POEMS OF PHILIP FRENEAU
VOLUME I
THE
POEMS OF PHILIP FRENEAU
POET OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
EDITED FOR
THE PRINCETON HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
BY
FRED LEWIS PATTEE
OF THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE COLLEGE, AUTHOR OF
"A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE"
"THE FOUNDATIONS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE" ETC.
VOLUME I
PRINCETON N. J.
THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
1902
Copyright 1902 by
The Princeton University Library
_C. S. Robinson & Co. University Press_
_Princeton N. J._
PREFACE
The present edition of the poetical works of Philip Freneau was begun at
the advice of the late lamented Moses Coit Tyler. In his opinion there
were few fields in American history that needed exploring more, and few
that would require on the part of the explorer more of the Columbus
spirit.
It would be almost impossible for a poet to pass more completely into
the shadow than has Freneau during the century since his activities
closed. His poems are, almost all of them in their earliest editions,
exceedingly rare and costly and only to be read by those who can have
access to the largest libraries, his letters and papers have almost
entirely disappeared, and his biography in almost every book of
reference has been so distorted by misstatement and omission as to be
really grotesque.
This neglect has resulted not from lack of real worth in the man, but
from prejudices born during one of the most bitter and stormy eras of
partisan politics that America has ever known. What Sidney Smith said of
Scotland at this period was true here: "The principles of the French
Revolution were fully afloat and it is impossible to conceive a more
violent and agitated state of society." Freneau was a victim of this
intense era. New England rejected him with scorn and all admirers of
Washington echoed his epithet, "that rascal Freneau." Thus it has become
the tradition to belittle his work, to vilify his character, and to sum
up his whole career, as a prominent New Englander has recently done, by
alluding to him as a "creature of the opposition."
Unprejudiced criticism, however, has always exalted Freneau's work. The
great Scotch dictator Jeffrey, with all his scorn for American
literature, could say that "the time would arrive when his poetry, like
that of Hudibras, would command a commentator like Gray;" and Sir Walter
Scott once declared that "Eutaw Springs [was] as fine a thing as there
is of the kind in the language." E. A. Duyckinck did not hesitate to
group him as one of "four of the most original writers whom the country
has produced," and S. G. W. Benjamin could say in 1887: "In all the
history of American letters, or of the United States press, there is no
figure more interesting or remarkable, no career more versatile and
varied than that of Philip Freneau." Such testimony might be multiplied.
Surely had the poet been an ordinary man, Jefferson would never have
said "his paper has saved our Constitution," Madison would not have
pronounced him a man of genius, and Adams would hardly have admitted
that he was a leading element in his defeat.
I have endeavored not only to rescue the most significant of Freneau's
poems, but to arrange them as far as possible in their order of
composition, or at least in the order in which they first appeared in
print. It has seemed to me highly important to do this since such an
arrangement, especially with a poet like Freneau, who drew his themes
almost wholly from the range of his own observation, would be virtually
an autobiography, and since it would also furnish a running commentary
upon the history of a stirring period in our annals. The task has been
no slight one. It has necessitated a search through the files of a large
proportion of the early newspapers and periodicals and a minute
investigation of every other source of possible information.
Much material has been rescued that, as far as the public was concerned,
had practically become extinct. I have introduced the unique fragment of
an unpublished drama, "The Spy," which I was the first to explore. I
have taken pains to reproduce the poet's early poetical pamphlets
dealing with the first year of the Revolution, not one of which has ever
been republished. The revisions of many of these used by Freneau in his
later collections were so thoroughgoing as to be in reality entirely new
poems. "The Voyage to Boston," for instance, published during the siege
of Boston, was cut down for the 1786 edition from six hundred and five
lines to three hundred and six lines, and of these more than half were
entirely changed. From the standpoint of the historian, at least, the
original version is much more valuable than that made several years
after the war was over. This is true of all the earlier pamphlet poems.
Aside from their value as specimens of Freneau's earlier muse they are
valuable commentaries on the history of the stormy times that called
them forth, and I have not hesitated to reprint them verbatim in
connection with the revised versions. The pamphlet poems "American
Liberty" and "General Gage's Confession," (until recently supposed to
have been lost) exist only in unique copies. Freneau never attempted to
revise them. Some of the other early poems, notably "The House of
Night," I have annotated with care, showing the evolution of the poem
from its first nucleus to its final fragmentary form. In the case of a
few of the more important poems, especially those dealing with the
Revolution, I have given variorum readings.
Aside from this early material, which has a real historical value, I
have introduced very few poems not included in Freneau's collected
editions of 1786, 1788, 1795, 1809 and 1815. Previous to 1795 the poet
reprinted with miserly care almost all the verses which he had
contributed to the press. In his later years he was more prodigal of his
creations. I have, however, reprinted from newspapers very few poems not
found elsewhere, and these few only on the best evidence that they were
genuine, for it has been my experience that when a poem is not to be
found in the collected editions of the poet it is almost certain that it
is not genuine. In justice to Freneau, who had the welfare of his
writings much at heart, and who cut and pruned and remodeled with
tireless hand, I have usually given the latest version.
I wish to acknowledge here my great indebtedness to the descendants of
Philip Freneau, especially Miss Adele M. Sweeney, Mr. Weymer J. Mills,
Mrs. Helen K. Vreeland, and Mrs. Eleanor F. Noël, who have allowed me to
consult freely all the papers and literary remains of the poet and have
supplied me with all possible information. I would also express my great
obligation to many librarians, collectors, and scholars, who have
cheerfully aided me, especially to Mr. Wilberforce Eames, of the New
York Public Library, the late Paul Leicester Ford, Mr. Robert H. Kelby,
of the New York Historical Society, Mr. John W. Jordan, of the
Pennsylvania Historical Society, Mr. A. S. Salley, Jr., of Charleston,
S. C., Mr. E. M. Barton, of the American Antiquarian Society, and Dr. E.
C. Richardson, of Princeton University, who with their courteous
helpfulness have made possible the work. I wish also to express my
thanks to Professor A. Howry Espenshade, and Mr. John Rogers Williams,
to whose careful and patient work upon the proofs the accuracy of the
text depends.
F. L. P.
STATE COLLEGE, Pa., Sept. 19, 1902.
CONTENTS
PAGE
VOLUME I
PREFACE v
LIFE OF PHILIP FRENEAU xiii
PART I
_Early Poems. 1768-1775_
HISTORY OF THE PROPHET JONAH 3
ADVENTURES OF SIMON SWAUGUM 14
THE PYRAMIDS OF EGYPT 25
THE MONUMENT OF PHAON 30
THE POWER OF FANCY 34
THE PRAYER OF ORPHEUS 39
THE DESERTED FARM-HOUSE 40
THE CITIZEN'S RESOLVE 42
THE DYING ELM 45
COLUMBUS TO FERDINAND 46
THE RISING GLORY OF AMERICA 49
ON RETIREMENT 84
DISCOVERY 85
THE PICTURES OF COLUMBUS 89
EXPEDITION OF TIMOTHY TAURUS, ASTROLOGER 123
PART II
_The First Poetic Period. 1775-1781_
A POLITICAL LITANY 139
AMERICAN LIBERTY, A POEM 142
GENERAL GAGE'S SOLILOQUY 152
THE MIDNIGHT CONSULTATIONS, OR, A TRIP TO BOSTON 158
THE SILENT ACADEMY 182
LINES TO A COASTING CAPTAIN 184
TO THE AMERICANS 185
THE VERNAL AGUE 188
GENERAL GAGE'S CONFESSION 189
THE DISTREST SHEPHERDESS 195
MARS AND HYMEN 197
MACSWIGGEN, A SATIRE 206
THE HOUSE OF NIGHT 212
THE JAMAICA FUNERAL 239
THE BEAUTIES OF SANTA CRUZ 249
ON A HESSIAN DEBARKATION, 1776 269
THE JEWISH LAMENTATION AT EUPHRATES 270
AMERICA INDEPENDENT 271
ON AMANDA'S SINGING BIRD 283
ON THE NEW AMERICAN FRIGATE ALLIANCE 285
ON THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN NICHOLAS BIDDLE 288
CAPTAIN JONES'S INVITATION 290
THE SEA VOYAGE 293
LIFE OF PHILIP FRENEAU
1752-1832
LIFE OF PHILIP FRENEAU
I.
In the possession of the Freneau descendants there is an old French
Bible, printed in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1587, which preserves an
unbroken roll of the heads of the family back to the original owner of
the book, Philip Fresneau, who on his death-bed in La Chapelle, France,
in 1590, gave it into the hands of his eldest son. For five generations
the book remained in the little suburban village, its possessors sturdy,
industrious tradesmen, who stood high in the esteem of their community
and yet who on account of their Protestant faith were often imposed upon
and at times even persecuted. It was doubtless this feeling of
insecurity, if not positive persecution, which compelled André Fresneau,
like so many of his fellow Huguenots, to leave his native village and to
seek a home in a more tolerant land.
He landed in New York in 1707. He was in his thirty-sixth year, an
active, handsome man, almost brilliant in certain directions, of
pleasing address, and skilled from his youth in the handling of affairs.
He became at once a leader in the little Huguenot Colony whose center
was the quaint old church "du St. Esprit" on Pine street. He was soon in
the midst of a thriving shipping business, dealing largely in imported
wines, and in 1710, three years after his arrival, he was able to
furnish a beautiful home on Pearl street, near Hanover Square, for his
young bride, Mary Morin, a daughter of Pierre Morin, of the French
Congregation. Of the comfort and hospitality of this home there are many
contemporary references. John Fontaine, the French traveller, was
entertained here in 1716 and he speaks highly of his host and his
entertainment.[1]
In 1721 Mrs. Fresneau died at the early age of twenty-seven, leaving
behind a family of five children, the oldest only nine years of age.
Four years later the father followed. But the young family was far from
destitute. The business house in New York had grown to be very
profitable and there was a large landed estate in eastern New Jersey, a
part of which was sold in 1740. Soon the two eldest sons, Andrew, born
1712, and Pierre, born January 22, 1718, were able to continue their
father's business. For years their firm name was familiar in New York.
Pierre Freneau (the family seem to have dropped the "s" about 1725) was
married in 1748 to Agnes Watson, daughter of Richard Watson, of
Freehold, whose property bordered upon the Freneau estate. They made
their home in Frankfort street, New York, and here on January 2 (O. S.),
1752, was born their eldest child, Philip Morin Freneau, the subject of
our sketch. Four other children came from their union, of whom only one,
Peter, born April 5, 1757, who in later years became a prominent figure
in Charleston, S. C., need be mentioned.
The home of the Freneau's was one of comfort and even refinement. There
was a large and well selected library, the pride of its owner. "There,"
he would say to his visitors, pointing to his books, "use them freely,
for among them you will find your truest friends." He delighted in men
of refinement, and his home became a social center for the lovers of
books and of culture. He looked carefully after the education of his
children; and all of them early became omnivorous readers. In such an
environment the young poet passed his first ten years.
In 1762 the family decided to leave New York and to make their home
permanently on their estate, "Mount Pleasant," near Middletown Point, N.
J. The estate at this time contained nearly a thousand acres, and with
its large buildings, its slaves and its broad area under cultivation,
was in many respects like a southern plantation. Heretofore the elder
Freneau had made it of secondary importance. He had used it as a summer
resort, and as a pleasant relief to the monotony of his city business,
but now, perhaps on account of failing health, he determined to devote
to it all of his energies. Philip was left behind in New York. For the
next three years he lived at a boarding school in the city, going home
only during the long vacations. At the age of thirteen he was sent to
the Latin school at Penolopen, then presided over by the Rev. Alexander
Mitchell, to prepare for college.
The father of the family died Oct. 17, 1767. This, however, did not
disturb the plans of the eldest son, and on Nov. 7, 1768, he entered the
sophomore class at Princeton so well prepared that President Witherspoon
is said to have sent a letter of congratulation to his mother.
II.
Of the college life of Philip Freneau we have only fragmentary records.
He was in his sixteenth year when he entered, a somewhat dreamy youth
who had read very widely, especially in the English poets and the Latin
classics, and who already commanded a facile pen, especially in the
field of heroic verse. During the year in which he entered Princeton he
composed two long poems, "The History of the Prophet Jonah," and "The
Village Merchant,"--surely notable work for the pen of a college
sophomore. During the following year he wrote "The Pyramids of Egypt,"
and before his graduation he had completed several other pieces, some of
them full of real poetic inspiration.
The period during which Freneau resided at Princeton was a most
significant one. In the same class with him were James Madison, H. H.
Brackenridge, the author of "Modern Chivalry" and a conspicuous figure
in later Pennsylvania history, and Samuel Spring, who was to become
widely influential in religious circles. In the class below him were the
refined and scholarly William Bradford and the brilliant Aaron Burr. The
shadow of the coming struggle with Great Britain was already lengthening
over the Colonies and nowhere was its presence more manifest than in the
colleges, always the most sensitive areas in times of tyranny and
oppression. On August 6, 1770, the senior class at Princeton voted
unanimously to appear at commencement dressed in American manufactures.
Another circumstance made the period a notable one. On June 24, 1769, a
little band of students, headed by Madison, Brackenridge, Bradford and
Freneau, organized an undergraduate fraternity to be called the
American Whig Society. One year later The Well Meaning Club, a rival
literary organization founded in 1765, became the Cliosophic Society.
The act was the signal for a war, the echoes of which have even yet not
died away at Princeton. There exists a manuscript book,[2] rescued from
the papers of William Bradford, in which are preserved the poetic
tirades, called forth in this first onset. Its title page is as follows:
"Satires | against the Tories. | Written in the last War between the
Whigs & Cliosophians | in which | the former obtained a compleat
Victory.
--Arm'd for virtue now we point the pen
Brand the bold front of shameless, guilty men
Dash the proud Tory in his gilded Car
Bare the mean heart that hides beneath a star."
It opens with ten "pastorals" by Brackenridge, of which the ninth begins
thus:
"Spring's Soliloquy that morning before he hung himself.
O World adieu! the doleful time draws nigh
I cannot live and yet I fear to die
Warford is dead! and in his turn Freneau
Will send me headlong to the shades below.
What raging fury or what baleful Star
Did find--ingulph me in the whiggish war
The deeds of darkness which my soul hath done
Are now apparent as the noon-day sun
A Thousand things as yet remain untold
My secret practice and my sins of old."
Then follow several satires by Freneau, full of fire and invective, but
like the work of all the others, not always refined or quotable in
print. His satire, "McSwiggen," printed in 1775, contains nearly half
of the poems,--the only lines indeed which are of any real merit. The
three concluding poems of the collection, and these by all means the
worst of the lot, are from no less a pen than Madison's. No patriotic
citizen will ever venture to resurrect them.
There is a tradition very widely current that Freneau was for a time the
room-mate of Madison. However this may be, there is no question as to
who was his most intimate friend. With Brackenridge he had much in
common. Both had dreams of a literary life, both had read largely in
polite literature, both scribbled constantly in prose and verse. In the
same manuscript volume with the Clio-Whig satires there is an extensive
fragment of a novel written alternately by Brackenridge and Freneau,
between September 20th and October 22d, 1770. Its manuscript title page
is as follows:
"Father Bombo's | Pilgrimage to Mecca in Arabia. | Vol. II. |
Wherein is given a true account of the innumerable and | surprizing
adventures which befell him in the course of that | long and
tedious Journey, | Till he once more returned safe to his native
Land, as related | by his own mouth. | Written By B. H. and
P. F.--1770.
Mutato nomine
Fabula de te narratur--_Hor._
Change but the name
The story's told of you.
MDVIILXX."
The adventures of the hero read like chapters from the "Arabian Nights."
He has been for seven days a close captive on a French man-of-war, but
he is rescued by an Irish privateer, only to be taken for a wizard and
thrown overboard in a cask which is finally washed ashore on the north
coast of Ireland. It would be useless to recount all of his adventures
both afloat and ashore. He finally succeeds in reaching Mecca, and in
returning safely home to America. The final chapter recounts the details
of his death and moralizes on his life and character.
