Note 12 — Chapter III
Reading edition
Dr. Chapman goes even beyond Johnson in his admiration of these youthful lines. He says:
"It is profoundly significant that this child of destiny, at his life's early morning, in clumsy but impressive verse thus reverently coupled his name with that of his Creator.... I am not claiming for this fragment of a Lincoln manuscript any divine inspiration" (Latest Light on Lincoln, p. 315).
But he stops little short of that, and might about as well have claimed it. The simple truth is that the lines have no significance whatever. They were a current bit of schoolboy doggerel, not original with Lincoln, and were scribbled by him as by other boys, with no real purpose beyond that of working his name into a jingle.