and are mostly tame and artificial. Though inferior in native talent to his brother-in-law, Washington Allston, Dana was more widely known as a writer, partly because of his ability as literary critic. His verse was melancholy and his meditation not virile. As a poet he won a smaller audience than did Charles Sprague (1791-1875), also of Boston; yet it is not now easy to understand why Sprague’s longest poem, “Curiosity” (1823), should have been “largely read and quoted in this country, and grossly plagiarised in England” (Onderdonk). James A. Hillhouse (1789-1841), who wrote a Biblical drama called “Hadad” (1824), published “Dramas, Discourses, and Other Pieces” in 1839. He is interesting as an early exponent of the dramatic art in America. His style shows a strange blending of elements from Lord Byron and the Scriptures. It would probably be fairer to judge him by “Demetria” than by “Hadad.” A Byronic sentimentalism runs through the work of James Gates Percival (1795-1856), whose “Prometheus” (1820) luxuriates in the sorrows of men and the vanity of human wishes. His poetry often belies his everyday life, since for all his facile pessimism he was a man of genuine attainments and solid interest in science. He could not make his own experience the fundamental thing in his verse;--unlike his contemporary John Pierpont (1785-1866), a clergyman of Boston. In his hymns and patriotic odes, Pierpont was masculine and sane, a good representative of the New England abolitionist, as may be gathered from “The Fugitive Slave’s Apostrophe to the North Star.” “Warren’s Address to the American Soldiers” is even better known, and still withholds the name of Pierpont from oblivion. John G. C. Brainard (1796-1828) died before his poetical gift could find complete expression. He dealt with the scenery and legends of Connecticut, but is hardly remembered outside the histories of American literature.