The work is crude and hasty. Whole chapters of it were evidently written
at one sitting. The part signed H. B. is unquestionably the best; the
prose is vigorous and the movement rapid. The only merit in Freneau's
section lies in its lyric lament at the close of one of the chapters.
The hero suddenly bursts into minor song, the opening stanzas of which
are:
Sweet are the flow'rs that crown the Vale
And sweet the spicy breathing Gale
That murmurs o'er the hills:
See how the distant lowing throng
Thro' verdant pastures move along,
Or drink the Limpid Streams and crystal rills.
Ah see in yonder gloomy Grove
The Shepherd tells his tale of Love
And clasps the wanton fair:
While winds and trees and shades conspire
To fann with Love the Gentle Fire,
And banish every black and boding care.
But what has Love to do with me
Unknown ashore, distress'd by sea,
Now hast'ning to the Tomb:
Whilst here I rove, and pine and weep,
Sav'd from the fury of the deep
To find alas on shore a harder doom.
The nature of the undergraduate work done by Princeton in Freneau's time
was thus summed up by President Witherspoon in his "Address to the
Inhabitants of Jamaica," published in Philadelphia in 1772:
"In the first year they read Latin and Greek, with the Roman and Grecian
antiquities, and Rhetoric. In the second, continuing the study of the
languages, they learn a compleat system of Geography, with the use of
the globes, the first principles of Philosophy, and the elements of
mathematical knowledge. The third, though the languages are not wholly
omitted, is chiefly employed in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. And
the senior year is employed in reading the higher classics, proceeding
in the Mathematics and Natural Philosophy and going through a course of
Moral Philosophy. In addition to these, the President gives lectures to
the juniors and seniors, which consequently every Student hears twice
over in his course, first, upon Chronology and History, and afterwards
upon Composition and Criticism. He has also taught the French language
last winter, and it will continue to be taught to all who desire to
learn it. * * *
"As we have never yet been obliged to omit or alter it for want of
scholars, there is a fixed Annual Commencement on the last Wednesday of
September, when, after a variety of public exercises, always attended by
a vast concourse of the politest company, from the different parts of
this province and the cities of New York and Philadelphia. * * *"
Of Freneau's proficiency as a student we have no record. Of the details
of the Commencement of September 25, 1771, when he received his degree,
we have but a brief account. Brackenridge opened the exercises with a
salutatory, and following came four other exercises which completed the
morning's programme.
The audience assembled again at three, and after singing by the students
there came:
"6. An English forensic dispute on this question, 'Does ancient poetry
excel the modern?' Mr. Freneau, the respondent, his arguments in favor
of the ancients were read. Mr. Williamson answered him and Mr. McKnight
replied."
"7. A poem on 'The Rising Glory of America,' by Mr. Brackenridge, was
received with great applause by the audience."
Madison on account of ill health did not appear.
The "Rising Glory" had been written conjointly by Brackenridge and
Freneau. Although the former was given on the Commencement programme
full credit for the exercise, it was surely Freneau who conceived the
work and who gave it its strength and high literary value. Brackenridge
in later years confessed to his son that "on his part it was a task of
labor, while the verse of his associate flowed spontaneously." The poem
was printed in Philadelphia the following year, and in 1786 Freneau
isolated his own portion for publication in the first edition of his
works.
This detaching of Freneau's portion from the complete work destroyed at
the outset the original unity of the piece. The changes and omissions
made necessary by the process of separating the part from the whole, the
deliberate readjustment of perspective to bring the poem up to the
historical conditions of the later date, and the careful editing which
strove to remove blemishes and weaknesses due to inexperience, combine
to make the 1786 version practically a new poem.
The first glimpse of Freneau after his graduation from Princeton is
furnished by a letter to Madison, dated Somerset County, in Maryland,
November 22, 1772:[3]
"If I am not wrongly informed by my memory, I have not seen you
since last April, you may recollect I was then undertaking a School
at Flatbush on Long Island. I did not enter upon the business it is
certain and continued in it thirteen days--but--'Long Island I have
bid adieu, With all its bruitish, brainless crew. The youth of
that detested place, Are void of reason and of grace. From Flushing
hills to Flatbush plains, Deep ignorance unrivalld reigns.' I'm
very poetical, but excuse it. 'Si fama non venit ad aures,'--if you
have not heard the rumour of this story (which, by the by is told
in various taverns and eating houses) you must allow me to be a
little prolix with it. Those who employed me were some gentlemen of
New York, some of them are bullies, some merchants, and others
Scoundrels: They sent me eight children, the eldest of whom was 10
years. Some could read, others spell and a few stammer over a
chapter of the Bible--these were my pupils and over these was I to
preside. My salary moreover was £40,--there is something else
relating to that I shall not at present mention--after I forsook
them they proscribed me for four days and swore that if I was
caught in New York they would either Trounce or Maim me: but I
luckily escaped with my goods to Princetown--where I remained till
commencement--so much for this affair.
"I have printed a poem in New York called the American Village,
containing about 450 Lines, also a few short pieces added; I would
send you one if I had a proper opportunity--the additional poems
are--A Poem to the Nymph I never saw--The miserable Life of a
Pedagogue--and Stanzas on an ancient Dutch house on Long Island--As
to the main poem it is damned by all good and judicious judges--my
name is in the title page, this is called vanity by some--but 'who
so fond as youthful bards of fame?'
"I arrived at this Somerset Academy the 18th of October, and intend
to remain here till next October. I am assistant to Mr.
Brakenridge. This is the last time I shall enter into such a
business; it worries me to death and by no means suits my 'giddy,
wandring brain.' I would go over for the gown this time two years,
but the old hag Necessity has got such a prodigious gripe of me
that I fear I shall never be able to accomplish it. I believe if I
cannot make this out I must turn quack, and indeed I am now reading
Physic at my leisure hours, that is, when I am neither sleeping,
hearing classes, or writing Poetry--for these three take up all my
time.
"It is now late at night, not an hour ago I finished a little poem
of about 400 lines, entitled a Journey to Maryland--being the Sum
of my adventures--it begins 'From that fam'd town where Hudson's
flood--unites with Stream perhaps as good; Muse has your bard begun
to roam--& I intend to write a terrible Satire upon certain vicious
persons of quality in New York--who have also used me ill--and
print it next fall it shall contain 5 or 600 lines. Sometimes I
write pastorals to shew my Wit.
'Deep to the woods I sing a Shepherd's care,
Deep to the woods, Cyllenus calls me there,
The last retreat of Love and Verse I go,
Verse made me mad at first and----will keep me so.'
"I should have been glad to have heard from you before now; while I
was in college I had but a short participation of your agreeable
friendship, and the few persons I converse with and yet fewer,
whose conversation I delight in, make me regret the Loss of it. I
have met with a variety of rebuffs this year, which I forbear to
mention, I look like an unmeaning Teague just turn'd out of the
hold of an irish Ship coming down hither I met with a rare
adventure at Annapolis. I was destitute even of a brass farthing. I
got clear very handsomely.
"Could one expect ever to see you again, if I travel through
Virginia I shall stop and talk with you a day or two. I should be
very glad to receive a letter from you if it can be conveniently
forwarded--in short 'Non sum qualis eram' as Partridge says in Tom
Jones--My hair is grown like a mop, and I have a huge tuft of beard
directly upon my chin--I want but five weeks of twenty-one years of
age and already feel stiff with age--We have about 30 Students in
this academy, who prey upon me like Leaches--'When shall I quit
this whimpering pack, and hide my head in Acomack?'--Shall I leave
them and go 'Where Pokomokes long stream meandering flows--
"Excuse this prodigious scrawl without stile or sense--I send this
by Mr. Luther Martin who will forward it to Col. Lee--and he to you
I hope. Mr. Martin lives in Acomack in Virginia this side the bay.
Farewell and be persuaded I remain your
truly humble Serv't and friend
PH. F-R-E-N-E-A-U-"
The scene of Freneau's new labors was the famous old school near
Princess Anne, Md., which in 1779 was incorporated as Washington
Academy. Brackenridge became Master here shortly after his graduation,
and in the words of his son and biographer, received "a handsome
salary." "He continued here," says his biographer, "during several
years until the breaking out of the American Revolution, in the midst of
a wealthy and highly polished society, greatly respected as a man of
genius and scholarship. He used to speak with the pride of a Porson, of
the Winders, the Murrays, the Parnells and others who afterward became
distinguished."[4] For many years the academy drew to it the sons of the
best families of Northern Virginia, Maryland and Delaware.
The length of Freneau's stay in Maryland is uncertain. There is evidence
that he remained as Second Master of the school for several years. There
is a tradition in the family that it was the wish of Freneau's father
that he study divinity and that for a time he joined with Brackenridge
in preparing for this profession; and there is another, which is very
persistent, that he left Maryland to study the law in Philadelphia, but
I can find no positive evidence. The period between 1772 and 1775 is at
best a vague one in our life of the poet.
III.
In the early summer of 1775, Freneau suddenly appeared in New York as a
publicist of remarkable fluency. Before November he had issued no less
than eight long poems as separate publications, nearly all of them
called forth by the new crisis in American affairs. Beginning with
"American Liberty," issued by Anderson, the editor of the new patriotic
weekly, _The Constitutional Gazette_, he published pamphlet after
pamphlet in rapid succession, all of them throwing upon Gage and the
British cause in Boston all the satire and invective which he had used
so mercilessly in the old society war at Princeton. Two of these were
published by Hugh Gaine, and another, "The Voyage to Boston," first
issued by Anderson, was reprinted at once in Philadelphia. All of them
have fared hardly during the years. Several, like "General Gage's
Soliloquy," and "Timothy Taurus," which recounts the story of a journey
made by Freneau to Passaic Falls, near Paterson, New Jersey, in August,
have disappeared entirely, one of them, the "General Gage's Confession,"
has never been republished in any form, and all the others were cut down
and altered by the author for later editions until they were almost in
every respect entirely new poems.
That these voluminous and vigorous tirades, which their author evidently
poured forth with perfect ease, were criticised and condemned by the
fastidious we have no evidence. Certain it is that judging by the
contemporary newspaper press they were exceedingly popular. Yet, in
November we find Freneau in a sad state of discouragement, ready to give
up forever all association with the muses. Some one, envious of his
rising fame, has criticised him unmercifully. He seeks out the old
Clio-Whig satires and after adapting and reshaping them he hurls them at
the head of his enemy whom he designates as McSwiggen.
Great Jove in wrath a spark of genius gave
And bade me drink the mad Pierian wave,
Hence came those rhymes with truth ascribed to me,
That urge your little soul to jealousy.
* * * * *
Devoted mad man what inspired your rage,
Who bade your foolish muse with us engage?
Against a windmill would you try your might,
Against a castle would a pigmy fight?
The young poet had begun to realize how barren was the new world in
poetic appreciation; how impossible it was for even a true poet to
practice his art where few could appreciate, and none really cared:
Alone I stand to meet the foul-mouthed train
Assisted by no poets of the plain.
He looked longingly across the water where poets were appreciated:
Long have I sat on this disastrous shore,
And sighing sought to gain a passage o'er
To Europe's towns, where as our travellers say
Poets may flourish, or perhaps they may.
The poem was a valedictory.
I to the sea with weary steps descend,
Quit the mean conquest, that such swine must yield
And leave McSwiggen to enjoy the field.
In distant isles some happier scene I'll choose
And court in softer shades the unwilling muse.
Freneau had determined to spend the winter in the West Indies. He had
become acquainted during the autumn with a West Indian gentleman by the
name of Hanson, who owned large estates in the islands, and who sailed
master of his own vessel. Upon his invitation Freneau became a passenger
late in November for the Island of Santa Cruz. Early in the voyage the
mate died, and the young poet, his education outweighing his
inexperience in nautical matters, was chosen to fill his place. The
study of navigation, made necessary by this step, doubtless turned the
direction of his whole life.
For the next two years Freneau made his home on Captain Hanson's estate
on the Island of Santa Cruz. A selection from one of his letters
charmingly describes the spot.
"The town at the west end is but mean and ordinary, consisting of a
fort and perhaps 80 or 90 wooden houses. The harbor is nothing but
an open road, where, however, ships lie in the utmost security at
their moorings, the bottom being good for anchorage and the wind
always off shore. About two miles to the eastward of this town,
along the seashore, is the estate of Capt. Hanson, into which the
sea has formed a beautiful little bay, called Buttler's Bay, about
100 yards across; it has a sandy shore and an excellent landing,
though all the rest of the shore is sharp craggy rocks. My
agreeable residence at this place for above two years, off and on
during the wars in America, renders the idea of it all too
pleasing, and makes me feel much the same anxiety at a distance
from it as Adam did after he was banished from the bowers of
Eden."[5]
He seems to have been employed at intervals by Captain Hanson in voyages
about the islands. Thus he records of the Island of St. James, that "I
went over July 13, 1777, and remained there eight days. We loaded our
vessel with coral rock, which is used in these islands for burning lime
of a very excellent quality."
It was while at the ideal retreat at Butler's Bay that Freneau wrote
three of his most significant poems, "Santa Cruz," "The House of Night,"
and "The Jamaica Funeral," the first two of which were contributed to
the _United States Magazine_ in 1779. Of these the "House of Night" is
the most significant, containing as it does evidence of a high creative
power and a romantic imagination, rare indeed in English poetry in 1776.
There are evidences that Freneau composed the first draught of the poem
before leaving for the West Indies, but the point is not an important
one. For the edition of 1786 he nearly doubled the original version,
but in 1795 he cut it down to a few stanzas, taking from it nearly
everything which had made it a notable creation.
On April 1, 1778, Freneau sailed from Santa Cruz for the Bermuda
Islands, where for a time he was the guest of the English Governor. In
an elaborate letter to Brackenridge, dated Bermuda, May 10, afterward
published in the _United States Magazine_, he describes at length the
islands. "These," he says in conclusion, "are a few particulars
concerning this little country where I resided upwards of five weeks,
and if this slight description gives you any satisfaction, it will amply
repay me for the fatigues I underwent in sailing thither."
On June 6th he was again in Santa Cruz; on the 15th he set out on his
homeward voyage, after an absence of nearly three years. The run home
was destined to be eventful. Off the Delaware capes the vessel was taken
by the British, but Freneau, being a passenger, was landed on July 9th
and allowed to go his way.
The young poet now retired to Mount Pleasant, where doubtless he quietly
remained until the autumn of the following year. In August, 1778, he
published with Bell in Philadelphia the pamphlet poem "America
Independent." On January 1, 1779, Brackenridge issued in Philadelphia
the first number of the _United States Magazine_,[6] and Freneau at once
became an important contributor. His work in prose and verse may be
found in nearly every number. There are prose papers on the West Indies,
purporting to be extracts from the letters of "a young philosopher and
_bel esprit_ just returned from several small voyages amongst these
islands." There are several early poems for the first time put into
print, like "Columbus to Ferdinand" and "The Dying Elm," and there are
several notable long poems, like "Santa Cruz" and "The House of Night."
At least three of the poetical contributions were written expressly for
the magazine: "George the Third's Soliloquy," "Psalm cxxxvii
Imitated,"--signed "Monmouth, Sept. 10,"--and the "Dialogue between
George and Fox." It is evident, however, that Freneau, though his work
very greatly strengthened the periodical, was only a "valued
contributor." The psalm in the September issue, the first of the poems
to bear his name, had a foot-note explaining that the author was "a
young gentleman to whom in the course of this work we are greatly
indebted."
