FOOTNOTES:
[319:1] First published in the Morning Post, September 6, 1799: included in 1828, 1829, and 1834. It is printed separately as the Devil's Walk, a Poem, By Professor Porson, London, Marsh and Miller, &c., 1830. In 1827, by way of repudiating Porson's alleged authorship of The Devil's Thoughts, Southey expanded the Devil's Thoughts of 1799 into a poem of fifty-seven stanzas entitled The Devil's Walk. See P. W., 1838, iii. pp. 87-100. In the Morning Post the poem numbered fourteen stanzas; in 1828, 1829 it is reduced to ten, and in 1834 enlarged to seventeen stanzas. Stanzas iii and xiv-xvi of the text are not in the M. P. Stanzas iv and v appeared as iii, iv; stanza vi as ix; stanza vii as v; stanza viii as x; stanza ix as viii; stanza x as vi; stanza xi as vii; stanza xvii as xiv. In 1828, 1829, the poem consists of stanzas i-ix of the text, and of the concluding stanzas stanza xi ('Old Nicholas', &c.) of the M. P. version was not reprinted. Stanzas xiv-xvi of the text were first acknowledged by Coleridge in 1834.
[320:1] And I looked, and behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death, Rev. vi. 8. M. P.
[321:1] This anecdote is related by that most interesting of the Devil's Biographers, Mr. John Milton, in his Paradise Lost, and we have here the Devil's own testimony to the truth and accuracy of it. M. P.
'And all amid them stood the tree of life
High, eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit
Of vegetable gold (query paper-money), and next to Life
Our Death, the tree of knowledge, grew fast by.—
* * * * *
* * * * *
So clomb this first grand thief—
Thence up he flew, and on the tree of life
Sat like a cormorant.'—Par. Lost, iv.
The allegory here is so apt, that in a catalogue of various readings obtained from collating the MSS. one might expect to find it noted, that for 'Life' Cod. quid. habent, 'Trade.' Though indeed the trade, i. e. the bibliopolic, so called κατ' ἐξοχήν, may be regarded as Life sensu eminentiori; a suggestion, which I owe to a young retailer in the hosiery line, who on hearing a description of the net profits, dinner parties, country houses, etc., of the trade, exclaimed, 'Ay! that's what I call Life now!'—This 'Life, our Death,' is thus happily contrasted with the fruits of Authorship.—Sic nos non nobis mellificamus Apes.
Of this poem, which with the 'Fire, Famine, and Slaughter' first appeared in the Morning Post [6th Sept. 1799], the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 9th, and 16th stanzas[321:A] were dictated by Mr. Southey. See Apologetic Preface [to Fire, Famine and Slaughter]. [Between the ninth and the concluding stanza, two or three are omitted, as grounded on subjects which have lost their interest—and for better reasons. 1828, 1829.]
If any one should ask who General —— meant, the Author begs leave to inform him, that he did once see a red-faced person in a dream whom by the dress he took for a General; but he might have been mistaken, and most certainly he did not hear any names mentioned. In simple verity, the author never meant any one, or indeed any thing but to put a concluding stanza to his doggerel.
[321:A] The three first stanzas, which are worth all the rest, and the ninth 1828, 1829.
[323:1] In a MS. copy in the B. M. and in some pirated versions the blank is filled up by the word 'Gascoigne's'; but in a MS. copy taken at Highgate, in June, 1820, by Derwent Coleridge the line runs 'General Tarleton's', &c.