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too well. The Culprit Fay has obviously suffered from an 

 inherited tradition of over-praise. It is easy to find echoes of 

 Scott and Moore, and perhaps of Shelley, conceivably even of 

 Keats, in The Culprit Fay, but the echoes are far more from 

 the minor matters of theme and intention, and the lesser 

 matters of the line, than from the major matters of treatment 

 and of appeal. We do better for The Culprit Fay when we 

 do not urge these fatal judicial comparisons. 



The ambition to aid in building an American fairy lore was 

 certainly in Drake's mind. Legend, however, has done its 

 work here. Practically every one who has written about The 

 Culprit Fay since Griswold — and this includes the Duyckincks, 

 R. H. Stoddard, General Wilson and Francis R. Tillou, 

 Drake's brother-in-law — records a charming moonlight meet- 

 ing of friends at Cold Spring in the Hudson Highlands in 

 1816, at which Drake, the novelist Cooper, De Kay, Halleck. 

 and Charles Fenno Hoffman were discussing the power of 

 scenery to impress the imagination. Cooper and Halleck 

 claimed for the Scottish Highlands supreme power to inspire 

 the poet and the novelist; and they lamented that American 

 scenery could not similarly inspire the man of letters. That 

 night, before morning, the legend runs, Drake wrote The 

 Culprit Fay, as a reply; and in three days had perfected the 

 poem. 



The legend seems not supported by facts. In the Halleck 

 correspondence, preserved in the New York Public Library. 

 is an unpublished letter from Halleck to E. A. Duvckinck. 

 dated May 13, 1866, evidently relating to the revision of this 

 paragraph for a new edition of the Cyclopedia of American 

 Literature. It reads : " In acknowledgment of the compli- 

 ment you are paying to the writings of Dr. Drake and myself, 

 I have looked over the proof sheets you sent me some years 

 ago, which I have kept subject to your order, and hand you 

 herewith two extracts for the purpose of explanation." The 

 second of these extracts concerns The Culprit Fay. " The 

 Culprit Fay was written in 1816," it runs, " DeKay was then 

 in Europe. Drake was never acquainted with Cooper. The 