The _United States Magazine_ is a notable landmark in American literary
history. Its methods, as we view them to-day, seem singularly modern,
and its materials and arrangement are indeed remarkable when we view
them against the background of their times. It was a spirited, intensely
patriotic, and highly literary periodical; the single fact that "The
House of Night" first appeared in its columns is enough to stamp it as
no ordinary work. It died with its twelfth issue, owing to the troubled
state of the country and the unsettled nature of the currency. Then,
too, the audience to which it appealed was found to be a small one. In
his valedictory the editor complains bitterly of the unliterary
atmosphere in America. A large class, he declares, "inhabit the region
of stupidity, and cannot bear to have the tranquility of their repose
disturbed by the villanous shock of a book. Reading is to them the worst
of all torments, and I remember very well that at the commencement of
the work it was their language, 'Art thou come to torment us before the
time?' We will now say to them, 'Sleep on and take your rest.'"
Late in September, 1779, Freneau shipped as super-cargo on the brig
_Rebecca_, Captain Chatham, bound for the Azores. After an exciting
voyage, during which they were several times chased by British ships,
they arrived at Santa Cruz, in the island of Teneriffe, where they
remained two months. A part of Freneau's notebook during this voyage has
been preserved. It shows him to have been a careful and conscientious
student of navigation, making each day an observation of his own and
minutely tabulating his results. His cash account with the crew during
the stay in the islands is interesting and suggestive.
The early spring of 1780 was spent by the poet at the old home, but his
mind was evidently tossing upon the ocean. He longed to visit again his
beloved West Indies, and accordingly on the 25th of May he took passage
at Philadelphia, in the ship _Aurora_, for St. Eustatia. Freneau's
account of this voyage and its after results is still extant.[7] A few
quotations will tell the story.
"On the 25th of May, in beating down the Delaware Bay, we
unfortunately retook a small sloop from the refugees loaded with
corn, which hindered us from standing out to sea that night,
whereby in all probability we should have avoided the enemy which
afterwards captured us.
"Friday morning, May 26. The air very smoky and the wind somewhat
faintish, though it afterward freshened up. The wind was so that we
stood off E.S.E., after putting the pilot on board the small sloop,
handcuffing the prisoners, and sending the prize to Cape May.
About three o'clock in the afternoon we discovered three sail
bearing from us about E.N.E.; they were not more than five leagues
from us when we discovered them from the foretop; at the same time
we could see them from the quarter-deck. One appeared to be a
pretty large ship, the other two brigs. We soon found they were in
chase of us; we therefore tacked immediately, set all sail we could
crowd, and stood back from the bay. My advice to the officers was
to stand for Egg Harbor or any part of the Jersey shore, and run
the ship on the flats, rather than be taken; but this was
disregarded. We continued to stand in till we saw Cape Henlopen;
the frigate, in the meantime, gaining on us apace; sun about half
an hour high. We were abreast of the Cape, close in, when the wind
took us aback, and immediately after we were becalmed; the ebb of
the tide at the same time setting very strong out of the bay, so
that we rather drifted out. Our design was, if possible, to get
within the road around the point, and then run the ship on shore;
but want of wind and the tide being against us, hindered from
putting this into execution. We were now within three hundred yards
of the shore. The frigate in the meantime ran in the bay to leeward
of us about one-quarter of a mile (her distance from the Cape
hindering it from becalming her as it did us) and began to bring
her cannon to bear on us. Her two prizes hove to; one we knew to be
the brig _Active_, Captain Mesnard; the other, as we afterward
learned, was a Salem brig from the West Indies. The frigate was the
_Iris_, returning from Charleston to New York, with the express of
the former's being taken. We now began to fire upon each other at
the distance of about three hundred yards. The frigate hulled us
several times. One shot went betwixt wind and water, which made the
ship leak amazingly, making twenty-four inches in thirty minutes.
We found our four-pounders were but trifles against the frigate, so
we got our nine-pounder, the only one we had, pointed from the
cabin windows, with which we played upon the frigate for about half
an hour. At last a twelve-pound shot came from the frigate, and,
striking a parcel of oars lashed upon the starboard quarter, broke
them all in two, and continuing its destructive course, struck
Captain Laboyteaut in the right thigh, which it smashed to atoms,
tearing part of his belly open at the same time with the splinters
from the oars; he fell from the quarter-deck close by me, and for
some time seemed very busily engaged in setting his legs to rights.
He died about eleven the same night, and next day was sewed up in
his hammock and sunk. Every shot seemed now to bring ruin with it.
A lad named Steel had his arm broken and some others complained of
slight wounds; whereupon, finding the frigate ready and in a
position to give us a broadside, we struck, after having held a
very unequal contest with her for about an hour.... As soon as we
struck, one Squires with some midshipmen came on board and took
possession of the vessel."
Freneau at first supposed that, being a passenger, he would be taken
with the prize to New York and there released; but despite his protests,
he was driven into the barge with the other prisoners and taken to the
_Iris_. All his baggage was left behind, and he was destined never to
see it again. Arriving on board, the prisoners were driven between
decks, where the air was hot and stifling.
"There were about one hundred prisoners forward, the stench of whom
was almost intolerable. So many melancholy sights and dismal
countenances made it a pretty just representation of the infernal
region. I marched through a torrent of cursing and blasphemy to my
station, viz., at the blacksmith's vice, where the miserable
prisoners were handcuffed two and two. At last it came my turn.
'Pray,' said I, 'is it your custom to handcuff passengers? The
Americans, I am confident, never used the English so.'
"'Are you a passenger?' said the blacksmith. At the same time
happening to look up, I saw Hugh Ray looking steadily at me, who
immediately seized my hand, and asked me how I did. 'Do you know
him?' said Holmes, the master-at-arms. 'Then you are free from
irons; come over among the gentlemen.'
"This was an unexpected deliverance from a cursed disgrace which I
hardly knew how I should get clear of. After this I was used well
by everybody."
On the 29th the _Iris_ reached New York and the common prisoners were
sent to the prison ships in the harbor. Freneau, however, was retained
with the officers. He had been promised his liberty at the first
possible moment, but on Thursday, June 1st, at the Commissioner's
office, the charge was brought by the second mate that Freneau had been
among those stationed at the guns during the fight. He was refused
parole, though he promised security in any amount up to ten thousand
pounds, and the same day was placed on board the _Scorpion_ prison ship,
"lying off the college in the North River."
Freneau's experiences during his stay upon the _Scorpion_ have been
described by him in graphic style in his poem, "The Prison Ship."
"On the night of June 4th, thirty-five of the prisoners formed a
design of making their escape, in which they were favored by a
large schooner accidentally alongside of us. She was one that was
destined for the expedition to Elizabeth Town, and anchored just
astern of us. We were then suffered to continue upon deck, if we
chose, till nine o'clock. We were all below at that time except the
insurgents, who rushed upon the sentries and disarmed them in a
moment; one they tied by his neck-stock to the quarter rails, and
carried off his musquet with them (they were all Hessians); the
rest they drove down with their arms into the cabin and rammed the
sentry box down the companion in such a manner that no one could
get it up or down. One, Murphy, possessed himself of Gauzoo's
silver-hilted sword, and carried it off with him. When the sentries
were all silent, they manned the ship's boat and boarded the
schooner, though the people on board attempted to keep them off
with handspikes. The wind blowing fresh at south and the flood of
tide being made, they hoisted sail and were out of sight in a few
minutes. Those particulars we learned from some who were on duty,
but were unsuccessful in getting into the boat. As soon as the
sentries got possession of the vessel again, which they had no
difficulty in doing, as there was no resistance made, they posted
themselves at each hatchway and most basely and cowardly fired fore
and aft among us, pistols and musquets, for a full quarter of an
hour without intermission. By the mercy of God they touched but
four, one mortally.... After this no usage seemed severe enough for
us."
On June 22d, Freneau, who was weak with fever, was taken to the _Hunter_
hospital ship, lying in the East River. Here he languished with an
intermittent fever, that threatened constantly to become "putrid" and
fatal, until July 12th, when:
"The flag came alongside and cleared the hospital ship. But the
miseries we endured in getting to Elizabeth Town were many. Those
that were very bad, of which the proportion was great, naturally
took possession of the hold. No prisoner was allowed to go to the
cabin, so that I, with twenty or thirty others, were obliged to
sleep out all night, which was uncommonly cold for the season.
About ten next morning we arrived at Elizabeth Town Point, where we
were kept in the burning sun several hours, till the Commissary
came to discharge us.
"I was afflicted with such pains in my joints, I could scarcely
walk, and besides was weakened with a raging fever; nevertheless I
walked two miles to Elizabeth Town; here I got a passage in a wagon
to within a mile of Crow's Ferry, which I walked; got a passage
over the ferry and walked on as far as Molly Budleigh's, where I
stayed all night. Next morning, having breakfasted on some bread
and milk, I set homeward; when I came to Obadiah Budleigh's corner
I turned to the right and came home round about through the woods,
for fear of terrifying the neighbors with my ghastly looks had I
gone through Mount Pleasant."
Some days later he despatched the following note to his friend at Santa
Cruz:
"SIR:--I take this opportunity to inform you that instead of
arriving, as I fondly promised myself, at the fragrant groves and
delectable plains of Santa Cruz, to enjoy the fruits and flowers of
that happy clime, I was unfortunately taken and confined on board a
prison ship at New York, and afterwards in a Hospital Ship, where
the damnable draughts of a German doctor afforded far different
feelings to my stomach than the juice of the orange or more
nourishing milk of the cocoa."
IV.
On April 25, 1781, there was established in Philadelphia a new weekly
newspaper, the _Freeman's Journal or North American Intelligencer_,
which was to be "open to all parties but influenced by none," and which
had for its object "To encourage genius, to deter vice, and disrobe
tyranny and misrule of every plumage." The proprietor and printer of
this paper was Mr. Francis Bailey, who not long before had removed his
office from Lancaster, Pa. The editor and ruling spirit, although his
name during three years did not once appear in its columns, was Philip
Freneau. The mark of the young poet is upon every page. Its opening
editorial, which was from his pen, sounded a note that was not once
lowered or weakened while he was in control.
"At no period of time, in no era of important events from the first
establishment of social government, have the liberties of man, have
the rights even of human nature, been more deeply interested than
at the time in which we presume to address you. While Liberty, the
noblest ornament of society, and without which no community can be
well organized, seemed to pine and sicken under the trammels of
despotic restraint in every one of the ancient nations of the
earth, it fairly promises to resume its pristine majesty here, and
the new world begins to emerge from the fangs and tyranny of the
old.... One of the first sources of her decline in those countries
where she last resided spring from the wanton and unhallowed
restraints which the jealous arm of despotism hath imposed on the
freedom of the press....
"That freemen may be made acquainted with the real state of their
affairs, and that the characters of their public servants, both
individually and collectively, be made manifest, is our object.
With this patriotic view, and under the tutelage of law and the
constitution, has the subscriber opened a Free Press, universally
free to every citizen indiscriminately, whose principles coincide
with those of the Revolution, and whose object is confessedly known
to point at public or private good."
From this time until June, 1784, Freneau resided principally in
Philadelphia, and edited the journal. During all of this time his muse
was exceedingly active. He followed carefully the last years of the war,
and put into satiric verse every movement of the "insolent foe." He sang
the victory of Jones, and mourned in plaintive numbers the dead at Eutaw
Springs. He voiced his indignation over the destructive career of
Cornwallis, and burst into a _Laus Deo_ at his fall. The ludicrous
plight of Rivington and Gaine, the distress of the Tories, and the final
departure of the British filled him with glee, which he poured out in
song after song. It was his most prolific and spontaneous period.
He wrote, too, an abundance of prose. The series of graceful papers
entitled "The Pilgrim" is from his pen, besides many a political study
and literary sketch signed with a sounding name. Everywhere are manifest
his love of true literature and his desire to lead a merely literary
life, but here and there are notes of discouragement. "Barbers cannot
possibly exist as such," he writes, "among a people who have neither
hair nor beards. How, then, can a poet hope for success in a city where
there are not three persons possessed of elegant ideas?"
During the year 1783 Freneau's pen was very busy in various lines of
work. It is probable that he assisted Bailey in many ways,--writing
introductions to publications issued by the office and performing the
various other duties incumbent upon the literary editor of a publishing
house. During this year he translated the "New Travels through North
America," which had just been issued by the Abbé Robin, one of the
chaplains of the French Army in America, and the translation was issued
first by Bailey and later by Powers and Willis of Boston. Freneau's
introduction is characteristic:
"Most of those accounts of North America, given to the public by
British explorators and others, previous to the Revolution, are
generally taken up, with the recitals of wonderful adventures, in
the woods beyond the Lakes, or with the Histories and records of
the wild Indian nations, so that by the time the reader gets
through one of those performances, he never fails to be better
acquainted with the _Ottagnies_, _Chereokees_, _Miamees_,
_Nadouwessians_, and a hundred others, with their various customs
of _paw-wawing_, or methods of making _wampum_, than with the most
interesting particulars relative to the _inhabitants_ of the then
colonies _these_ were but rarely thought worthy mentioning by those
gentlemen, and when they are, it is mortifying enough to see them
constantly considered as mere beasts of burden, calculated solely
for the support of the grandeur, wealth and omnipotence of
Great-Britain, than as men and Free-Men.
"Our French Author is more liberal--two years before the present
peace he considered the United States as a great independent
nation, advancing with hasty strides to the summit of power and
sovereignty."
It was during this year that the poet, for the first time, met with
positive opposition and abuse. Oswald, the editor of the newly
established _Gazette_, quarrelled with Bailey, and a poetical battle was
one phase of the contest. The details of this affair will be found in
the proper place, and I need not recount them here, but suffice it to
say that Freneau soon found his muse assailed by the meanest of all
critics. His extremely sensitive nature could brook no criticism. His
Celtic temperament could fight fiercely in the presence of an open foe,
but it was easily depressed and discouraged by criticism and covert
attack. He lost heart in his work, and at the end of the third volume he
quietly withdrew from his editorship.
The three volumes of the _Journal_ which bear his impress are notable
for their vigor of policy, their high ideals, their unswerving
patriotism, and their real literary merit. It is to be hoped that a
selection from Freneau's prose writings during this critical era in our
history may sometime be made. Nowhere else can we gain so distinct a
picture of the man, with his sanguine, impetuous temperament, his proud
spirit, and his intense hatred of every form of tyranny. He wrote
vigorously not only on British oppression, but on such topics as the
wrongs of negro slavery, cruelty to animals, the wanton destruction of
trees, the evils of intemperance, and the rights of woman.
The "Epistle to Sylvius" was his valedictory. In it he deplores the lack
of literary taste in America, and the sad fate which has befallen his
youthful poetic dreams. The age is grown mercantile, and Sejanus the
mighty tradesman,--
"Sejanus has in house declared
'These States, as yet, can boast no bard,
And all the sing-song of our clime
Is merely nonsense fringed with rhyme.'"
A bard with more Teutonic blood, if he knew within himself that he was
indeed a poet, and the only real poet of his time, would have staid at
his post and made himself heard, despite narrow criticism and mean
abuse, but Freneau was too proud to fight for recognition. The people
had crowned him, to be sure, but if the critics, those who should be the
real judges, rejected him, he would strive no longer. He would leave the
field.
"Then, Sylvius, come--let you and I
On Neptune's aid, once more rely:
Perhaps the muse may still impart
The balm to ease the aching heart.
Though cold might chill and storms dismay,
Yet Zoilus will be far away."
On June 24, 1784, Freneau sailed from Middletown Point as master of the
brig _Dromilly_, bound for Jamaica. The voyage was indeed a memorable
one. On the night of July 30, while off the end of the island, the ship
encountered a violent hurricane. According to contemporary accounts, "No
more than eight out of one hundred and fifty sail of vessels in the
ports of Kingston and Port Royal were saved." The _Dromilly_ survived
the storm, but it was a mere wreck when the next morning it crept into
Kingston Harbor.
Freneau remained in Jamaica until September 24, when he left for
Philadelphia in the brig _Mars_, arriving November 4. His experiences in
trying to fit out the wrecked _Dromilly_ are not recorded, but the one
incident of his poetic reply to the keeper of the King's water works,
who had refused him a puncheon of water, is characteristic.
