We have indeed seldom seen more beautiful volumes than the volumes now before us. But an adventitious interest of a loftier nature- the interest of the living in the memory of the beloved dead- attaches itself to the few literary remains of Drake. The poems which are now given to us with his name are nineteen in number; and whether all, or whether even the best of his writings, it is our present purpose to speak of these alone, since upon this edition his poetical reputation to all time will most probably depend.

It is only lately that we have read The Culprit Fay. This is a poem of six hundred and forty irregular lines, generally iambic, and divided into thirty-six stanzas, of unequal length. The scene of the narrative, as we ascertain from the single line,

The moon looks down on old Cronest, is principally in the vicinity of West Point on the Hudson. The plot is as follows. An Ouphe, one of the race of Fairies, has "broken his vestal vow,"

He has loved an earthly maid

And left for her his woodland shade;

He has lain upon her lip of dew,

And sunned him in her eye of blue,

Fann'd her cheek with his wing of air,

Play'd with the ringlets of her hair,

And, nestling on her snowy breast,

Forgot the lily-kings behestin short, he has broken Fairy-law in becoming enamored of a mortal. The result of this misdemeanor we could not express so well as the poet, and will therefore make use of the language put into the mouth of the Fairy-King who reprimands the criminal.

Fairy! Fairy! list and mark,

Thou hast broke thine elfin chain,

Thy flame-wood lamp is quench'd and dark

And thy wings are dyed with a deadly stain.

The Ouphe being in this predicament, it has become necessary that his case and crime should be investigated by a jury of his fellows, and to this end the "shadowy tribes of air" are summoned by the "sentry elve" who has been awakened by the "wood-tick"- are summoned we say to the "elfin-court" at midnight to hear the doom of the Culprit Fay.