Famous Single Poems
Poetry and Song, he wrote to Mrs. Akers and asked her to show cause why the poem should not be credited to the Elizabeth bard. Mrs. Akers tartly replied that there was only one reason, to wit: Mr. Ball did not write the poem and she did. This seems to have convinced Mr. Bryant, for when his collection was published the poem was credited to Florence Percy. J. T. Trowbridge came to her defense, as did the Atlantic and The Nation, and gradually the weight of expert opinion rallied behind her, and Mr. Ball and Iago and all the rest of them faded from public memory, until the whole controversy became just another literary curiosity—and a warning to plagiarists who seek to impress their admiring acquaintances!
Even yet, from time to time, its ghost flits feebly across the stage. Its most recent appearance is in the new edition of Hoyt’s Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations, edited by Kate Louise Roberts. Miss Roberts has evidently been taken in by the same old hokum, for she credits the poem to Mr. Ball, and gives as her authority an article which appeared in the Northern Monthly in 1868. The Northern Monthly was published at Newark, N. J., which happens also to be Miss Roberts’s home, and this perhaps caused her to give it more weight than it deserves. But it is unfortunate that a claim so shameless and mendacious should receive sup-
268
