SOURCE: "Fitz-Greene Halleck," in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XXXIX, June, 1877, pp. 718-29.

An influential American literary critic during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, George Parsons Lathrop helped establish realism as the dominant mode of literary expression. In the following excerpts from an article on Halleck's life and work, Lathrop examines several of Halleck's most popular works with a view to defining his historical and literary importance.

[There] was a mutual reaction in Halleck, of literary ability and literary languor, which it will be useful to keep in mind while we are discussing him. These qualities confront us suggestively in the so-called Croaker poems, written in company with his friend, Joseph Rodman Drake.

It was in March, 1819, that Drake's address "To Ennui," the first of the Croaker series, appeared in the New York Evening Post. "The Culprit Fay," commonly reported to have been composed in the same...