Famous Single Poems
who would write this sort of mush could, by any possibility, write a real poem.
Literary stealings of this sort have given rise to many controversies and to endless heartburnings. Many lives have been embittered by them, and they have often furnished a theme for the moralist. But few denunciations have been so vigorous as an editorial entitled “Literary Larcenies,” published in the New York Evening Gazette of January 3, 1867. This polemic is so characteristic of the controversial style of that epoch, that it is worth quoting, in part at least:
There must be something in a literary reputation, or so many would not be striving to attain it by all sorts of means. There is a class of scribblers who wriggle themselves into momentary notoriety by puffery, and there is another class who impudently demand attention by claiming the authorship of productions which they could not under any circumstances have written. They generally fasten upon some striking poem which was published anonymously, or whose writer’s name has been separated from it in its wanderings over land and sea, and make a manuscript copy which they read to their friends, who, of course, are ready afterwards to testify that they saw the piece in manuscript, fresh from the brain of the author, before it found its way into print, with other little fanciful additions which they very honestly believe.
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