University of Virginia Library

It is obvious that W. I. Paulding did not use the 1843 copybook (as we shall call this ms., using the date of the preface). He refers to one poem (number 41 in the check-list) as the earliest piece of his father's writing he has found. Had he possessed this copybook, he would have seen a poem (number 42 in the check-list) written a year earlier. W. I. Paulding does mention (page 43) "an early Commonplace book" from which he prints a poem found there as a newspaper clipping. He estimates its date as "about 1810" and prints it as "no doubt" of his father's authorship. It is a highly doubtful attribution. The copybook mentioned cannot be the present one: see no. 71 below.

The Paulding copybook came into the possession of Dr. Godfrey F. Singer and upon his untimely death became a part of the Singer Memorial Collection presented to the University of Pennsylvania Library. The volume is a typical nineteenth century copybook—a volume of blank pages bound in boards, with an engraved title page reading simply "Album . . ." It measures 7 7/8 by 9 13/16 inches and contains 109 numbered pages. (Pagination through page 55 is in ink, entered apparently by the author, and continued in pencil by another hand. Certain verso pages which are blank are not numbered. A loose sheet of letter paper, inserted at the back of the volume, is numbered 110.) I am indebted to the University of Pennsylvania for permission to publish this study.

Seventy-four poems are noted in my checklist, however, since no. 61 is a revision of no. 43.

With three exceptions these were all printed during the 1840's. Only two of the poems printed in the 1840's and located to date in printed form were written during that decade.

In the check-list these are numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 19, 20, 24, 25, 26, 28, 40, 41, 44, 45, 69, 70, and 73. In a few cases Paulding indicates the periodical or newspaper in which some of the poems appeared. When the writer has been unable to verify these, Paulding's notation is provided.