[353:2] First published in the Morning Post, December 4, 1800: reprinted in Fraser's Magazine both in February and in May, 1833, and in Payne Collier's Old Man's Diary, i. 35. First collected in P. W., 1834, with the following Prefatory Note:—'See the apology for the "Fire, Famine, and Slaughter", in first volume. This is the first time the author ever published these lines. He would have been glad, had they perished; but they have now been printed repeatedly in magazines, and he is told that the verses will not perish. Here, therefore, they are owned, with a hope that they will be taken—as assuredly they were composed—in mere sport.' These lines, which were directed against Sir James Mackintosh, were included in a letter to [Sir] Humphry Davy, dated October 9, 1800. There is a MS. version in the British Museum in the handwriting of R. Heber, presented by him to J. Mitford. Mr. Campbell questions the accuracy of Coleridge's statement with regard to his never having published the poem on his own account. But it is possible that Davy may have sent the lines to the Press without Coleridge's authority. Daniel Stuart, the Editor of the Morning Post, in the Gentleman's Magazine for May, 1838, says that 'Coleridge sent one [poem] attacking Mackintosh, too obviously for me not to understand it, and of course it was not published. Mackintosh had had one of his front teeth broken and the stump was black'. Stuart remembered that the lines attacking his brother-in-law had been suppressed, but forgot that he had inserted the rest of the poem. The poem as printed in 1893, despite the heading, does not follow the text of the Morning Post.
LINENOTES:
[Title]] Skeltoniad (To be read in the Recitative Lilt) MS. Letter: The Two Round Spaces; A Skeltoniad M. P.
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The Devil believes the Fraser (1).
[[3]]
time] hour MS. Letter, M. P., Fraser (1), Collier. At the same hour MS. H.
[[4]]
an Old] a cold Fraser (1): On Old MS. H.
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