POE OE HOOD?

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 764, 12 March 1910, Page 9

POE OE HOOD?

. Sir,—ln 'last Saturday's-. iss'ue? : you reprint from..the . "Manchester-Guardian" ?? a ™tcle Referring to the researches• of Mr. lullis Campbell, ofTthe.University -of JLoxas, on the works 1 of Poe. ■'Among Mr. Cauipbell.g;. "finds,"'., we are. itold, is a sonnet .on'-'"Silence"—which is'quoted in ™,V. „ 1S surely-very curious that Mr. lullis Campbell, his friends of the University of Texas, his publisher, tho ;. .Manchester Guardian," and yourself > have. all. apparently. failed, to. noti.ee that jjthß sonnet in question is one which has 'always been attributed to Thomas Hood, it was printed as Hood's,. without any suggestion of doubtful authorship, in the late William Sharp's anthology: of nineteenth century sonnets, and 1 find in the complete edition,of Hood's works, edited by his son and (laughter, a note stating that it was contributed by Hood to the "London Magazine" in tho year 1823. 1( was in September, 1839 (according to Mr., Campbell), that this same sonnet appeared in a magazine edited by J>oe| and his acknowledged sonnet on "Science"—so like and so .unlike the other one—was published (see Harrison's edition of Poo) in the same magazine for April, 1840. The similarity of the two sonnets may be accounted for by ! supposing that Poe's was suggested by Hood's, while the differences are so great as to safeguard the younger poet against any charge of plagiarism. Why Hood's* sonnet, when' it -appeared in Poe's Magazine, was signed "P." remains a mystery; Perhaps the printer was to blame. Readers who have clipped last week's article for their scrap-books may ,be glad to learn that in. the received text of • Hood's sonnet the last words of line 8 are "the idle ground"—not "the silent ground."—l am," etc., .'" BOOKWORJ- .