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our own rivers furnished no such capabilities, when Drake, as 

 usual, took the opposite side of the argument, and. to make 

 his position good, produced in three days The Culprit Fay. 

 The scene is laid in the Highlands of the Hudson, but it is 

 noticeable that the chief associations conjured up relate to the 

 salt water, the poet drawing his inspiration from his familiar 

 haunt on the sound at Hunt's Point." This is Duyckinck's 

 account; and Drake himself can be quoted to support the 

 theory that he did not take his work with passionate serious- 

 ness, for in a manuscript of "The Culprit Fay" he wrote, 

 "The reader will find some of the inhabitants of the salt 

 water a little farther up the Hudson than they usually travel, 

 but not too far for the purposes of poetry." 



Next to this poem, Drake's best known work appeared in 

 The Croakers, the series of satires and patriotic verse which 

 he and Halleck contibuted to "The Evening Post," in 1819. 

 Halleck's biography tells how these poems started from a bit 

 of nonsense. " Halleck and Drake were spending a Sunday 

 morning with Dr. William Langstaff, an eccentric apothecary 

 and an accomplished mineralogist, with whom they were both 

 intimate . . . when Drake, for his own and his friend's 

 amusement, wrote several burlesque stanzas ' To Ennui.' Hal- 

 leck answering then in some lines on the same subject. The 

 young poets decided to send their productions, with others of 

 a similar character, to William Coleman, the editor of ' The 

 Evening Post.' If he published them, they would write more; 

 if not, they would offer them to M, M. Noah, of the ' National 

 Advocate ' ; and if he declined their poetical progeny, they 

 would light their pipes with them. Drake accordingly sent 

 Coleman three pieces of his own, signed ' Croaker ' a signature 

 adopted from an amusing character in Goldsmith's comedy of 

 'The Good-natured Man.' To their astonishment, a para- 

 graph appeared in the ' Post ' the day following, acknowledg- 

 ing their receipt, promising the insertion of the poems, pro- 

 nouncing them to be the products of superior taste and genius, 

 and begging the honor of a personal acquaintance with the 



