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2. NOTES ON SOME MANUSCRIPTS OF DRAKE 



Original manuscripts of Drake are uncommon. In the fol- 

 lowing record, which is not intended to be complete, may be 

 found some of the most interesting manuscripts that have 

 survived. 



The New York Public Library has the original autographic 



manuscript of Drake's Croaker poem, entitled : " To 



Esquire," whose first line is, " Come, shut up your Blackstone, 

 & sparkle again." It is written on paper with a watermark- 

 date of 1812. 



A poem written in 1818, for Miss Halleck, 16 lines; with 

 another poem on the reverse, being " A true and faithful in- 

 ventory of goods belonging to Doctor Swift," together two 

 pages, folio, was offered by Dodd, Mead and Co., in Novem- 

 ber, 1901 (Catalogue No. 61, item 100) for $10. The poem 

 to Miss Halleck begins : " In a fair lady's heart once a secret 

 was lurking." 



A Drake manuscript poem, in the sale of Gen. James Grant 

 Wilson, by the Merwin-Clayton Sales Co., on April 13, 1905, 

 fetched $52. 



A poem of four verses of eight lines each, written on two 

 quarto pages, headed: "Lines addressed to the Defender of 

 New Orleans, the Day before the Battle of the 8th of Janu- 

 ary, 181 5. By Dr. J. R. Drake," was sold by the Anderson 

 Auction Company, on April 8, 1907, in the autograph collec- 

 tion of John D. Crimmins, of New York City, for $46. It 

 begins, " Hail ! Sons of gen'rous Valour ! " It was bought by 

 William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper publisher. It wa 5 

 first printed in a little New Jersey paper called Young Hickory, 

 and reprinted in The New Mirror, edited by Morris and 

 Willis, on Sept. 21, 1844 (vol. 3, no. 25, p. 398). Its incom- 

 plete printing in the Matja.zinc of History, vol. 5 (1907), p. 

 274, as though hitherto unpublished, was an error. 



Dodd, Mead and Co. offered, in Catalogue No. 90, May, 

 1908, item 106, an antograph manuscript, four pages, quarto. 