From this time until 1790, Freneau's life is redolent of the ocean. A
complete itinerary of this wandering era may be compiled from the
shipping news of the various seaport newspapers, but it is useless to go
into details. He was master for a time of the sloop _Monmouth_, plying
for freight between Charleston, S. C., New York, and Savannah. His
brother Peter, in Charleston, had become a man not only of influence,
but of means, and together they owned the vessel and shared its profits.
For several years advertisements like this appeared in the Charleston
papers:
"For freight to any part of this State or Georgia; for charter in
any free port in the West Indies, the sloop _Monmouth_, Philip
Freneau, Master, burden about 40 tons. She is new, stanch,
well-formed and draws six feet when loaded. Will carry about one
hundred barrels of rice. For further particulars inquire of said
master on board at Mrs. Motte's wharf or Peter Freneau."
On the 1st of June, 1786, there was issued from Bailey's press the first
collected edition of Freneau's poetry. During the entire year its author
was at sea almost continuously. It is evident that he had little to do
with the edition. The copy furnished to Bailey consisted of the
manuscript of a few early poems, revised copies of the 1775 pamphlets,
and corrected and enlarged versions of his contributions to the _United
States Magazine_. The bulk of the book is made up of Freneau's
contributions to the _Freeman's Journal_, printed _seriatim_ and without
change. The poem "Rivington's Confessions" is even divided into two
parts, with another poem between, as it first appeared in the paper. An
index of the poetry in the first four volumes of the _Journal_ is a
nearly perfect index of the 1786 edition, after the poem "The Prison
Ship."
Bailey wrote for the edition the following introduction:
"The pieces now collected and printed in the following sheets, were
left in my hands, by the author, above a year ago, with permission
to publish them whenever I thought proper. A considerable number of
the performances contained in this volume, as many will recollect,
have appeared at different times in Newspapers (particularly the
Freeman's Journal) and other periodical publications in the
different States of America, during the late war, and since; and
from the avidity and pleasure with which they generally appear to
have been read by persons of the best taste, the Printer now the
more readily gives them to the world in their present form,
(without troubling the reader with any affected apologies for their
supposed or real imperfections) in hopes they will afford a high
degree of satisfaction to the lovers of poetical wit, and elegance
of expression."
This edition is the most spontaneous and poetic of the poet's works. In
it we see Freneau before he has lost his early poetic dream, before he
has become hardened by close contact with the world of affairs and the
cold, practical round of political life. This and the 1788 edition
contain by far the most valuable part of his poetic work.
In those days before the invention of book reviews, the fate of a book
turned largely upon its immediate reception by the reading public.
Criticism was by word of mouth: the poems were discussed in polite
circles and over the morning coffee. Thus we have nothing to quote to
show how America received her bard. We know, however, that the poems
were successful even beyond Bailey's expectations. In less than five
months he was out with proposals for "an additional collection of
entertaining original performances in prose and verse by Philip
Freneau." The book was to be published as soon as five hundred
subscribers could be secured, and the subscribers' names were to be
printed at the beginning of the volume.
"Such persons as are disposed to encourage American authors
(particularly at a time when we are surfeited with stale
publications retailed to us from British presses) and are not
unwilling to be known as promoters of polite literature and the
fine arts in these Republican States are requested to deliver in
their names."
One bit of contemporary praise, however, has been preserved. On June
8th, one week after the appearance of Freneau's first volume, Col. Parke
of Philadelphia composed the following, which was first published in the
_Journal_ of June 21st, and afterward included in his volume of "The
Lyric Works of Horace, ... to which are added a Number of Original
Poems," issued later in the year:
"To Mr. PHILIP FRENEAU, on his Volume of excellent POEMS,
Printed by Mr. BAILEY.
"_Difficile est Satiram non Scribere._"--_Juv._
"Tho' I know not your person, I well know your merit,
Your satires admire--your muse of true spirit;
Who reads them must smile at poetical story
Except the k--g's printer, or some such like tory;
Sir William, sir Harry, and would-be sir John,
Cornwallis, the devil, those bucks of the ton;
Black Dunmore and Wallace with sun-setting nose,
Who steak hogs and sheep, secure--_under the Rose_.[A]
But a fig for the anger of such petty rogues,
To the devil we pitch them without shoes or brogues!
"Pythag'ras' choice scheme my belief now controuls,
I sign to his creed--transmigration of souls;
Euphorbas's shield he no doubt did employ,
And bravely let blood on the plains of old Troy:
The souls of great Marlbro' and warlike Eugene
Conspicuous in Washington's glory are seen:
Sage Pluto beams wisdom from Franklin's rich brain,
And sky-taught sir Isaac[B] is seen here again.
But Hugh when he migrates may daily be found
Cracking bones in a kitchen in form of a hound;
When his compeer shall die--while no Christian shall weep him,
Old Pluto, below, for a devil will keep him;
Unless he's sent up on some hasty dispatch,
The whigs to abuse, and more falsehoods to hatch.
Thou red-jerkin'd fops, whom your muse I've heard sing
From Hounslow's bold heroes successively spring;
From Tyburn they tumble as supple as panders,
Then migrate straightway into knights and commanders.
But you, worthy poet, whose soul-cutting pen
In gall paints the crimes of all time-serving men,
The fiend of corruption, the wretch of an hour,
The star-garter'd villain, the scoundrel in pow'r,
From souls far unlike may announce your ascension,
The patriot all-worthy, above bribe or pension,
The martyr who suffered for liberty's sake
Grim dungeons, more horrid than hell's bitter lake:
Your name to bright honor, the spirits shall lift,
That glow'd in the bosoms of Churchill and Swift.
"And when you are number'd, alas! with the dead,
Your works by true wits will forever be read,
Who, pointing the finger, shall pensively shew
The lines that were written, alas! by Freneau."
_Philadelphia, June 8, 1786._
[A] He commanded the _Rose_ sloop.
[B] David Rittenhouse, Esq., the Ingenious inventor of the
celebrated perpendicular Orrery.
The second volume of poems did not appear promptly. One year after the
first proposals, Bailey advertised that the book was at last in press.
"An unusual hurry of other business (of a nature not to be postponed),
has unavoidably delayed the printer in its publication to so late a
period." It is notable that of the four hundred and sixty-three
subscribers, two hundred and fifty, or over half, were in Charleston,
S. C., and one hundred and twenty-six in New York. Philadelphia
subscribed for very few of the volumes.
The printer's advertisement was as follows:
"The following Essays and Poems, selected from some printed and
manuscript papers of Mr. Freneau, are now presented to the public
of the United States in hopes they will prove at least equally
acceptable with his volume of poems published last year. Some few
of the pieces in this volume have heretofore appeared in American
newspapers; but through a fatality, not unusually attending
publications of that kind, are now, perhaps, forgotten; and, at any
time, may possibly never have been seen or attended to but by very
few."
Of the forty-nine poems in the volume, one, "Slender's Journey," had
been published separately by Bailey early in 1787, and nearly half of
the others had first seen the light between April, 1786, and January,
1788, in the columns of the _Freeman's Journal_. The greater number of
the others were doubtless printed from the poet's manuscripts. A few of
the prose papers, like "The Philosopher of the Forest," were selected
from the columns of the _Journal_, especially from the series entitled
"The Pilgrim," but much of the rest was from the poet's manuscripts now
first published.
In the meantime the poet was leading a stormy and adventurous career
upon the sea. As master of the sloop _Industry_, and later of the
schooner _Columbia_, plying irregularly on all kinds of coastwise
voyages between Georgia and New York, he experienced every phase of
life upon the ocean. As a sample of his adventurous career during this
period, note the following letter[8] to Bailey, written from Norfolk,
Va., in the summer of 1788:
"_Norfolk, Virginia, August 6, 1788._
"_Mr._ BAILEY,
"I have the mortification to inform you that, after leaving
New-York on the 21st of July, I had the misfortune to have my
vessel dismasted, thrown on her beam ends, shifted and ruined the
bulk of her cargo, lost every sail, mast, spar, boat, and almost
every article upon deck, on the Wednesday afternoon following, in
one of the hardest gales that ever blew upon this coast. Capt.
William Cannon, whom I think you know, who was going passenger with
me to Charleston, and Mr. Joseph Stillwell, a lad of a reputable
family in New-Jersey, were both washed overboard and drowned,
notwithstanding every effort to save them. All my people besides,
except one, an old man who stuck fast in one of the scuttles, were
several times overboard, but had the fortune to regain the wreck,
and with considerable difficulty save their lives.--As to myself, I
found the vessel no longer under any guidance--I took refuge in the
main weather shrouds, where indeed I saved myself from being washed
into the sea, but was almost staved to pieces in a violent fall I
had upon the main deck, the main-mast having given way six feet
above the deck, and gone overboard--I was afterward knocked in the
head by a violent stroke of the tiller, which entirely deprived me
of sensation for (I was told) near a quarter of an hour.--Our pumps
were now so choaked with corn that they would no longer work,
upward of four feet of water was in the hold, fortunately our
bucket was saved, and with this we went to baling, which alone
prevented us from foundering in one of the most dismal nights that
ever man witnessed.
"The next morning the weather had cleared away and the wind came
round to the N. E. which during the gale had been E. N. E.--the
land was then in sight, about 5 miles distant, latitude at noon
36-17, I then rigged out a broken boom, and set the fore top-sail,
the only sail remaining, and steered for cape Henry; making however
but very little way, the vessel being very much on one side and
ready to sink with her heavy cargo of iron, besides other weighty
articles. We were towed in next day, Friday, by the friendly
assistance of capt. Archibald Bell, of the ship Betsey, from
London--I have since arrived at this port by the assistance of a
Potowmac pilot.--Nothing could exceed our distress--no fire, no
candle, our beds soaked with sea water, the cabbin torn to pieces,
a vast quantity of corn damaged and poisoning us to death, &c. &c.
&c. As we entered this port, on the 29th of July, the very dogs
looked at us with an eye of commiseration--the negros pitied us,
and almost every one shewed a disposition to relieve us. In the
midst of all this vexation the crew endeavoured to keep up their
spirits with a little grog, while I have recourse to my old
expedient of philosophy and reflection. I have unloaded my cargo,
partly damaged, partly otherwise--This day I also begin to refit my
vessel, and mean to proceed back to New-York as soon as refitted,
which cannot be sooner than the 25th, perhaps the 30th of this
month. It is possible, however, that I may be ordered to sell the
vessel here; if so, I shall take a passage to Baltimore, and go to
New-York by the way of Philadelphia, to look out for another more
fortunate barque than that which I now command.
Your's &c. PHILIP FRENEAU."
I cannot forbear quoting another letter[9] written nearly a year later,
since it gives us a charming glimpse of the Freneau of this period:
"Yamacraw, Savanna, March 14th, 1789.
"SIR: Amongst a number of my good natured acquaintance, who have
lately sympathized with me, on account of what they term my
misfortunes, during great part of last year, I know of no one more
entitled to my acknowledgments, on the occasion, than yourself.
When an old woman talks of witches, ghosts, or blue devils, we
naturally make an allowance for bad education, or the imbicility of
intellect, occasioned by age. When one man seriously supposes
another unfortunate, for the sake of two or three successive
disasters, which no prudence or foresight could have avoided, the
same allowance ought to be made, provided the same excuses could be
assigned.
"Can you be serious, then in advising me to quit all future
intercourse with an element, that has for some years, with all its
dangers and losses, afforded to your humble servant attractions,
far more powerful than those of Apollo! Formerly, when I wrote
poetry, most of those that attended to it, would not allow my
verses to be good. I gave credit to what I deemed the popular
opinion, and made a safe retreat in due time, to the solitary
wastes of Neptune. I am not, however, inclined to believe people so
readily now, when they alledge my vessel is not sound, and when
several gentlemen, for reasons best known to themselves, and
perhaps not over willing to risque the uncertainties of the world
to come, effect to doubt of her ability to waft their carcases in
safety.
But my ambition is greatly concerned in this matter: a schooner is
confided to my care, humble, indeed, when compared to those lofty
piles which I have seen you so much admire, but which is,
nevertheless, really capable of an European, nay of an India
voyage. Read all history, ransack libraries, call tradition to your
aid, search all records, examine a million of manuscripts on
vellum, on parchment, on paper, on marble, on what you please, and
I defy you to find the most distant hint of any _poet_, in any age
or country, from Hesiod down to Peter Pindar, having been trusted
with the controul or possession of anything fit to be mentioned or
compared with the same barque, which you say, _I have the
misfortune to command._
"To be serious: misfortune ought to be only the topic of such men
as do not think or reason with propriety, upon the nature of
things. Some writer says, it is but another name for carelessness
or inattention: Though that may not at all times be the case, it is
in the power of every man to place himself beyond the supposed
baneful influence of this inexorable deity, by _assuming_ a dignity
of mind, (if it be not the gift of nature) that will, in the end,
get the better of the untoward events, that may frequently cross
our best purposes. Indeed, the _sea_ is the _best_ school for
philosophy (I mean of the moral kind); in thirteen or fourteen
years' acquaintance with this element, I am convinced a man ought
to imbibe more of your right genuine _stoical_ stuff, than could be
gained in half a century on shore.--I must add that, be our
occupations what they may, or our fortunes what they will, there is
a certain delectable, inexpressible satisfaction in now and then
encountering the rubs and disasters of life, and I am entirely of
the opinion which (says Dr. Langhorne)
"Weakness wrote in Petrarch's gentle strain,
When once he own'd at love's unfavouring shrine
_A thousand pleasures art not worth one pain_!"
"I must now conclude this scrawl, with telling you, that I am
receiving on board my vessel a small cargo of lumber, at a place
called Yamacraw, a little above Savanna. The weather is extremely
warm, I am tired of my letter, and must, of course, conclude. I do
not know whether you ever mean to make a voyage to sea--if you
should, thrice welcome shall you be to such accommodations as my
little embarkation affords. Poets and philosophers, shall ever
travel with me at a cheap rate indeed! Not only because they are
not generally men of this world, but because, even supposing the
barque that bears them, should make an external exit to the bottom
of the ocean, the busy world, as things go, will regret the loss of
most of them very little, perhaps not at all.
Your's, &c., P. FRENEAU."
On the 24th of April, 1789, when Washington arrived in New York to enter
upon the duties of the presidency, in the fleet that accompanied him
from Elizabethtown Point was the schooner _Columbia_, Capt. Freneau,
eight days from Charleston. In June the _Columbia_ again entered New
York Harbor, and on December 28th she was at Sunbury, Georgia. On
February 12th, 1790, Freneau arrived in New York, passenger from
Middletown Point in the brig _Betsy_, Capt. Motley, to become editor of
Child and Swaine's _New York Daily Advertiser_. For several months
negotiations had been pending. Every appearance of the poet in New York
for a year past had been marked by a small budget of poems in the
_Advertiser_ from the pen of "Capt. Freneau," but it was not until
February, 1790, that he was induced to leave his beloved _Columbia_ and
settle down to a life upon shore. The poem "Neversink," written some
months later, is his valedictory to the ocean.
"Proud heights: with pain so often seen
(With joy beheld once more)
On your firm base I take my stand,
Tenacious of the shore:
Let those who pant for wealth or fame
Pursue the watery road;--
Soft sleep and ease, blest days and nights,
And health, attend these favoring heights,
Retirement's blest abode."
The poem "Constantia" may record the poet's reasons for leaving the
ocean, for on the 19th of May, 1790, there appeared in Peter Freneau's
Charleston paper, the _City Gazette_, _or the Daily Advertiser_, the
following:
"_Married_, on the fifteenth of April, at Middletown Point, East
New Jersey, Capt. Philip Freneau to Miss Eleanor Forman, daughter
of Mr. Samuel Forman, of that place."
The Forman family with which the poet allied himself was one of great
respectability and even prominence in New Jersey. Its record during the
Revolution had been a conspicuous one, and its connection included the
Ledyards, the Seymours, and many other prominent families. Mrs. Freneau,
in the words of her daughter, "was remarkable for her gentle, lady-like
manners, amiable disposition and finely informed mind. She was affable
and sprightly in her conversation, and there were, even when she had
reached the advanced age of eighty-seven, few handsomer women." In her
early years she dabbled a little in poetry herself, and there is a
tradition in the family that the prenuptial correspondence was for a
long time wholly in verse.
