Rock Me to Sleep
had heard Mr. Ball read portions of the poem prior to 1860; and (3) an elaborate analysis of the poem to show that it is all of one piece.
The story which this evidence is supposed to confirm is that “Mr. Ball wrote, or made a draft of the whole poem, except one verse, in the latter part of the year 1856. In February, 1857, he sailed for California, and on the steamers, on both oceans, he corrected and polished it, and added one verse,” bringing home with him the finished product of fifteen stanzas.
The letters were written in 1866 or 1867, after the controversy was well under way and at Ball’s solicitation. They can be explained simply by the error which most people make in trying to place from memory the date of a past event. One or two of them made a crude attempt at documenting the date, and it is possible that their authors did at some time or other hear Ball read some fragments which remotely resembled “Rock Me to Sleep.” Home, Mother, and Heaven have been the favorite themes of amateur poets since time began. All that any of them claims is to have heard Ball read his poem; not one possessed a copy of it.
William Dean Howells analyzed these letters in a review of the “Vindication,” which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly for August, 1867, in a way which would be difficult to improve upon. He says:
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