63 



perish while American literature and American patriotism 

 survive. 



The next speaker was Prof. John Erskine, of The Depart- 

 ment of English and Comparative Literature in Columbia Uni- 

 versity, whose subject was: 



DRAKE AS A POET • 



The man whose memory we honor today would not care 

 to be praised above his merits. He knew that he was not a 

 great poet, and if we in a moment of enthusiasm should call 

 him great, we have but to read his Croaker satires to remind 

 ourselves how he would have ridiculed such uncritical patriot- 

 ism. In fact, Drake was over modest. Before his death, 

 when all his poems that could be found were collected and 

 copied by Dr. de Kay, Drake told his friends to burn the 

 manuscripts, since they were valueless. Among the poenib 

 that he would have burned was The Culprit Fay. 



It is but just to Drake to begin an appreciation of his work 

 with a warning against overpraise. At his death in 1820 he 

 was but twenty-five years old, and the fact of his youth, taken 

 with the other facts that he was a physician, and that he died 

 of consumption, has persuaded some critics that he was the 

 American Keats. A comparison so trying makes Drake as 

 well as his admirers seem ridiculous. If on his deathbed he 

 would have destroyed the manuscript of The Culprit Fay, it 

 may be recalled that the dying Virgil expressed the same wish 

 for his great epic; yet even the enthusiastic patriot will hesi- 

 tate to call The Culprit Fay the American Aeneid. Drake 

 was a very minor poet; we might almost say, an occasional 

 poet; the man was better than anything he wrote. It is to 

 the advantage of his fame that while paying this deserved 

 tribute to his memory, we should not measure him by stand- 

 ards he never pretended to meet. 



His true immortality is an immortality of friendship. 