Freneau was now fairly settled in life, and for the next seven or eight
years he was engaged almost continuously in newspaper work.
V.
During the next year and more Freneau, as editor of the _Daily
Advertiser_, brought to bear upon the paper all the vigor and literary
skill which had so marked the _Freeman's Journal_. The tone of the
editorial comment was patriotic and spirited. The note of reform, of
opposition to everything that was degrading to high ideals, or that in
any way threatened personal liberty, was never absent. Despite the
manifold duties incumbent upon the editor of a city daily, he found time
to write finished prose sketches and to woo the muses. His poetry of
this period is notable both as to quantity and quality. Some of it was
drawn from the notebooks of his years of wandering, but the greater part
dealt with more timely topics. In June he published the advertisement:
"Mr. Freneau proposes publishing a volume of original poems, to
contain about two hundred and fifty pages, 12mo, neatly
printed.... As soon as there appears a sufficiency of subscribers
to defray the expenses of paper and printing, the collection shall
be put to press."
Judging from several poems of this period which were printed as from the
author's new volume, "The Rising Empire," this was to be the title of
the book. The advertisement was dropped in October, and "The Rising
Empire" never appeared, though most of its poems were printed in the
edition of 1795.
On September 20, 1791, Freneau's daughter, Eleanor, was born at Mount
Pleasant. His salary as editor of the _Advertiser_ was not large; the
little family, it appears, was in straightened circumstances. A
letter[10] from Aedanus Burke of Charleston to Madison, dated September
13, 1801, throws light upon the period.
"I remember, it was about the last fortnight that we served
together in Congress, in 1791, I one day called you aside, and
mentioned the name of Mr. Phillip Freneau to you, as one I knew you
esteemed, and then lay strugling under difficulties, with his
family. My memory brings to my recollection, that you mentioned the
matter to the Secretary of State, Mr. Jefferson. Freneau was
invited from N. York, and had the place of interpreter, with a mere
trifle of Salary. Little did William Smith know, that you were the
author or cause of bringing Freneau from New York; or he might
have turned against you, his terrible battery of the slanders and
invectives which he poured forth against Mr. Jefferson for three or
four years afterwards."
Madison acted promptly. On the 28th of February, 1791, Jefferson wrote
to Freneau as follows:
"SIR: The clerkship for foreign languages in my office is vacant
the salary indeed is very low, being but two hundred & fifty
dollars a year; but also it gives so little to do as not to
interfere with any other calling the person may chuse, which would
not absent him from the seat of government. I was told a few days
ago that it might perhaps be convenient to you to accept it--if so,
it is at your service. It requires no other qualification than a
moderate knowledge of the French. Should anything better turn up
within my department that might suit you, I should be very happy to
bestow it as well. Should you conclude to accept the present, you
may consider it as engaged to you, only be so good as to drop me a
line informing me of your resolution. I am with great esteem, Sir,
Your very humble serv't,
TH. JEFFERSON."
Freneau's letter in reply has been lost. On May 1st, however, Madison
wrote Jefferson, so that we may gather its import:
"I have seen Freneau also and given him a line to you. He sets out
for Philada. today or tomorrow, though it is not improbable that he
may halt in N. Jersey. He is in the habit, I find, of translating
the Leyden _Gazette_ and consequently must be fully equal to the
task you have alloted for him. He had supposed that besides this
degree of skill, it might be expected that he should be able to
translate with equal propriety into French: and under this idea,
his delicacy had taken an insuperable objection to the undertaking.
Being now set right as to this particular and being made sensible
of the advantages of Philada. over N. Jersey for his private
undertaking, his mind is taking another turn; and if the scantiness
of his capital should not be a bar, I think he will establish
himself in the former. At all events he will give his friends there
an opportunity of aiding his decision by their information &
counsel. The more I learn of his character, talents and principles,
the more I should regret his burying himself in the obscurity he
had chosen in N. Jersey. It is certain that there is not to be
found in the whole catalogue of American Printers, a single name
that can approach towards a rivalship."
Jefferson replied on May 9th:
"Your favor of the 1st came to hand on the 3d. Mr. Freneau has
not followed it. I suppose therefore he has changed his mind back
again, for which I am really sorry."
That Jefferson had made overtures to Freneau about the establishing of a
paper at the seat of government, or at least had discussed the matter
with those who had, is evident from the following letter written to his
son-in-law, Randolph, six days later:
"I enclose you Bache's as well as Fenno's papers. You will have
perceived that the latter is a paper of pure Toryism,
disseminating the doctrines of Monarchy, aristocracy, & the
exclusion of the people. We have been trying to get another
_weekly_ or _half weekly_ set up, excluding advertisements, so
that it might go through the states & furnish a _whig vehicle_ of
intelligence. We hoped at one time to have persuaded Freneau to
set up here, but failed."
It is a testimonial to the energy and the ability of Freneau that
leaders like Madison and Jefferson should have sought him so
persistently. Notwithstanding Freneau's refusal, Jefferson, on July
21st, wrote to Madison:
"I am sincerely sorry that Freneau has declined coming here. Tho'
the printing business be sufficiently full here, yet I think he
would have set out on such advantageous ground as to have been
sure of success. His own genius in the first place is so superior
to that of his competitors. I should have given him the perusal of
all my letters of foreign intelligence & all foreign newspapers;
the publication of all proclamations & other public notices within
my department, & the printing of the laws, which added to his
salary would have been a considerable aid. Besides this, Fenno's
being the only weekly, or half weekly paper, & under general
condemnation for its toryism & its incessant efforts to overturn
the government, Freneau would have found that ground as good as
unoccupied."
This being brought to Freneau's attention, he determined to hold out no
longer. On July 25th he wrote to Madison from Middletown Point:
"Some business detains me here a day or two longer from returning
to New York. When I come, which I expect will be on Thursday, if
you should not have left the City, I will give you a decisive
answer relative to printing my paper at the Seat of Govt. instead
of in N. York. If I can get Mr. Childs to be connected with me on
a tolerable plan, I believe I shall sacrifice other considerations
and transfer myself to Philadelphia."
Mr. Francis Childs, who was one of the proprietors of the _Advertiser_,
as we have already seen, agreed to the enterprise, and the following
document was soon signed:
"DEPARTMENT OF STATE OF THE UNITED STATES.
"Philip Freneau is hereby appointed Clerk for foreign languages in
the office of Secretary of State with a salary of two hundred &
fifty dollars a year, to commence from the time he shall take the
requisite oaths of qualification. Given under my hand and seal this
16th day of August 1791. TH. JEFFERSON."
I have considered this episode somewhat minutely since it throws light
upon what follows.
The first number of _The National Gazette_ appeared on Monday, October
31st. It was issued Mondays and Thursdays. Its typography and
arrangement were neat and attractive; its news columns were well filled,
and its literary department was carefully attended to. Its success was
all that had been predicted by Madison. On May 7, 1792, the editor
announced that the subscription to the _Gazette_ had succeeded beyond
his most sanguine expectations.
The period covered by the two years of the _National Gazette_ was one of
singular unrest in America. The French Revolution was in progress;
everything seemed tottering. America believed that all Europe was soon
to cast off its chains of monarch; she believed that the torch of the
Rights of Man had been lighted in America, and she looked with almost
paternal interest on the progress of the Revolution. In his poetical
salutatory in the first number of the _Gazette_, Freneau writes:
"From the spark that we kindled, a flame has gone forth
To astonish the world and enlighten mankind:
With a code of new doctrines the universe rings,
And Paine is addressing strange sermons to Kings."
The columns of the _Gazette_ are full of ringing words on the Rights of
Man, the Age of Reason, the final doom of monarchy. In poem after poem
the editor pours out his sympathy for republicanism and the cause of the
French insurgents. That the French had been largely instrumental in the
gaining of our own independence, increased the interest. "On the
Fourteenth of July," "On the French Republicans," "On the Anniversary of
the Storming of the Bastile," "Ode to Liberty," and "Demolition of the
French Monarchy," are a few of the poems that Freneau poured forth
during this incendiary period. It is significant that he included none
of these verses in his edition of 1809. That he was honest to the core
in his belief cannot for a moment be doubted. His impulsive Celtic
temperament threw his whole soul into his work.
"Ah! while I write, dear France allied,
My ardent wish I scarce restrain,
To throw these sybil leaves aside
And fly to join you on the main."
The frenzy among the American Republicans culminated with the arrival of
Citizen Genet, in 1793. At the Republican dinner given Genet, May 18th,
Citizen Freneau was elected by acclamation to translate Pichon's ode. On
June 1st, at the civic feast, Freneau's ode, "God Save the Rights of
Man," was received with thunderous applause.
One must study carefully this incendiary period of Freneau's life before
he can understand fully the much discussed episode of the _National
Gazette_. The wine of French Republicanism was sadly intoxicating. It
could make Freneau write such a stanza as this:
"_Virtue, Order and Religion_,
Haste, and seek some other region;
Your plan is fixed to hunt them down,
Destroy the mitre, rend the gown,
And that vile b-tc-h--Philosophy--restore,
Did ever paper plan so much before?"
And then explain it by saying that "_The National Gazette_ is the
vehicle of party spleen and opposition to the great principles of order,
virtue and religion."
In view of all this, it is not strange that he should have been
impatient with the conservative party, who not only did not grow
enthusiastic over the French Revolution, but even looked upon it with
actual disapprobation. From the very first, the editor of the _Gazette_
criticised the leading Federalists, especially Adams and Hamilton, and
he even mildly rebuked Washington, the hero of his earlier muse. The
administration, in his mind, was leaning toward monarchial ideas.
Washington, in his opinion, had exceeded his power in the matter of the
banks, and the precedent was a dangerous one. The ceremonials with which
the President had hedged himself about were greatly at variance with
simple democratic ideas; and, to crown all, the ingratitude of the
administration (to the extremists it could have no other name) in its
attitude toward Genet and the French people hurt him deeply. I believe
that Freneau was fundamentally honest in his position. It is almost
impossible to believe that a note like this, in the _Jersey Chronicle_
of 1795, is not sincere:
"The conduct of the Federal Executive of this country toward the
Republic of France, so far as it may appear inimical, has given
great and general disgust to the citizens of the United States....
It would be well if some that might be mentioned would recollect
the nation that supported us in the late war when our infant
Republic was on the point of annihilation. Enmity to France is
treason against Republicanism."
In regard to Adams, who had danced at the King's ball in a scarlet suit,
and Hamilton, the father of the Federalists, Freneau had no scruples.
The attacks of the _Gazette_ became more and more pointed with every
issue, though much of the more incendiary matter was not from Freneau's
pen. The "Probationary Odes," for instance, attributed to him by
contemporary enemies, and in later years quoted by Buckingham and
Duyckinck as from his pen, were written by St. George Tucker. They were
published in book form by Tucker in 1796. In the sensitive state of
party politics at this time, such frank criticism could not fail to
raise a tempest of rebuttal and of counter abuse. It was soon noted that
the _Gazette_, in its attacks upon the administration, spared the State
department. Jefferson was never mentioned except for praise. The
inference was obvious: either he had "muzzled" the paper by granting it
certain favors, or he was making use of it as a weapon against the very
administration of which he was a member.
Hamilton naturally inclined toward the latter view, and much bitterness
was the result. On July 25, 1792, he inserted this anonymous bit in
_Fenno's Gazette of the United States_, the Federalist organ:
"The Editor of the _National Gazette_ receives a salary from
Government:
"Quere--Whether this salary is paid him for _translations_; or for
_publications_, the design for which is to vilify those to whom the
voice of the people has committed the administration of our public
affairs--to oppose the measures of Government, and, by false
insinuations, to disturb the public peace?
"In common life it is thought ungrateful for a man to bite the hand
that puts bread in his mouth; but if the man is hired to do it, the
case is altered. T. L."
This was the beginning of a series of anonymous attacks in the
Federalist newspaper, written undoubtedly by Hamilton. A second article,
still more definite, appeared on August 4th. In it the writer directly
charged Jefferson with being the soul and spirit of the _National
Gazette_. "Mr. Freneau was thought a fit instrument," and so was
deliberately engaged; he was simply the "faithful and devoted servant of
the head of a party from whose hands he received a boon." The article
then proceeds at length to arraign Jefferson and to appeal to the
American people, whether they will consent to see the precious legacies
which are theirs "frittered away" in so shameless a manner.
This attack called forth (from Freneau) an affidavit which was printed
in the _Gazette_, August 8, 1792:
"Personally appeared before me, Matthew Clarkson, Mayor of the
City of Philadelphia, Philip Freneau, of the City of Philadelphia,
who, being duly sworn, doth depose and say, That no negociation was
ever opened with him by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State, for
the establishment or institution of the _National Gazette_: that
the deponent's coming to the City of Philadelphia, as publisher of
a Newspaper, was at no time urged, advised, or influenced by the
above officer, but that it was his own voluntary act; and that the
said Gazette, nor the Editor thereof, was ever directed,
controuled, or attempted to be influenced, in any manner, either by
the Secretary of State, or any of his friends; nor was a line ever,
directly or indirectly, written, dictated, or composed for it by
that officer, but that the Editor has consulted his own judgment
alone in the conducting of it--free--unfettered--and uninfluenced.
"PHILIP FRENEAU.
"Sworn the 6th August, 1772, before
"MATTHEW CLARKSON, Mayor."
Hamilton followed, August 11th, with another article. He emphatically
discredited Freneau's oath, declaring that "facts spoke louder than
words, and under certain circumstances louder than oaths;" that "the
editor of the _National Gazette_ must not think to swear away their
efficacy;" that "if he was truly, as they announced, the pensioned tool
of the public character who had been named, no violation of truth in any
shape ought to astonish; equivocations and mental reservations were the
too common refuge of minds struggling to escape from disgraceful
imputations." The article then proceeded to show that Jefferson did
really establish the _Gazette_ through a particular friend.
Freneau at once declined to answer further the attacks, on the ground
that they were mere "personal charges," and Hamilton promptly branded
this as "a mere subterfuge." Thus Freneau found himself in the midst of
a perfect hornet's nest of partisan strife that involved the country
from end to end. The Federal organ continued its attacks, and Freneau,
always restive under criticism, increased in bitterness.
