one general answer, that they lacked the genius, spirit, and beauty of the originals. On one occasion Coleman showed Halleck fifteen he had received in a single morning, all of which, with a solitary exception, were consigned to the waste-basket. The friends continued for several months to keep the city in a blaze of excitement; and it was observed by one of the editors, “that so great was the wincing and shrinking at ‘The Croakers,’ that every person was on tenter-hooks; neither knavery nor folly has slept quietly since our first commencement.” Of this series of satirical and quaint chronicles of New-York life half a century ago, Halleck, in 1866, said “that they were good-natured verses contributed anonymously to the columns of the New-York Evening Post, from March to June, 1819, and occasionally afterward.” The writers continued, like the author of Junius, the sole depositaries of their own secret, and apparently wished, with the Minstrel in Leyden’s “Scenes of Infancy,” to
“Save others’ names, but leave their own unsung.”
Among “The Croakers” will be found three
