When an edition of Drake’s poems, containing many pages hitherto unpublished, was announced as nearly ready for the press, we received the information with great pleasure. We expected much, and we are glad to say our expectations have been realized. The first thing which arrested our attention was the dedication, and it struck us at the time as unusually appropriate. It is a happy testimonial of respect, from a daughter to her father’s friend--to one who, perhaps, above all others, best deserved the appellation. To whom should it have been dedicated, if not to Halleck? To the community at large the loss of such a man as Drake may be regarded as a great calamity,--but to the cause of literature it is still more. It is taking from the latter one of its highest ornaments, and leaving a wide vacancy, which time may never fill. Of his general merits, as a writer, there can be but one opinion. The precise rank to which he is entitled we propose not to examine, or to venture on comparisons with critical minuteness. The exact extent of his abilities, or the results to which his genius might have led him, we would leave as questions to be settled by the taste of his admirers, and proceed to mention some of those peculiar features which stand out in his productions. In our view, his poems are distinguished for uncommon ease of diction, and the richness of their imagery. Over the wide realm of imagination our author seems to hold unlimited control, and to gather from it beauties, which he scatters with profusion. In whatever spot his fancy may detain him he is found at home, lingering around each scene with the familiarity of long acquaintance, and a perfect knowledge of each object and allurement. He is ever changing, too, in the visions he presents us. Now, he is hovering over an ideal land, sweeping forward with a wing, which, like that of the untiring Huma, is not folded upon earth. Now, he leads us forth to gaze upon the witcheries of nature,--to view the gorgeous colorings of her varied landscapes,--to break the silence of her forest solitudes,--to tread the mountain height, or to repose beside the streamlet that runs whimpering at its base. Again, he summons up our energies for a still bolder flight--carries us away to the bright fields of upper regions, onward and still onward, till our world is lost in distance, and we walk upon the star-lit plains of heaven. Anon, “Fleet as the swallow cuts the drift, Or sea-roc rides the blast,” he plunges with us far within the bosom of the heaving deep, where the wrath of the storm spirit is unheard--down to the coral towers of “snail-plated” warriors, or around the amber beds of ocean sylphs and mermaids.