On September 9, 1792, Jefferson put himself on record in a letter to
Washington.[11] The letter is extremely long, since it covers the entire
contest with Hamilton from the beginning. In it he declared:
"While the Government was at New York I was applied to on behalf of
Freneau to know if there was any place within my department to
which he could be appointed. I answered there were but four
clerkships, all of which I found full, and continued without any
change. When we removed to Philadelphia, Mr. Pintard, the
translating clerk, did not choose to remove with us. His office
then became vacant. I was again applied to there for Freneau, and
had no hesitation to promise the clerkship for him. I cannot
recollect whether it was at the same time, or afterwards, that I
was told he had a thought of setting up a newspaper there. But
whether then, or afterwards, I considered it a circumstance of some
value, as it might enable me to do, what I had long wished to have
done, that is, to have the material parts of the Leyden Gazette
brought under your eye, and that of the public, in order to possess
yourself and them of a juster view of the affairs of Europe than
could be obtained from any other public source. This I had
ineffectually attempted through the press of Mr. Fenno, while in
New York, selecting and translating passages myself at first, then
having it done by Mr. Pintard, the translating clerk, but they
found their way too slowly into Mr. Fenno's papers. Mr. Bache
essayed it for me in Philadelphia, but his being a daily paper, did
not circulate sufficiently in the other States. He even tried, at
my request, the plan of a weekly paper of recapitulation from his
daily paper, in hopes, that that might go into the other States,
but in this too we failed. Freneau, as translating clerk, and the
printer of a periodical paper likely to circulate through the
States (uniting in one person the parts of Pintard and Fenno)
revived my hopes that the thing could at length be effected. On the
establishment of his paper, therefore, I furnished him with the
Leyden Gazettes, with an expression of my wish that he could always
translate and publish the material intelligence they contained, and
have continued to furnish them from time to time, as regularly as I
received them. But as to any other direction or indication of my
wish how his press should be conducted, what sort of intelligence
he should give, what essays encourage, I can protest, in the
presence of Heaven that I never did by myself, or any other, or
indirectly, say a syllable, nor attempt any kind of influence. I
can further protest, in the same awful presence, that I never did,
by myself, or any other, directly or indirectly, write, dictate or
procure any one sentence or sentiment to be inserted _in his_, _or
any other gazette_, to which my name was not affixed, or that of my
office.... Freneau's proposition to publish a paper, having been
about the time that the writings of Publicola, and the discourses
on Davila, had a good deal excited the public attention, I took
for granted from Freneau's character, which had been marked as that
of a good Whig, that he would give free place to pieces written
against the aristocratical and monarchial principles these papers
had inculcated. This having been in my mind, it is likely enough I
may have expressed it in conversation with others, though I do not
recollect that I did. To Freneau I think I could not, because I had
still seen him but once, and that at a public table, at breakfast,
at Mrs. Elsworth's, as I passed through New York the last year. And
I can safely declare that my expectations looked only to the
chastisement of the aristocratical and monarchial writers, and not
to any criticisms on the proceedings of Government. Colonel
Hamilton can see no motive for any appointment, but that of making
a convenient partisan. But you, sir, who have received from me
recommendations of a Rittenhouse, Barlow, Paine, will believe that
talents and science are sufficient motives with me in appointments
to which they are fitted; and that Freneau, as a man of genius,
might find a preference in my eye to be a translating clerk, and
make good title to the little aids I could give him as the editor
of a gazette, by procuring subscriptions to his paper, as I did
some before it appeared, and as I have with pleasure done for the
labors of other men of genius. I hold it to be one of the
distinguishing excellences of elective over hereditary successions,
that the talents which nature has provided in sufficient
proportion, should be selected by the society for the government of
their affairs, rather than this should be transmitted through the
loins of knaves and fools, passing from the debauches of the table
to those of the bed. Colonel Hamilton, alias 'Plain Facts,' says,
that Freneau's salary began before he resided in Philadelphia. I do
not know what quibble he may have in reserve on the word
'residence.' He may mean to include under that idea the removal of
his family; for I believe he removed himself before his family did,
to Philadelphia. But no act of mine gave commencement to his salary
before he so far took up his abode in Philadelphia, as to be
sufficiently in readiness for the duties of the office. As to the
merits or demerits of his paper, they certainly concern me not. He
and Fenno are rivals for the public favor. The one courts them by
flattery, the other by censure, and I believe it will be admitted
that the one has been as servile, as the other severe. But is not
the dignity, and even decency of Government committed, when one of
its principal ministers enlists himself as an anonymous writer or
paragraphist for either the one or the other of them? No government
ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one
ever will. If virtuous, it need not fear the fair operation of
attack and defence. Nature has given to man no other means of
sifting out the truth either in religion, law, or politics. I think
it as honorable to the Government neither to know, nor notice, its
sycophants or censors, as it would be undignified and criminal to
pamper the former and persecute the latter."[12]
But if the _National Gazette_ concerned Jefferson not at all, as he
alleged, it certainly did exasperate Washington. Later on, when the
Genet affair had urged Freneau into still greater excesses, Washington,
on the 23d of May, 1793, had a conversation with Jefferson, which the
latter recorded in his _Ana_:
"He [the President] adverted to a piece in Freneau's paper of
yesterday, he said he despised all their attacks on him personally,
but that there never had been an act of the government, not meaning
in the Executive line only, but in any line, which that paper had
not abused. He had also marked the word republic thus----where it
was applied to the French republic [see the original paper]. He was
evidently sore & warm, and I took his intention to be that I should
interpose in some way with Freneau; perhaps withdraw his
appointment of translating clerk to my office. But I will not do
it. His paper has saved our constitution, which was galloping fast
into monarchy, & has been checked by no one means so powerfully as
by that paper. It is well and universally known, that it has been
that paper which has checked the career of the monocrats, & the
President, not sensible of the designs of the party, has not with
his usual good sense and _sang froid_, looked on the efforts and
effects of this free press and seen that, though some bad things
have passed through it to the public, yet the good have
preponderated immensely."[13]
Washington even brought the affair into a meeting of the Cabinet,
declaring, according to Jefferson's _Ana_, that,
"That rascal, Freneau, sent him three copies of his paper every day
as if he thought he (Washington) would become the distributor of
them; that he could see in this nothing but an impudent design to
insult him; he ended in a high tone."[14]
The _National Gazette_ published its last issue, October 23, 1793. The
collapse of the Genet bubble--the revulsion of feeling after the
Frenchman had threatened to appeal from Washington to the people,
brought on a tidal wave which swept away all the idols of French
Republicanism in America, and the _National Gazette_ could not withstand
the tide. Subscribers withdrew their subscriptions at a ruinous rate,
the notes of the proprietors were protested, and the paper was
abandoned. Freneau had no idea, however, of final surrender. His last
word was a promise which, however, was never fulfilled.
"With the present number concludes the second volume and second
year's publication of the _National Gazette_. Having just imported
on his own account a considerable quantity of new and elegant
printing types from Europe, it is the editor's intention to resume
the publication of this paper in a short time and previous to the
meeting of Congress in December next."
It is upon this episode that the reputation of Freneau among the
generality of people chiefly rests. "That rascal Freneau" is the epithet
that has clung to his name through all the intervening century. It is
this one affair, more than anything else, that has kept him from the
recognition he deserves, both as a patriot and a poet. The attitude of
New England may be expressed in the words of President Dwight, written
during the summer of 1793:
"Freneau, your printer, linguist, &c., is regarded here as a mere
incendiary, or rather as a despicable tool of bigger incendiaries,
and his paper as a public nuisance."
Letters might be multiplied in showing the same spirit in all of the
Federalists.
It must not be forgotten, however, that Freneau acted from pure and
honest motives; that the excitement and bitter partisanship of the
period were extraordinary, and that the air was heavily charged with the
subtle magnetism that in France had created a reign of terror. It cannot
be denied that Freneau went to excess in his denunciations; but so did
Hamilton, who in reality began the conflict; so did Jefferson; so did
many others. As to the extent to which Jefferson went in subsidizing the
_Gazette_ for his own use, the reader may judge for himself. Neither
side is free from blame; Freneau is certainly no more culpable than the
others who held far higher positions than he. It is but justice to say
of Freneau, in the words of Jefferson's biographer, Randall--
"He was always a warm, and after the period of which we write,
became a violent partisan. It is but justice to his memory,
however, to say that his honor and his veracity as a man were
never questioned by those who knew him, and that his reputation in
these particulars is now as free from all taint of suspicion as is
that of any of the distinguished gentlemen whose names were
associated with his in the controversy."
The following words of Madison, taken from Mr. Trist's memoranda of a
conversation, May 25, 1827, and published in Tucker's Life of Jefferson,
probably presents the affair in its true light:
"Mr. Madison said: 'Freneau's paper was another cause of soreness
in General Washington. Among its different contributors, some were
actuated by over-heated zeal, and some, perhaps, by malignity.
Every effort was made in Fenno's paper, and by those immediately
around him (Washington) to impress on his mind a belief that this
paper had been got up by Mr. Jefferson to injure him and oppose
the measures of his administration. Freneau himself was an old
College mate of mine, a poet and man of literary and refined
tastes, knowing nothing of the world. He was a French scholar,
and employed at first as translator. Henry Lee, who was also his
College mate, and had also a friendly feeling for him, was the
more immediate cause of his establishing a paper. Our main object
in encouraging it, was to provide an antidote against Fenno's
paper, which was devoted to monarchy, and had begun to publish
extracts from Mr. Adams's book. I used occasionally to throw in an
article, all of which I have marked, and some of which I have
shown you, with a view chiefly to counteract the monarchial spirit
and partisanship of the British government which characterized
Fenno's paper. I never engaged in the party criminations.'"
It deserves mention that Freneau stuck to his post during the yellow
fever epidemic of 1793, and that for weeks he was the only active editor
in the city. On October 1st he resigned his position as translator, and
soon after removed to his old home at Mount Pleasant. For a time he was
without employment. He contemplated several newspaper enterprises. He
evidently took steps toward the publication of a paper in Monmouth
County, New Jersey, as the following advertisement, published in the
_Jersey Chronicle_, May 30, 1795, would show:
"A number of persons in Freehold and other parts of Monmouth
subscribed last year to a paper the editor then proposed to set on
foot. As various causes delayed him prosecuting his intended
purpose until the present spring, and as he supposes, many of them
might in the meantime have engaged with other printers, he hopes
they will if possible transfer their subscription to the
_Chronicle_."
On November 2, 1794, he writes Madison, recommending his old friend
Bailey for the office of public printer, and on May 6th following, he
received a reply:
"I delayed acknowledging your favour long ago received, until I
could inform you of the prospects of Mr. Bailey in whose favor it
was written. I have now the pleasure to tell you that although his
wishes are not to be immediately fulfilled he is looking to obtain
under the auspices of Mr. Beckley and Mr. Randolph a share of
employment hereafter which may be very valuable to him. I
congratulate you on the public intelligence just received from
Holland which gives joy to all true Republicans, and wish you all
the private happiness which an exchange of your former travelled
scenes for the shade and tranquility of your present life can
afford. Remember, however, as you have not chosen any longer to
labor in the field of politics it will be expected by your friends
that you cultivate with the more industry your inheritance on
Parnassus."
On May the 20th following, Freneau continued the correspondence:
"My respected friend: By some accident your kind letter of April
6th was a long time in finding its way hither, having not come to
hand till the 17th inst. I sincerely thank you for the interest you
have taken in Mr. Bailey. He is a good Republican and a worthy
honest man, which qualifications, I have thought, entitled him to
some notice from the Government, in his line of business--I was
heartily laughed at, however, a few weeks ago in N. York, by some
Aristocrats, for having in my Letter to you or Mr. Beckley, I
forget which, extolled his Military services in the late War--I am
sensible he never cut off the heads of Giants or drove hosts before
him, as some have done; at the same time it ought to be remembered
that he was an officer in the Pennsylvania Militia in the season
that tried men's souls (as Paine says) and I believe never acted
otherwise than became the character in which he acted.--
I meet you at least half way in your congratulations on the public
intelligence received from Holland. It is but another step toward
the advancement and completion of that great and philanthropic
System which I have been anticipating for many years, and which you
as well as myself, I hope, will live to see realized--When I first
went to reside in Philada. in 1791 I wished to be one of those who
would have the honour and happiness of announcing these great
events to the public through the medium of a newspaper: A variety
of circumstances however, needless to trouble you with, urged my
departure from that city after completing a two years
publication--As I mean to pass the remainder of my days on a couple
of hundred of acres of an old sandy patrimony, I have, by the way
of filling up the vacuities of time set on foot a small weekly
Newspaper calculated for the part of the country in which I am.
Should you have any curiosity to see it I will forward it to you
free of all expence except that of postage. I will not make high
promises in regard to what it may contain. It will scarcely be
expected that in a rude barbarous part of the country I could
calculate it for the polite taste of Philadelphia.--Should your
fixed residence be in Philada. I can transmit the papers to you
once a week by the Public Post, who stops every Wednesday at my
door. A Letter put into the Post Office at Philadelphia on Saturday
morning, will be sure to reach me on Wednesday.--The public papers
some time ago announced your Marriage.--I wish you all possible
happiness with the lady whom you have chosen for your Companion
through life--Mrs. Freneau joins me in the same, and desires me to
present her best respects to your lady and yourself--and should you
ever take an excursion to these parts of Jersey, we will endeavour
to give Mrs. Madison and yourself--'if not a costly welcome, yet a
kind.'"
The _Jersey Chronicle_, an eight-paged paper of the size of a sheet of
letter paper, issued its initial number from the editor's little office
at Mount Pleasant, Saturday, May 2, 1795. It bore the motto, "_Inter
Sylvas Academi quaerere verum_.--Hor.;" and its object, in the words of
its editor, was "to present ... a complete history of the foreign and
domestic events of the Times, together with such essays, remarks, and
observations as shall tend to illustrate the politics, or mark the
general character of the age and country in which we live." The editor's
salutatory is characteristic of its author:
"Never was there a more interesting period than the present, nor
ever was there a time within the reach of history when mankind have
been so generally united in attending to the cultivation of the
mind, examining into the natural and political rights of nations,
and emancipating themselves from those shackles of despotism which
have so long impeded the happiness of the human species, and
rendered the rights of the many subservient to the interests of the
few.
"At this time, when new Republics are forming and new Empires
bursting into birth; when the great family of mankind are evidently
making their egress from the dark shadows of despotism which have
so long enveloped them, & are assuming a character suitable to the
dignity of their species, the Editor seizes the opportunity to
renew his efforts for contributing, in some small degree, to the
general information of his fellow citizens in the present history
and politics of the world. No pains shall be spared, on his part,
to procure the best, the most authentic, and earliest intelligence
from every quarter, and circulating it by every method and means in
his power; and to whatever parts his subscription will enable him
to do it.
"When it is considered that few Advertisements are reasonably to be
expected in these more eastern parts of New-Jersey, the terms of
subscription will appear low, and, it may be added, are within the
power of almost every man who has the will and inclination to
encourage literature, promote the interests, or enlarge the ideas
of the rising generation, and contribute to the general diffusion
of knowledge among his fellow citizens.
"Should the publication of The Jersey Chronicle be suitably
encouraged, the Editor will in due time enlarge the size of the
sheet; but that now published on is, in his opinion, every way
adequate to an experiment whether the attempt be practicable or
not."
Freneau's essays contributed to the _Chronicle_ are among the most
notable prose productions from his pen. He began a series of studies "On
Monarchial and Mixed Forms of Government;" he wrote "Observations on
Monarchy," and discussed at length the leading arguments for and against
Jay's Treaty with England. On May 23d he began to publish a series of
papers entitled "Tomo Cheeki, the Creek Indian in Philadelphia," in
which the manners and absurdities of the Americans are described from
the standpoint of an observant savage. In nearly every issue of the
paper there was an elaborate essay on some political subject. Of poetry
there was very little. The _National Gazette_ had contained little
poetry from the editor's pen, save earlier verses reprinted, and a few
political satires and republican lyrics. The influence of Peter Pindar
was becoming more and more manifest in the poet's style. Politics and
party strife had for a time displaced the muse. This is nowhere more
evident than in the collected edition of his poems printed on his own
press and issued in June, 1795.
In many respects this is the most interesting of Freneau's collections:
it brings us into the very presence of the poet. The earlier editions
had been published without his supervision, the material for this one
passed all of it under the author's critical eye. Scarcely a poem
escaped revision. After noting the scrupulous care with which he changed
adjectives, improved rhymes, added new stanzas, or cut out old ones,
repunctuated sentences, and rearranged material, one cannot join the
somewhat large band of hasty and superficial critics who allude
flippantly to the poet as a hasty and careless improviser of ephemeral
trash. As a matter of fact, Freneau was a miser with his verses. When a
newspaper poem suspected to be his, especially in the period previous to
1795, cannot be found in any of his collections, grave doubts at once
arise as to whether the poem is his. He was never tired of revising, and
cutting, and pruning. The poems so carefully edited in 1795 were again
carefully revised in 1809. As an instance of his concern for the fate of
his poems let me quote a letter, written August 29, 1781, to Matthew
Carey:
"I see by this day's paper that my verses on General Washington's
arrival, etc., are to appear in your next _Museum_. If it is not
too late, I would request the favour of you to rectify an error
(which was entirely of the press) in the fifth line of the
thirteenth stanza, as it materially affects the sense. Instead of
'whom' please to read 'who.'"
