Giving Credit to the Author
By Editor
A correspondent writes us that the poem “Thou Art, O God,” credited “Mrs. Lombard,” in SIGNS No. 35, present volume, is an old hymn, credited to Moore. We thank him. It is impossible in these days of multiplied writers, books, and papers, for one person to read all poetry, or to keep in mind all that he has read. There are many who take advantage of this to palm off articles and poems written many years before on editors and publishers as original matter, and many times receive compensation therefor. Of course it is stealing. Sometimes a good poem is copied by some one of its admirers and sent to a publisher, the writer not quoting the poem or giving the author’s name, not designedly, but unwittingly, not understanding what quotation marks are for or the ethics of the question involved. This may have been the case with the above, but, if so, after the poem was published over the name of Mrs. Lombard, and Mrs. Lombard saw it, Mrs. Lombard ought to have disowned its authorship. We desire to “render to all their dues.”