Page:Famous Single Poems (1924).djvu/175

 story of the poet who struggles long years to convince the public that he wrote some poem which, quite possibly, he really did write, is not an uncommon one; but the writer who lives, decade after decade, in the hope that eventually the public will forget a metrical indiscretion of his youth, only to die at last, an old man, with the hope unfulfilled—that is far more unusual, and perhaps also far more tragic.

The history of the distressing controversies waged by John Luckey McCreery and Lizzie York Case has already been recounted in these pages. Set against this the story of Thomas Dunn English, who spent the last sixty years of his life striving vainly to make the public understand that he had claims upon fame far more serious (as he thought) than a sentimental ballad written at the age of twenty-three.

The labors of Hercules were as nothing beside the task of getting an idea out of the public mind once it has found firm lodgment there, and McCreery and Mrs. Case and English all died defeated and disappointed. To-day there are apparently as many people as ever who