The 1795 edition is interesting from another standpoint. The resources
of the little country office were taxed to the utmost in the production
of the book. At best it is a crude piece of printing. There is manifest
everywhere an effort to keep the work within bounds, to economize
space. Titles are abbreviated, mottoes dropped, foot notes cut out, and
many earlier poems reduced, or omitted entirely. The list of omissions
is very suggestive: scenes one and two were cut from the "Pictures of
Columbus," the long song of Ismenius was dropped from "The Monument of
Phaon," "The Jamaica Funeral," and "The House of Night" were reduced to
mere fragments, "Female Frailty" was dropped save for the opening lyric,
and there were other notable changes. In every case it will be found
that the poet threw overboard the light and imaginative element, the
purely poetic.
The reason for these omissions has been often sought. Prof. C. F.
Richardson in particular has wondered at the dropping of the intensely
original and weirdly strong poem "The House of Night,"--in his opinion
the best thing Freneau ever did. It is not difficult to answer the
question after a careful study of the evolution of Freneau's poetic
ideals. He began to write poetry after a thorough course of reading in
the Latin and English classics. His early work is redolent of Virgil's
"Eclogues," of Horace, of Shakespeare, of Milton's minor poems, of
Gray's "Elegy." If ever there was a sensitive, beauty-loving, poetic
soul, the young Freneau was one. In his early inexperience he even
dreamed of a poetic career in which he might perhaps win a place beside
the great masters of song. His early work like the "Ode to Fancy," and
similar pieces, and the strong and original "House of Night" and "Santa
Cruz" show what he might have done in another environment.
But Revolutionary America had little encouragement for an imaginative
poet. There was something in the air that seemed to put into men the
Franklin spirit. It was the era of common-sense, of stern reality, of
practical affairs. Madison voiced the age when in 1774 he advised
Bradford, the cultured and imaginative young lover of poetry and all
art, to turn to sterner things:
"I was afraid you would not easily have loosened your affections
from the Belles Lettres. A Delicate Taste and warm imagination
like yours must find it hard to give up such refined & exquisite
enjoyments for the coarse and dry study of the Law. It is like
leaving a pleasant flourishing field for a barren desert; perhaps
I should not say barren either because the Law does bear fruit but
it is sour fruit that must be gathered and pressed and distilled
before it can bring pleasure or profit.... I myself use to have
too great a hankering after those amusing studies. Poetry wit and
Criticism Romances Plays &c captivated me much: but I begin to
discover that they deserve but a moderate portion of a _mortal's_
Time and that something more substantial more durable more
profitable befits our riper age. It would be exceeding improper
for a labouring man to have nothing but flowers in his Garden or
to determine to eat nothing but sweet-meats and confections.
Equally absurd would it be for a Scholar and man of Business to
make up his whole Library with Books of Fancy and feed his mind
with nothing but such Luscious performances."[15]
The first half of Freneau's life, as we have seen, was one of
disillusion. It took twenty-five years to kill the spark in his breast,
but the process though slow was sure. After the fierce period of the
_National Gazette_ he thought of himself only as a worker in the tide of
practical affairs, a champion of the rights of man, a protestor against
tyranny and wrong, and his muse had become a mere drudge, aiding by
satire and song what he now conceived to be his life work. He had taken
a deliberate though sorrowful leave of his early muse in 1787, one year
after the appearance of his first volume of poems:
"On these bleak climes by fortune thrown
Where rigid Reason reigns alone,
Where flowery Fancy holds no sway
Nor golden forms around her play,
Nor Nature takes her magic hue,
Alas what has the muse to do!
An age employed in painting steel
Can no poetic raptures feel;
No fabled Love's enchanting power
No tale of Flora's shady bower.
Nor wood-land haunt, or murmuring grove
Can its prosaic bosom move.
The muse of love in no request,
I'll try my fortune with the rest;
Which of the nine shall I engage
To suit the humor of the age?
On one, alas, my choice must fall,
The least engaging of them all!
Her visage stern, severe her style,
A clouded brow, a cruel smile,
A mind on murdered victims placed,
She, only she, can please the taste."
One cannot read long the columns of the _Jersey Chronicle_ without
realizing forcibly the change that had come over Freneau. The poet who
emerged from the crucible of the _National Gazette_ was not at all like
the poet of "The House of Night" period. He could look upon this product
of his early imagination much as Madison would have done, and he could
in cold blood cut it down to a mere fragment which would voice his new
French Deistic ideas, that he might have room for his Republican songs.
The poem "To the Americans of the United States," written in 1797, gives
us a true picture of this later Freneau. He would be no courtly singer
"beneath some great man's ceiling placed," no solitary dreamer. He would
be a man of action travelling over lands and seas, a poet who caught
his subjects from the varying scene of human things.
"To seize some _features_ from the faithless past;
Be this our care--before the century close:
The colours strong! for, if we deem aright,
The _coming age will be an age of prose_:
When _sordid cares_ will break the muses' dream,
And COMMON SENSE be ranked in seat supreme."
With the fifty-second number of the _Chronicle_, published April 30,
1796, the paper came to an end. Freneau's final editorial stated that:
"In number one of the Jersey Chronicle the editor announced his
intention of extending the publication beyond the first year,
provided the attempt should in the meantime be suitably encouraged
and found practicable. But the necessary number of subscribers
having not yet appeared, scarcely to defray the expenses of the
undertaking, notwithstanding the very low rate at which it has been
offered, the editor with some regret declines a further prosecution
of his plan at this time. He embraces the present opportunity to
return his sincere thanks to such persons in this and the
neighboring counties as have favored him with their subscriptions;
and have also by their punctuality in complying with the terms
originally proposed, thus far enabled him to issue a free,
independent, and republican paper."
A letter[16] written by Freneau from New York, to Madison, dated
December 1, 1796, reveals what was in the poet's mind during the months
following the abandonment of the _Chronicle_:
"Having three or four months since formed a resolution to bid adieu
for a few years to some old Trees in Jersey under the shade of
which I edited, amongst ditching and grubbing, a small weekly Paper
entitled the Jersey Chronicle, I did not know how to employ that
interval better than in striking out here with some printer, if
such could be found, already engaged in supporting the good old
Republican cause. After experiencing one or two disappointments in
accomplishing this object, I am now through the kind aid of some
friends here nearly completing the project of a copartnership with
Thomas Greenleaf in his two Papers, _The Argus_, a daily
publication, and the New York Journal, twice a week; both on a
pretty respectable footing, and noted for a steady attachment to
Republican principles, though open to all decent speculations from
any party if they choose to transmit them. In short, I would wish
to revive something in the spirit of the National Gazette, if time
and circumstances allow, and with proper assistance hope to
succeed--Thus,
A Raven once an acorn took
From Bashan's strongest stoutest tree;
He hid it near a murmuring brook,
And liv'd another oak to see.
As I consider the bargain the same as concluded, my next object is
to make all the friends here that I decently can among men of
eminence and ability. This I have in some small degree attempted
and gained, but for want of certain insinuating qualities, natural
enough I suppose to some men, I feel myself sadly at a loss to get
acquainted with some characters here to whom I could wish to be
known upon motives of public as well as private utility.
"Among these is the chancellor of this State, Robert R. Livingston,
with whom, if I recollect right, you are upon terms of intimacy. If
I am not mistaken in this point, and you can with propriety accede
to my request, you would confer a favor upon me by mentioning me to
him in your next Letter, in such manner as you may think best, so
that this new connexion may attract some share of his attention,
and thereby the countenance of the Livingston family in general,
which would operate greatly, through this State at least, in
advancing our Subscription and printing Interest in general."
The partnership with Greenleaf, mentioned to Madison, for some reason
was never consummated. On March 13, 1797, however, Freneau issued in New
York the first number of a new journal, _The Time Piece and Literary
Companion_, to be devoted to "literary amusement and an abridgement of
the most interesting intelligence foreign and domestic." He "associated
himself," as he expressed it, "as a partner in the typographical line of
business with Mr. Alexander Menut of that profession, sometime since
from Canada," though, during the first year at least, Freneau had entire
control of the editing of the paper. His address to the public is of
considerable interest:
"Several months having elapsed since the publication of a
periodical paper in this city was first contemplated by the
subscriber, he now informs his friends and the public in general
that he has at length so far matured his plan as to attempt a paper
of this kind to be published three times a week and transmitted to
city subscribers early on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings.
"The _Time Piece and Literary Companion_ will on all occasions be
open to political, moral, or other interesting discussion from any
quarter whatever provided such communications are written with
candor, decency, and liberality, their object such as to promote
the general good of our great Confederate Commonwealth, or the
common interest of man, and conceived in that disinterested spirit
which while it carefully avoids as far as possible irritating the
feelings of individuals, holds itself obligated under any
circumstances whatever to consider truth, the moral and political
happiness of our species, social harmony, and good order, the basis
of all its exertions, the end of all its aims, views and
endeavors."
The paper is a tastily arranged and neatly printed sheet, and its
contents show constantly its editor's rare ability to cater to the
public needs. Refinement and a fastidious taste are evidenced everywhere
in its columns. Duyckinck comments on "the skill of the selection and
the general elegance of the material," which were certainly unusual in
those early days of American journalism. The paper had a large number of
feminine contributors, who gave freely of their sentimental lyrics and
sprightly letters. The poet himself contributed many poems, the most of
them, as usual, concerned with contemporary affairs. He republished his
translation from the Abbé Robin made in 1783 since, as he declared, only
a small edition was then printed, and the work was in the hands of a
very few. He republished also his "Tomo Cheeki" letters, introducing
them thus:
"A number of eccentric writings under the subsequent title and to
the amount of a considerable volume are in the hands of the editor
of the Time Piece said to be translated from one of the Indian
languages of this country. They were transmitted to him more than
two years ago and a few numbers published in a gazette edited by
him in a neighboring State, but discontinued with that paper. If
the contributions of a rude aboriginal of America shall appear to
afford any gratification to the generality of our readers the whole
will be occasionally offered to the public through the medium of
the Time Piece."
His pen was constantly active. He wrote vigorous editorials on all
passing political measures, and on September 1, 1897, proposed to edit
Ledyard's Journals:
"The subscriber having procured from the hands of his relatives the
original MSS. of Mr. Ledyard now offers to the public of the United
States an opportunity of gratifying their curiosity and at the same
time paying a token of respect to the memory of Ledyard. Ledyard's
travels will be compiled by P. Freneau from the original MSS. of
the author, consisting of letters, journals, notes, etc., etc., and
such documents as have appeared in print, both in America and
Europe, particularly a work published by the British African
Society, in whose service, with a view of exploring the interior of
Africa, his last expedition was undertaken and terminated in his
death at Cairo, in Egypt.
"One vol. at least 250 pages.
"A life of the author collected from authentic materials will be
prefixed to the work, with some other preliminary matter."
Freneau evidently made some progress with the work, for on August 30,
1798, the following advertisement appeared in the _Time Piece_, as well
as in the Charleston _City Gazette_:
"The interesting travels of John Ledyard, with a summary of his
life, are now in the hands of the printer.
"It shall be printed on fine paper with new type ornamented with a
full length portrait of the author in the attitude of taking leave
on his departure for Africa. Page octavo, handsomely bound and
lettered. Calculated to contain between 400 and 500 pages. $2 per
volume."
The volume, whether from a failure to secure subscribers or other
reasons, was never published.
The partnership of Freneau and Menut was dissolved September 13, 1797,
and shortly after, the imprint of the paper was changed to read
"Published by P. Freneau and M. L. Davis, No. 26 Moore Street, near
Whitehall." On January 3, 1798, Freneau made a visit to Charleston,
taking passage in the sloop _Katy_, and arriving after a rough voyage of
thirty-one days. During the following month he was the guest of his
brother, Peter, and in the words of his daughter, of "his many friends
there, among whom were Charles Pinckney, Governor of South Carolina,
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, General Bull, Edge, and many others where
he was as much at home as at his brother's." He embarked from Charleston
March 7th and arrived in New York after a week's voyage.
The affairs of the _Time Piece_ were in a critical condition. A part of
the subscribers lived at a distance from New York and the expenses were
large. Freneau was unwilling to run further risks, and a few days after
his return from the South, he withdrew from the firm, having been editor
of the paper just one year. He thereupon retired with his family to the
little estate at Mount Pleasant, where he made his home for the rest of
his life.
VI.
The quiet period after the anxiety and stress of editorship in a great
city was for a time grateful to the poet. He managed the farm in a
desultory way, but his main occupation was composing verses under his
favorite locust tree which had been planted by his father and which had
increased in size and numbers until in the words of his daughter, "it
was a complete grove of locust trees surrounding a house grown old with
its time worn owner, his venerable mother and maiden sister beloved and
respected for her many virtues. Her decease, which took place a few
years previous to his own, he says in an obituary, he can say no more
nor less than that 'she was as good and innocent as an angel.'" This
sister, Mary Freneau, a beautiful woman, had been wooed at one time by
Madison, but for some reason she had refused him.
Freneau's family consisted of four daughters: Eleanor, born in 1791;
Agnes W., born June 22, 1794; Catherine L., born February 25, 1798; and
Margaret Alaire, born June 10, 1801. Eleanor married a Mr. Hammill, and
the four daughters of this union died unmarried; Agnes married Dr.
Edward Leadbeater, and the eldest son of this union, at the earnest
request of the poet, was christened Philip Leadbeater Freneau, his
grandfather putting into his infant hands the ancestral Bible, which was
the family treasure. The descendants of Agnes Freneau and Dr. Leadbeater
are very numerous. The two younger daughters of the poet never married.
The active pen of Freneau, so long practiced in discussing the affairs
of the day, could not rest idle during his period of retirement. He
began a series of letters to the Philadelphia _Aurora_ and other papers,
and on December 30, 1799, issued them in a volume entitled "Letters on
Various Interesting and Important Subjects, many of which have appeared
in the Aurora." It bore his old pen name, Robert Slender, with the added
title, O. S. M., interpreted later to mean "One of the Swinish
Multitude." The book has surprising merit. The letters are written in a
breezy, colloquial style, and the simple-minded old cobbler is well
characterized. Freneau has actually succeeded in making him a living
creature, and his opinions and "whim whams" are full of hard sense and
practical wisdom. The book is by all means the best prose that Freneau
ever wrote. So easy is the style and so natural is the characterization
that I cannot forbear quoting at some length from a chapter chosen
almost at random:
LETTER XXII
MR. EDITOR,
Having heard that there was a tavern at about the distance of a
mile or so from my favourite country spot, where now and then a few
neighbours meet to spit, smoke segars, drink apple whiskey, cider
or cider-royal, and read the news--a few evenings ago, I put on my
best coat, combed out my wig, put my spectacles in my pocket, and a
quarter dollar--This I thought was right; for although Mrs. Slender
told me eleven-pence was enough, says I, I'll e'en take the quarter
dollar, for a man always feels himself of more consequence when he
has got good money in his pocket--so out I walks with a good stout
stick in my hand, which I always make a point to carry with me,
lest the dogs should make rather freer with my legs than I could
wish. But I had not gone more than half the way, when, by making a
false step, I splash'd my stocking from knee to the ancle. Odds my
heart, said I, see what a hand I have made of my stocking; I'll be
bail, added I, I'll hear of this in both sides of my head--but it
can't now be helped--this, and a thousand worse accidents, which
daily happen, are all occasioned by public neglect, and the
misapplication of the public's money--Had I, said I, (talking to
myself all the while) the disposal of but half the income of the
United States, I could at least so order matters, that a man might
walk to his next neighbour's without splashing his stockings or
being in danger of breaking his legs in ruts, holes, gutts, and
gullies. I do not know, says I to myself, as I moralized on my
splash'd stocking, but money might with more profit be laid out in
repairing the roads, than in marine establishments, supporting a
standing army, useless embassies, exorbitant salaries, given to
many flashy fellows that are no honour to us, or to themselves, and
chartering whole ships to carry a single man to another
nation--Odds my life, continued I, what a number of difficulties a
man labours under, who has never read further than Lilly's
grammar, and has but a poor brain--had I been favoured with a good
education, I could no doubt readily see the _great usefulness_ of
all these measures of government, that now appear to me so
unaccountable--I could then, said I, still talking to myself, see
the reason why the old patriots, whose blood flowed so freely in
purchasing our independence, are cast aside, like a broken pitcher,
(as the scripture says) and why the old tories and active refugees
are advanced to places of power, honour and trust--I could then be
able to explain why Robbins, an American citizen, for killing an
Englishman who held him a slave, and so gaining his liberty, was
delivered to the English to be hanged--and Sterret, who killed a
veteran sailor, who had formerly fought and bled in the cause of
his country, and then was bravely doing his duty, yet, remains
unpunished.... As I said this, by accident I looked up, and
perceived to my surprise, that if I had gone but one step further,
I would have actually knocked my nose against the sign-post--I
declare, said I, here I am, this is a tavern indeed. I then felt in
my pocket, if I had my quarter dollar, which to my joy I found--I
then unbuttoned my coat, to shew my silk waistcoat, pulled my watch
chain a good piece longer out of my pocket, fixed my hat a little
better on my head--and then advanced boldly into the tavern--But I
see I am got to the end of my page, and therefore must defer the
remainder of my adventure to another opportunity."
