The first allusion made to this poem in any of Lincoln's letters, that I have seen, was in April, 1846, when he was writing some verses of his own, and comparing them with those of another budding poet, William Johnson. Johnson had sent to Lincoln a poem which he had written, a parody upon Poe's "Raven." Lincoln had never read the "Raven," but he sent to Johnson some lines of his own, composed after his visit to his old home in Indiana in the fall of 1844. Subsequently, in September, 1846, Lincoln sent him additional lines suggested by the same visit. It is in the letter of April 18, 1846, that Lincoln refers to the poem, "Oh why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" He says:
I have not your letter now before me; but from memory, I think you ask me who is the author of the piece I sent you, and that you do so ask as to indicate a slight suspicion that I am the author. Beyond all question, I am not the author. I would give all I am worth, and go in debt, to be able to write so fine a piece as I think that is. I met it in a straggling newspaper last summer, and I remember to have seen it once before, about fifteen years ago, and this is all I know about it.
The statement that he first had seen the poem about fifteen years before 1846—that is, about 1831—carries his acquaintance with it back to the period of his friendship for Ann Rutledge, and it is not at all improbable that she learned it at the same time.
After Lincoln had become President, he is said to have made one or more copies of this poem for personal friends; but I have not seen any of these copies. It would be interesting to know whether he ever knew the whole poem.
Literary critics have not shared his high estimate of the composition. In general they have esteemed it a rather mediocre piece. But its rhythm is accurate, and its rhyme is good, and its plaintive sentiment accorded with the melancholy of Lincoln and of his social environment. It is not the only poem of no great literary merit which became popular in that period; and it would have been forgotten with the rest but for the association of its lines with the name of Abraham Lincoln. He gave to it and its author their chief claim to immortality.
During his Presidency, Lincoln said:
There is a poem which has been a great favorite with me for years, which was first shown me when a young man, by a friend, and which I afterwards saw and cut from a newspaper and learned by heart. I would give a good deal to know who wrote it, but I have never been able to ascertain.
The author of the poem, "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" was William Knox, who was born at Firth, in the parish of Lilliesleaf, in the county of Roxburghshire, in Scotland, on the 17th of August, 1789, and who died at the age of thirty-six. From his early childhood he wrote verses, and he attained sufficient prominence to win the attention of Walter Scott, who encouraged him and loaned him money. What he might have done had he lived, we do not know; but this is the only poem of his that has any claim to distinction, and that not for its own outstanding merit, but for its association with Abraham Lincoln.
Knox's earliest volume, "The Harp of Zion," was published in 1825, and does not contain this poem. What appears to have been an inclusive volume of the poems of Knox was published in London and Edinburgh in 1847, and bore the title "The Lonely Hearth, The Songs of Israel, Harp of Zion, and Other Poems." This includes the poem which bears the title "Mortality." It is interesting to recall that it has sometimes been printed with the title "Immortality." To that title, however, it can bear no claim.