Page:Halleck.djvu/409

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NOTES.
377
honestly drawn out from a lottery comprising those of the thirty-seven city poets, and impartially representing the whole lot. Where the writings of all were of equal value, choice was impossible, and chance the only arbiter, except the account-sales of their several publishers—a class of accountants whose hieroglyphics are proverbially difficult to decipher.

(10) Page 172.—Stephen Allen, Benjamin Bailey, and John Targee, prominent members of the Tammany Society. Mr. Allen became in after-years Mayor of the city.

(11) Page 173.—Signorina Garcia, then attached to her father’s opera company, soon after to become the world-renowned and lamented cantatrice.


THE CROAKERS.

(1) Page 253.—A signature adopted by Halleck and Drake, from an amusing character in Goldsmith’s comedy of “The Good-natured Man,” and attached to a series of verses appearing from time to time in the New-York Evening Post, and in other periodicals, in and after the month of March, 1819. The letters H. and D. represent the names of Fitz-Greene Halleck and Joseph Rodman Drake, and indicate the respective authorship of the poems.

(2) Page 255.—Fitz and Lang, the names abbreviated of Fitz-Greene Halleck and Dr. William Langstaff, intimate friends of the writer, and in daily intercourse with him. The latter studied medicine with Drs. Bruce and Romayne, Drake and DeKay being fellow-pupils. Langstaff not being successful as a physician, his friend Henry Eckford aided him in establishing an apothecary and drug store at No. 360 Broadway, which business he carried on for many years. By the liberality of the same gentleman Langstaff accompanied Dr. and Mrs. Drake in their tour through Europe in 1818.

(3) Page 255.—“Lady Morgan and Madame De Stael.”—The “France” of the one, and the “French Revolution” of the other, had been recently published.

(4) Page 256.—“Guardsmen,” the Governor’s Guard.—A company of young gentlemen, in scarlet and gold, commanded by James B. Murray, then an active and able young merchant; in after-life an alderman of the city, and among her most public-spirited magistrates.

(5) Page 256.—“Altorf.”—A drama founded on the tradition of William Tell, and unsuccessfully played at the Park Theatre. Its author, Miss Fanny Wright, a Scottish lady, was for a time a public lecturer on morals and religion, from a somewhat infidel point of view. Her chief theme was “just knowledge,” which she pronounced “joost nolidge.”