nd the best beloved perhaps of
all that brilliant group. Hardly known to this generation save by
'The Culprit Fay' and 'The American Flag,' Drake was essentially
a true poet and a man of letters. His work was characteristic of
his day. He had a certain amount of classical knowledge, a certain
eighteenth-century grace and style, yet withal, an instinctive
Americanism which flowered out into our first true national
literature. The group of writers among whom were found Irving,
Halleck, Willis, Dana, Hoffman, Verplanck, Brockden Brown, and a
score of others, reflected that age in which they sought their
literary models. With the exception of Poe, who belonged to a somewhat
later time and whose genius was purely subjective, much of the
production of these Americans followed the lines of their English
predecessors,--Johnson, Goldsmith, Addison, and Steele. It is only in
their deeper moments of thought and feeling that there sounds that
note of love of country, of genuine Americanism, which gives their
work individuality, and which will keep their memory green.

Drake was born in New York, in August 1795. He was descended from the
same family as the great admiral of Elizabethan days, the American
branch of which had served their country honorably both in colonial
and Revolutionary times. The scenes of his boyhood were the same as
those that formed the environment of Irving, memories of which are
scattered thick through the literature of the day. New York was still
a picturesque, hospitable, rural capital, the centre of the present
town being miles distant in the country. The best families were all
intimately associated in a social life that was cultivated and refined
at the same time that it was gay and unconventional; and in this
society Drake occupied a place which his lovable qualities and fine
talents must have won, even had it been denied him by birth. He was a
precocious boy, for whom a career was anticipated by his friends while
he was yet a mere child; and when he met Halleck, in his eighteenth
year, he had already won some reputation.

The friendship of Drake and Halleck was destined to prove infinitely
valuable to both. A discussion between Cooper, Halleck, and Drake,
upon the poetic inspiration of American scenery, prompted Drake to
write 'The Culprit Fay'--a poem without any human character. This he
completed in three days, and offered it as the argument on his side.
The scene of the poem is laid in the Highland