o moans unseen, and ceaseless sings
Ever a note of wail and woe,
Till morning spreads her rosy wings,
And earth and sky in her glances glow."

Here we have, at last, the whip-poor-will, an American bird, and not
the conventional lark or nightingale, although the elves of the Old
World seem scarcely at home on the banks of the Hudson. Drake's memory
has been kept fresh not only by his own poetry, but by the beautiful
elegy written by his friend Fitz-Greene Halleck, the first stanza of
which is universally known:

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

Halleck was born in Guilford, Connecticut, whither he retired in 1849,
and resided there till his death in 1867. But his literary career is
identified with New York. He was associated with Drake in writing the
_Croaker Papers_, a series of humorous and satirical verses contributed
in 1814 to the _Evening Post_. These were of a merely local and
temporary interest; but Halleck's fine ode, _Marco Bozzaris_--though
declaimed until it has become hackneyed--gives him a sure title to a
remembrance; and his _Alnwick Castle_, a monody, half serious and half
playful on the contrasts between feudal associations and modern life,
has {418} much of that pensive lightness which characterizes Praed's
best _vers de societe_.

A friend of Drake and Halleck was James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851),
the first American novelist of distinction, and, if a popularity which
has endured for nearly three quarters of a century is any test, still
the most successful of all American novelists. Cooper was far more
intensely American than Irving, and his books reached an even wider
public. "They are published as soon as he produces them," said Morse,
the electrician, in 1833, "in thirty-four different places in Europe.
They have been seen by American travelers in the languages of Turkey
and Persia, in Constantinople, in Egypt, at Jerusalem, at Ispahan."
Cooper wrote altogether too much; he published, besides his fictions, a
_Naval History of the United States_, a series of naval biographies,
works of travel, and a great deal of controversial matter. He wrote
over thirty novels, the greater part of which are little better than
trash, and tedious trash at that. This is especially true of his
_tendenz_ novels and his novels of society. He was a man of strongly
marked individuality, fiery, p