Here is what your 5th great grandfather referenced.
1 John 4:8
Whoever does not love does not know God, because
God is love.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Visit_from_St._Nicholas#Original_copies
I had no idea there was a question of authorship of The Night Before Christmas! Looks like Livingston won using several modern computer techniques!
Thank you for sharing his poetry.
MEG!!!!!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wow.
I have read that poem for 18 years and never knew that. Thank you. I'll add that to the description of the poem online.
Not having any bible background (raised Catholic), I always relied on the professors I worked with to know their bible and that one seems to have slipped through the crack. Again, thank you.
Henry did publish some poetry that was written by others, such as
Hiding Place by Rev. Jehoida Brewer (1752-1817) and
The IX ode of Horace from The Poetics of Scaliger.
>>Looks like Livingston won using several modern computer techniques!
I was at the table for a mock trial on the authorship. The jury came down for Henry and Troy NY named a Henry Livingston Day. Pretty fun.
I saw the reference to Henry as the author 18 years ago on an obscure webpage that has since disappeared. Curious, I searched for Moore's poetry. His book had never been republished and I couldn't find his work. This was 1999 and the web didn't have the depth it has today. Research libraries wouldn't allow me to view the book because I was a civilian, not an academic. FINALLY, Brown University in RI said they had a microfilm copy I could see. As it printed out, all became clear. This was the WORST poet I had ever read. No wonder no one reprinted his book!
So it became my major research of the time to find out for sure if it was true or not. I talked a Vassar prof into looking into it, but he'd only do it if the results went into his book and I was his researcher. I found the materials, answered his questions, REPEAT. For a year. Toured the country to research institutions. Part of what saved Henry's material was that the family were holding onto things because of the controversy. Some because his descendants were famous and had collections around the country.
People Magazine
Skip forward to 2011 and an Auckland Emeritus Professor contacted me because he thought he could prove the matter for good through statistical analysis. Again, I was the scut help, which worked well because my expertise wasn't in poetry, but in computer science.
MASSIVE YEARS of detailed analysis of poetry innards.
One of our big breakthrus came from a girlfriend. When I chaired computer languages, she was president of computational linguistics - just what we were doing in our analysis of poetry. I took her to a Dunkin Donuts and recited Moore and Henry aloud. Then noticed that I was having trouble getting Moore's words out of my mouth, while Henry's flowed like butter. She observed that the reason was probably because of where the tongue moved in my mouth reciting consecutive syllables and suggested studying the phonemes of the poems would work as a differentiator. I wrote Mac and he knew about it and thought it had possibilities. So Lyn and I transcribed the ENTIRE bodies of work of both men and NBC into phonemes and my husband and I began HUGE waves of statistical analysis until Mac found a differentiator set. The research took solid YEARS!
We threw the data over the fence to New Zealand, never having any idea how Mac would interpret them. He finally wrote that he had enough proof. Henry was the author! Basically, look at any unconscious trait that we analyzed and the author of NBC and Henry share those traits. They're far outside of the way Moore writes just looking at small details that he couldn't control. Where he COULD control was that for years after the poem was published - AFTER, not BEFORE - he started putting in some of the NBC vocabulary, so I personally think he was trying to cover his tracks. Mac is kinder.
You can't IMAGINE the feeling!
I made my Kindle book on Henry free to FR people last week. I'll do it again before Christmas. I collect art and I also put out two art/poetry books of Henry's - NBC with 89 illos in the Kindle edition (I collect antique editions) and Henry's love poetry with antique postcards. Both mindblowingly beautiful with no modesty whatsoever. I'll make those Kindle versions free at times before Christmas. They let me do that for 5 days per book and last year I spread them just before the holidays.
My
basic website for Henry is about 15,000 pages. I have a secret website that I use to communicate with the professors as we work that's just as big.