulary are each of them
likely to prove a snare. To be wholly successful, the journalist--at
least the English journalist--must not be too eloquent, or too witty,