William Cullen Bryant

(1794-1878) is one of the great American examples of a mind of a high order remaining unimpaired till the end of a long and fruitful life. Though born in Massachusetts he was a citizen of New York for fifty-three years. Having early in the century written "Thanatopsis," after an interval of nearly seventy years, he enriched the world with such noble lines as "The Flood of Years," and the sonnet in memory of his friend, John Lothrop Motley. Ten years before his death Bryant expressed to General James Grant Wilson a wish that he might not survive the loss of his mental faculties like Southey, Scott, Wilson, Lockhart and the Ettrick Shepherd, and mentioned his hope that he be permitted to complete his translation of Homer before death, mental imbecility, or failure of physical strength should overtake him. On another occasion he said "If I am worthy, I would wish for sudden death, with no interregnum between the times I cease to exercise reason and I cease to exist." In these wishes he was happily gratified.

Drake and "The Culprit Fay"

Joseph Rodman Drake (1795-1820), author of "The Culprit Fay," was born in New York in the year that gave birth also to the eccentric poet, James G. Percival, and John P. Kennedy, the author of "Horseshoe Robinson." At eighteen he abandoned merchandise and began the study of medicine. It was at this time that Drake and Halleck first met and formed a friendship that was only severed by death. When the young physician married, in 1816, it was Halleck who acted as groomsman; when their only child was born she was christened Halleck; when he went to Europe, it was to his brother poet that Drake addressed several amusing poetical epistles; as premonitions of his early death gathered and he grew feebler each day, it was his faithful friend "Fitz," who, with more than a brother's love, soothed his dying hours; and when the grave closed over Drake, and his sorrowing friend had said, as Scott did when standing by the last resting-place of Johnnie Ballantyne, "there will be less sunshine for me hereafter," it was the sorrow-stricken friend who wrote those now familiar tender lines:

Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days!
None knew thee but to love thee,
Nor named thee but to praise.

The exquisite poem, "The Culprit Fay," on which Drake's reputation as a poet chiefly rests, was written in his twenty-first year, and not, as has sometimes been asserted, in the summer of 1819. It was in this year that the two literary partners produced the "Croaker Papers," a signature adopted from an amusing character in Goldsmith's comedy of "The Good-natured Man." The Poems were copied from the original by Langstaff, Drake's partner, that their handwriting should not betray them, and were either sent through the mail or delivered by Daniel Embury or Benjamin R. Winthrop, then fellow-clerks with Halleck in the counting house, in Wall Street, of Jacob Barker, the Quaker banker and merchant. So carefully did they keep the secret of the authorship, that these amusing jeux d'esprit were generally attributed to the Salmagundi set-the Irvings, Duers, Pauldings, Hoffmans, and Verplancks. They were many years afterwards collected and included in the latest editions of Halleck's poems, and the author of each indicated for the first time. Sixteen years after Drake's death his poetical writing were first published in a handsome octavo volume, dedicated to his devoted friend, Fitz-Greene Halleck.

G. P. Morris, Song Writer

George Perkins Morris (1802-64) is also to be numbered among the conspicuous literary figures of the earlier portion of the century in New York and is to be numbered among the most admired of American song writers. In early life he moved to New York, and at the age of fifteen was a contributor of verses to the newspapers of the city. At twenty-one, with Woodworth for a partner,
he established the "Mirror," a literary weekly journal, which he continued until 1845, when, associated with Willis and Hiram Fuller, he began the publication of the "Evening Mirror." At the close of 1845 he established the "National Press," changed in November of the year following to the "Home Journal," a highly successful society weekly, which he edited with Mr. Willis until a short period before his death, at the age of sixty-two. General Morris edited a number of works, including "The Song Writers of America," and, in conjunction with Willis, "The Prose and Poetry of Europe and America." In 1825 he wrote a successful drama, called "Briar Cliff," founded upon events of the American Revolution, from which he derived $3,500 royalty. He was the author of the libretto of Charles E. Horn's opera, "The Maid of Saxony," and a volume of prose sketches published in 1836, but it is chiefly as a song writer that Morris is best remembered. Some of his lyrics, such as "Woodman, Spare that Tree," and "Near the Lake Where Drooped the Willow," are compositions of which any poet might be proud. An evidence of the great popularity of Morris as a poet is the fact that for many years he could exchange one of his songs unread for $50, when none of the other literati of New York could sell a poem for the fifth part of that amount. Between 1838, the year in which he published " The Deserted Bride and Other Poems," and 1860, when the last edition of his poetical writings appeared, several collections of his songs, ballads and poems were issued by New York publishers. His military title came from his connection with the State militia.

