quotation in the "amusing passage in which he declared that
the loyalty of the followers of the Prime Minister was only comparable to that of the creatures in the Ark." But are you not mistaken as to the source of the quotation referred to P You attribute it to Coleridge or Southey, "whichever it was wrote The Devil's Drive.'" The lines to which I think you refer are neither by Coleridge nor Southey, but are from "The Devil's Walk," by Richard Porson (1759-1808,
Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge, and first Chief Librarian of the London Institution). It is said that Porson one evening, at the house of his friend Dr. Vincent, having been "cut out" at whist, was asked to write some verses while waiting for the game to finish, the subject being assigned to him. The result was "The Devil's Walk," which was read at the supper-table. The verses begin :— " From his brimstone bed, at break of day, A-walking the Devil is gone, To visit his snug little farm of the Earth, And see how his stock goes on."
Among other things, the Devil-
" Saw a certain Minister
(A Minister to his mind) Go up into a certain House, With a majority behind.
The Devil quoted Genesis
Like a very learned clerk; How Noah and his creeping things
Went up into the Ark."
These are the lines which Mr. Lloyd-George might aptly have quoted. But surely there are other verses in the same ballad which have a modern application. Is not the following, for instance, prophetic of our Tariff Reformers ?—
" Down the river did glide, with wind and with tide,
A pig, with vast celerity And the Devil grinn'd, for he saw all the while
How it cut its own throat ; and he thought, with a smile, Of England's commercial prosperity."
66 Pens Road, Hatcham, S.E.
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