The one note no-one seems to have made about SDBotts and Emmeline's poetry was what SLC himself said about it. When he was working for a philadelphia newspaper in 1853, his job was to compose -- both set type and write -- this sort of funereal type. He and his fellow compositors used to laugh themselves sick with the blather. He never lost his taste for ridiculing that type of poetry. The same kind of stuff is still printed, at least in the Providence Journal. Check the obit pages of your local rag, particularly in the section where people publish testimonials to their loved ones who died too young. Same motivation, same material, slightly different style. Andy Hoffman