A MISTAKEN ASCRIPTION.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR."1 SIR,—In your issue for June 23rd, p. 809, you fall into the natu- ral error of supposing the late William Lloyd Garrison to have been the author of the sonnet "with which he concluded his memorable manifesto in the first number of the Liberator,"— " Oppression ! I have seen thee face to face," &c. Not a few of his readers shared this error at the time, although the sonnet was printed with quotation marks. The editor took the first opportunity to disclaim the authorship imputed to him, in favour of Thomas Pringle, the Scottish poet, who was, I believe, one of the founders of Blackwood, and Secretary of the London Society for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Dominions.
It is true, my father had written sonnets, witness two, "The Guiltless Prisoner" and "Freedom of the Mind," composed the year before (1830), while he was confined in Baltimore jail, for " libelling " a townsman engaged in the domestic slave-trade. And in 1843 his published verse was sufficiently voluminous to warrant a little collection, "Sonnets and Other Poems, by William Lloyd Garrison" (Boston).—I am, Sir, &c.,
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