Page:Famous Single Poems (1924).djvu/97

, of “somewhere in Illinois”—was he a myth? Or was he really an industrious plagiarist, copying other people’s verses and signing his name to them, with the result that they were all, in the end, attributed to Bulwer-Lytton because, sooner or later, some proofreader took it for granted that Bulmer was a misprint for Bulwer and changed it accordingly?

It was in that way, so John Luckey McCreery averred, that his poem, “There Is No Death,” came to be attributed to Bulwer.

And years later Mrs. Lizzie York Case made precisely the same explanation with respect to another poem, “There Is No Unbelief,” of which she claimed to be the author, but to which Bulwer’s name was usually signed.

In the story of McCreery’s struggle for recognition as the author of “There Is No Death,” the remark was hazarded that, for some reason, Bulmer, the villain of the piece, was not altogether convincing. There was about him a certain puzzling elusiveness and insubstantiality. All that McCreery knew about him was his