Probably no one would have been inspired,
twenty-five years earlier, to write a work like Irving's _Knickerbocker's
History of New York_. Even if it had been produced earlier, the country
would not have been ready to receive it. This remarkable book was published
in New York in 1809, and more than a quarter of a century had passed before
Massachusetts could produce anything to equal that work.
In the New York group there were three great writers whom we shall discuss
separately: Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and William Cullen
Bryant. Before we begin to study them, however, we may glance at two of the
minor writers, who show some of the characteristics of the age.
DRAKE AND HALLECK
[Illustration: JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE]
Two friends, who in their early youth styled themselves "The Croakers,"
were Joseph Rodman Drake (1795-1820) and Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867),
"the Damon and Pythias of American poets." Drake was born in New York City
in the same year as the English poet, John Keats, in London. Both Drake and
Keats studied medicine, and both died of consumption at the age of
twenty-five. Halleck was born in Guilford, Connecticut, but moved to New
York in early youth, where he became a special accountant for John Jacob
Astor.
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