Although Halleck outlived Drake forty-seven years, trade seems to
have sterilized Halleck's poetic power in his later life.
The early joint productions of Drake and Halleck were poems known as _The
Croakers_, published in 1819, in the New York _Evening Post_. This stanza
from _The Croakers_ will show the character of the verse and its avowed
object:--
"There's fun in everything we meet,
The greatest, worst, and best;
Existence is a merry treat,
And every speech a jest:
Be't ours to watch the crowds that pass
Where Mirth's gay banner waves;
To show fools through a quizzing-glass
And bastinade the knaves."
This was written by Drake, but he and Halleck together "croaked" the
following lines, which show that New York life at the beginning of the
nineteenth century had something of the variety of London in the time of
Queen Anne, at the beginning of the eighteenth century:--
"The horse that twice a week I ride
At Mother Dawson's eats his fill;
My books at Goodrich's abide,
My country seat is Weehawk hill;
My morning lounge is Eastburn's shop,
At Poppleton's I take my lunch,
Niblo prepares my mutton chop,
And Jennings makes my whiskey punch.
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