The Press: Great Caesar's Ghost

Into the Congressional Record last week Arizona's grandiloquent Senator Henry Fountain Ashurst inserted a scholarly dissertation on ghostwriting. Excerpts:

> "Ghostwriting has-been practiced for many centuries. ... It seems to be definitely established that the speeches delivered by the Roman Emperor Nero were written by his prime minister, Seneca."

> "Press dispatches have just announced the discovery of the tomb of great Caesar's ghost writer, one Aulus Hirtius. ... It is more than probable that Hirtius wrote some portion of Caesar's Commentaries, dividing with Oppius, another ghost writer of that day, the credit for authorship of the eighth book of the Gallic Wars."

> "Dr. Samuel Johnson contributed nine lines to Oliver Goldsmith's poem The Traveller and . . . four lines to ... The Deserted Village."

> "Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, an authentic historian, is of opinion that Alexander Hamilton wrote all but four lines of General Washington's Farewell Address."

> "One of the most tragic episodes . . . occurred when a ghost writer who was employed to write a farewell address for Hon. John White, Speaker of the House of Representatives in the 27th Congress . . . copied copiously from the farewell address delivered by Vice President Aaron Burr. . . . Mr. White, being unable to laugh at the comic position into which the ghost writer had placed him, was on the contrary so overcome with mortification and disgust that he committed suicide."