Morris himself declared in 1862 that in his opinion the three most popular American songs were: Payne's "Home, Sweet Home," Sergeant's "A Life on the Ocean Wave," and "Woodman, Spare that Tree"; and alluded to the pleasure he had received from hearing the older Russell, who composed the music for his own and Sergeant's poem, sing them, and also Sir Henry Bishop's arrangement
of "Home, Sweet Home." "But," added the poet, "no one ever sang Payne's lines like Ann Bishop." When Morris was asked if his song was founded on fact, he replied that it was, and the account given of it is contained in a published letter, written by the poet, dated New York, February 1, 1837. Before the middle of the last century a member of the British House of Commons closed a long speech in favor of protection by quoting "Woodman, Spare that Tree"; the "tree," according to the speaker from Yorkshire, being the "Constitution," and Sir Robert Peel the "woodman" about to cut it down. The incident pleased Morris, for it showed the universality of the appeal in his verses. He lived usually at Undercliff, on the banks of the Hudson, near Cold Spring; making trips to or from New York by the steamer "Powell."

Hoffman, Last of the "Knickerbocker" Authors

Charles Fenno Hoffman (1806-1884), though he suffered for thirty-four years from a mental disorder that obliged him to live in retirement was one of the most generally admired of the group of Knickerbocker authors. As a song writer he stands among Americans second only to Morris; and some writers have been of opinion that his lyric, "Sparkling and Bright," is unsurpassed
by any similar production in the language. Few American martial poems, produced even during the War of the Rebellion, surpass Hoffman's spirited lines on the Mexican battle of Monterey, which was greatly admired by both Grant and Sherman. During the war these great soldiers sometimes called on a young cavalry officer to repeat them, and also to sing, at the siege of Vicksburg and elsewhere, Bayard Taylor's spirited "Song of the Camp."

Hoffman, as a boy of eleven, was seated one day on the Cortlandt Street dock, with his legs hanging over the wharf, as the ferry came in. The boat caught one of his legs and crushed it so badly as to render amputation above the knee necessary. At fifteen he entered Columbia College, after preparation at the Poughkeepsie Academy, and six years later was admitted to the bar. To his "Knickerbockers Magazine" he contributed a series of letters descriptive of a tour in the Northwest, which were collected and published in 1834, entitled "A Winter in the West." This work was followed by "Wild Scenes in the Forest and Prairie," and in 1840 by the "Romance of Greyslaer," founded on the criminal trial of Beauchamps for the murder of Colonel Sharpe, of Kentucky, which also furnished the theme of Simms's novel of "Beauchamps." Hoffman also issued several volumes of poetry, and it is as a lyric poet that he is best known to the world. In this field he is admittedly entitled to take high rank. Among the favorites which made his name widely known may be mentioned "Rosalie Clare," "Tis Hard to Share Her Smiles with Many," "The Myrtle and Steel," "Room, Boys, Room," and "Rio Bravo: A Mexican Lament."

Of the large number of literary men present at the famous dinner given to authors at the City Hotel, March 30, 1837, by the booksellers of New York, Hoffman was the last survivor. During the forty-seven years he outlived that memorable evening, he saw pass away, among others who were present: Chancellor Kent, Colonel Trumbull, Albert Gallatin, Washington Irving, Fitz-Greene Halleck, James K. Paulding, William Cullen Bryant, George P. Morris, William L. Stone, Edgar A. Poe, John W. Francis, Orville Dewey, Matthew L. Davis, Charles King, and Lewis Gaylord Clark.

"Hoffman," remarked a London literary journal during his lifetime, "belongs to the front rank of American authors"; adding, "his plume waves above the heads of all the literary men of America a cubit clear." While filling a government position at Washington, he was in 1850 attacked by a serious mental disorder, from which he never recovered. He died in the Harrisburg Asylum, in Pennsylvania, of which he had been an inmate for thirty-four years, June 7, 1884. He was not a graduate of Columbia College, which he left in his junior year; but at the semi-centennial celebration of its incorporation, he received the honorary degree of A.M., conferred on him in
company with Washington Irving, Fitz-Greene Halleck and William Cullen Bryant.