who died Scjit. 21st, 1820.

Aged 25 years. Xone knew him but to love him, Xor named him but to praise."'

The salt marsh surrounded the knoll on which the cemetery is laid out and the Bronx at that point is but a lazily flowing stream. At the rate of decay then in progress the people of a few generations later would be compelled to refer to books and maps to know where the grave of Drake was situated.

J. Rodman Drake was born in New York City, August 7, 1795. He studied medicine under Dr. Nicholius Romayne, and shortly afterwards married Sarah, the daughter of Henry Eckford, a connection that placed him in affluent circumstances. The youthful couple took a trip to Europe, but Drake's health soon after failed, and, after spending the winter of 1819 in New Orleans, in the hope of regaining it, he returned to New York fatally smitten with consumption, dying on September 21, 1820, at the age of twenty-five.

Drake was a poet from his boyhood. Some of his youthful compositions have been preserved and show great fluency and aptness of expression. In March, 1819, he published the first of the famous "Croakers," the verses to " Ennui," which were written in conjunction with his friend, Halleck. " The Culprit Fay" was written to refute an assertion, by Fenimore Cooper and Halleck, that the rivers of this country furnished no such romantic associations as the Scottish streams for purposes of poetical composition. The scene is laid in the highlands of the Hudson, but the chief associations relate to salt water, " the poet drawing his|inspiration from his familiar haunt on the Sound, at Hunt's Point." "The Culprit Fay " is an exquisite creation of the fancy and will always re- Uiin for its author a niche in the gallery of American poets.