In the advertisement of the book, the author made the half promise of
more letters in the same vein:
"Should these letters meet with a favourable reception in their
present form, a second volume will shortly be published, containing
besides those that have since appeared separately a variety of
original ones upon such interesting subjects as may hereafter claim
the public attention."
The volume was never published. The little family at Mount Pleasant
could not subsist alone on letters and poems, however brilliant. The
outlook was not a bright one, as the following letter[17] to his brother
Peter, in Charleston, dated March 1, 1801, would indicate:
"Having been here [New York] a day or two and finding the brig
Echo, Capt. Webb, to sail for Charleston, I take the opportunity of
dropping you a line by him.
"I left all well at home last Thursday, and the place, etc., as
well as could be expected after my poor mother's absence. I have
been and shall be for some time busy in repairing old fences and
making new ones, and some other small improvements, as far as I
personally can with the money you let me have. Helen goes to school
here, the other two girls are at home, but Agnes is to come here
next month for the same purpose for awhile. There are more cares
and vexations coming on, but still they must be got through with at
some rate. Probably I shall have to embark on some new expedition
or plan before long wherever or to whatever the devil, etc., shall
see fit to drive me. But I shall attempt nothing if I can before I
see you here, in April or May, as you promised.
"I return this morning to Jersey. Mr. Hunn, Peggy, Mamma and Polly
all desire their love to you. My love and respects to Mrs. Freneau
and Miss Dora with her mother and family. Remembrances, love, etc.,
to Mr. Davis, and may I expect to have a line from you by Capt.
Peter."
Freneau was at best a half-hearted farmer. A little anecdote told by the
family is eloquent. One day the poet and his wife, who had walked
together into the field to inspect the work, found a slave asleep in the
young corn. Mrs. Freneau seizing his hoe declared that she would show
him how to work. At the very first attempt, however, she cut down a hill
of corn, whereupon the slave remarked gleefully: "Ho, ho, Missie
Freneau, if that's the way you hoe, the corn'll never grow." She threw
down the hoe in disgust, declaring that "No wonder the farm doesn't pay
when even the slaves talk in rhymes."
The affairs of the poet were soon such as to give real concern to his
friends. In a letter dated September 13, 1801, a part of which we have
already quoted, Aedanus Burke wrote Madison:
"I am sorry to have it to say that Freneau, with his wife and two
children, is still in embarrassed circumstances. He is a virtuous,
honest man, and an undeviating Republican; yet utterly incapable
of soliciting anything for himself. The best apology I can offer
for mentioning it, is that I know you have great regard for him.
You were at College together, as I heard you often say."
However this letter may have been received, Freneau obtained no
appointment either from Madison or Jefferson, though there is a
persistent tradition among his descendants that he was offered a good
position under President Jefferson but refused it on the ground that the
latter had deserted him in the _National Gazette_ affair. On October 23,
1803, his old-time friend, Francis Bailey, addressed Madison:
"My dear sir: The death of Col. Bauman of New York has left the
Post Office without a Master. I know of no man in the United States
who would fill the office with more ability, or greater integrity,
than Philip Freneau."
As far as we know, there was no response, though the family declare that
Madison sent for him and that the poet proudly said, "James Madison
knows where I live, let him come to see me."
The "expedition" to mend his fortunes, which he had mentioned to his
brother as a disagreeable possibility, became at length inevitable. On
Saturday, November 27th, he embarked at New York as Master of the
schooner _John_, bound for Fredericksburg, Virginia, with a cargo of
salt. A minute log book of this voyage is still to be seen.[18] After an
exceedingly hard experience he returned to New York, January 12, 1803,
and the last entry in the log reads "Finished discharging the
wheat--1264 bushels at 17 cents a bushel freight--214 dollars and 88
cents."
This was the opening voyage of his last period at sea. His brother Peter
had fitted out at Charleston a new brig for the Madeira trade, and until
1807 Freneau was busy plying between Charleston and the Azores. In one
of his books of navigation is inscribed the following:
"Sailed from Charleston for Maderia with brig Washington, May 12,
1803. Got there June 23. Arrived back at Charleston Aug. 16.
"Sailed in ditto from Charleston Jan. 25, 1804. Arrived in Maderia
March 7th following. A hurricane of wind the whole way. April 12,
sailed from Funchal Road for Teneriff. Arrived at Santa Cruz the
15th; at Arasava, 22nd. Sailed May 11th. Arrived in Charleston,
June 10."
On June 30, 1806, he was in Savannah, Georgia, as Master of the sloop
_Industry_. He made his last voyage to the Azores in the _Washington_ in
1807. During this last period of sea life we find evidences everywhere
that this old enthusiasm for nautical adventure had greatly waned. He
was a sailor now from sheer necessity; he was approaching old age and he
longed for the quiet of his home and his family. In one of his books of
navigation of this period is penned a verse made in mid Atlantic:
"In dreams condemned to roam
He left his native home
O'er land and ocean vast and wide
With oar and sail, with wind and tide,
Proceeding an imaginary way."
In 1809, Freneau now in retirement at Mount Pleasant, began a new
edition of his poems. On April 8, he wrote Madison:[19]
"SIR,--I do myself the pleasure to enclose to you a copy of
Proposals for the publication of a couple of Volumes of Poems
shortly to be put to the Press in this city. Perhaps some of your
particular friends in Virginia may be induced from a view of the
Proposals in your hands to subscribe their names. If so, please to
have them forwarded to this place by Post, addressed to the
Publisher at No. 10 North Alley, Philadelphia. "Accept my
congratulations on your late Election to the Presidency of the
United States, and my hopes that your weight of State Affairs may
receive every alleviation in the gratitude and esteem of the Public
whom you serve in your truly honourable and exalted Station."
Madison's reply has been lost, but on May 12th, Freneau answered from
Philadelphia:[20]
"SIR,--After a month's ramble through the States of New Jersey and
New York, I returned to this place on Saturday last, and found your
friendly Letter on Mr. Bailey's table, with the contents. There was
no occasion of enclosing any Money, as your name was all I wanted
to have placed at the head of the Subscription list.--I hope you
will credit me when I say that the republication of these Poems,
such as they are, was not a business of my own seeking or
forwarding. I found last Winter an Edition would soon be going on
at all events, and in contradiction to my wishes, as I had left
these old scribblings, to float quietly down the stream of oblivion
to their destined element the ocean of forgetfulness. However, I
have concluded to remain here this Summer, and have them published
in a respectable manner, and free as possible from the blemishes
imputable to the two former Editions, over which I had no controul,
having given my manuscripts away, and left them to the mercy of
chance.--I am endeavouring to make the whole work as worthy of the
public eye as circumstances will allow. 1500 copies are to be
printed, only; but I have a certainty, from the present popular
frenzy, that three times that number might soon be disposed of.--I
will attend to what you direct on the subject, and will forward the
ten you mention by the middle of July or sooner.--I will consider
of what you say relative to the insertion of a piece or two in
prose, but suspect that anything I have written in that way is so
inferior to the Poetry, that the contrast will be injurious to the
credit of the Publication.--I feel much in the humour of remaining
here about two years, to amuse myself, as well as the Public, with
such matter as that of the fat man you refer to, and if the public
are in the same humour they shall be gratified.--But I am intruding
on your time and will add no more at present.--I had almost said--
"'Cum tot sustineas et tanta negotia solus
Res Italas armis tuteris, moribus ornes
Legibus emendes, in publica commoda peccem
Si longo sermone mores[21] tua tempora, Caesar--'
"My best wishes, Sir, will ever await you, and in particular that
your Presidential Career may be equally honourable though less
stormy than that of your predecessor."
It is evident that Freneau wrote also to Jefferson, for on May 22, 1809,
the latter wrote from Monticello.[22]
"SIR,--I subscribe with pleasure to the publication of your volumes
of poems. I anticipate the same pleasure from them which the
perusal of those heretofore published has given me. I have not been
able to circulate the paper because I have not been from home above
once or twice since my return, and because in a country situation
like mine, little can be done in that way. The inhabitants of the
country are mostly industrious farmers employed in active life and
reading little. They rarely buy a book of whose merit they can
judge by having it in their hand, and are less disposed to engage
for those yet unknown to them. I am becoming like them myself in a
preference of the healthy and cheerful employment without doors, to
the being immured within four brick walls. But under the shade of a
tree one of your volumes will be a pleasant pocket companion.
"Wishing you all possible success and happiness, I salute you with
constant esteem and respect."
The reply to Freneau's second letter to Jefferson has also been lost,
but Freneau's letter dated Philadelphia, May 27th, has escaped
destruction:[23]
"SIR,--Yesterday your Letter, dated May 22d came to hand.--Perhaps
you a little misunderstood me, when I wrote to you from this place
in April last, inclosing the Proposal Paper, respecting the
Poems.--I only wished your name to be placed at the head of the
list, and did not wish you to be at the pains of collecting
Subscriptions, further than as any of your neighbours might choose
to put down their names--Indeed, the whole Subscription plan was
Set a going without my knowledge or approbation, last Winter. But
as I found the matter had gone too far to be recalled, I thought it
best to submit, in the present Edition, to the course and order of
things as they are and must be.--Sir, if there be anything like
happiness in this our State of existence, it will be such to me,
when these two little Volumes reach you in August ensuing, if the
sentiments in them under the poetical Veil, amuse you but for a
single hour.--This is the first Edition that I have in reality
attended to, the other two having been published, in a strange way,
while I was wandering over gloomy Seas, until _embargoed_ by the
necessity of the times, and now again, I fear, I am reverting to
the folly of scribbling Verses.
"That your shades of Monticello may afford you complete happiness
is the wish and hope of all the worthy part of Mankind, and my own
in particular. In such the philosophers of antiquity preferred to
pass life, or if that was not allowed, their declining days.
"Will you be so good as to read the inclosed Verses? They were
published early in March last in the Trenton True American
Newspaper, and in the Public Advertiser, of New York."
On August 7, 1809, Freneau wrote finally to Madison:[24]
"SIR,--The two Volumes of Poems that in April last I engaged to
have published, are finished, and will be ready for delivery in two
or three days. The ten Setts you subscribed for I am rather at a
loss how to have safely transmitted to you at your residence in
Virginia, where I find by the Newspapers, you mean to Continue
until the end of September. Will you on receipt of this, send me a
line or two, informing me whether you would prefer having the Books
put into the hands of some Confidential person here, to be sent or;
that they be sent to the Post Office at Washington; or that they be
forwarded directly to yourself in Orange County. The precise
direction is not in my power."
The 1809 collection is the most elaborate of all the earlier editions of
Freneau's works. His statement that it was the only one which received
his personal supervision is certainly wrong, for he had carefully
supervised the 1795 edition. On the title page he announced that the
poems were "now republished from the original manuscripts," and that he
had added several "translations from the ancients and other pieces not
heretofore in print," but the new poems that had not previously appeared
in the _Time Piece_ were very few. On the title page also he placed the
stanza:
"Justly to record the deeds of fame,
A muse from heaven should touch the soul with flame;
Some powerful spirit in superior lays
Should tell the conflicts of the stormy days."
The poet's advertisement is as follows:
"The Poems, included in these two volumes, were originally written
between the years 1768 and 1793; and were partly published in the
transient prints of the times, and afterwards collected into two
editions of 1786 and 1795. The present is a revision of the whole,
and now published agreeable to the terms of the subscription issued
in this city, in April last. Such, perhaps, as are not attracted by
mere novelty or amusement, will attend more particularly to the
Poems originating from the temporary events of the American war.
These Poems were intended, in part to expose to vice and treason,
their own hideous deformity; to depict virtue, honour and
patriotism in their native beauty. Such (says a most distinguished
foreign author) was the intention of poetry from the beginning, and
here her purpose should end. Whether the following verses have any
real claim to the attention of the citizens of the American United
States, who may honour them with a reading, is left for the Public
to decide.
"To his Countrymen, the real _Patriotic Americans_, the
_Revolutionary Republicans_, and the rising generation who are
attached to their sentiments and principles, the writer hopes this
collection will not prove unacceptable. A more complete edition
might have been published, so as to include a great number of
miscellaneous Poems and animadversions on public events down to the
present year, 1809; but it has been judged most proper, to restrict
what is now printed to the date of 1793; with the exception of only
a very few pieces of later composition which have been retained,
and inserted in the body of the work, but not so as to materially
interrupt the general tenor of the Poems that arose from the
incidents of the American revolutionary contest.
"The Author will only add, that to this Edition are prefixed two
copper-plate engravings: the one representing ST. TAMMANY,
observing a hostile fleet approaching his shores; the other a
nocturnal view of Captain Jones's engagement with the
Seraphis.--These, it is hoped will be considered not inelegant
embellishments of the edition now presented to the public.
"_Philadelphia, August 2d, 1809._"
The work is divided into four parts:
"Book I. Containing translations from the ancients; and other
pieces on various subjects, written in America.
"Book II. Containing original pieces, with some relative to the
more early events of the American Revolutionary War.
"Book III. Containing original poems, written and published at
different periods, during the Revolutionary War.
"Book IV. Consisting of Miscellaneous pieces, on the events of the
times, interspersed with others on moral, satirical, and political
subjects."
The author made almost no attempt to arrange the material
chronologically as to the dates of composition. He resurrected none of
the material dropped from the 1795 collection, but cut from the edition
some fifty-five other poems, among them nearly all of the material
relating to the French Revolution, the greater number of the New Year
Odes, and such fine pieces as "Neversink," "The Country Printer,"
"Slender's Journey," and "The Wintry Prospect."
The text was taken largely from the 1795 version, and a few minor
amendments and changes made, but in no case were they so frequent or so
careful as those made for the second edition. The poet's editorial work
consisted mainly in elaborated titles with Latin quotations, in
foot-notes, and in division of the material into books.
The next few years of Freneau's life were spent quietly at Mount
Pleasant. He passed his time, as his daughter describes, "in writing
poetry, and in answering and receiving letters." Her picture of the man
at this period is full of interest. "Although no farmer, he loved to see
the work going on. He was very fond of feeding poultry and all the dumb
animals, and when the season came for slaughtering the porkers, he
generally managed it so as to have some business in New York, and he was
usually absent when poultry was wanted for dinner. Mrs. Freneau had to
give orders to the blacks to do it privately. He confessed it a weakness
and tried to conceal it."
His interest in politics was still keen. He watched carefully all the
premonitory signs of the approaching storm of 1812, and when war was
found to be inevitable, his harp was in full tune to satirize the foe,
which he had never ceased to hate, and to celebrate the heroes and the
victories of his country.
On January 12, 1815, we find him again in correspondence with his old
friend Madison:[25]
"SIR,--Since my last return from the Canary Islands in 1807 to
Charleston and from thence to New York; with my Brigantine
Washington, quitting the bustle and distraction of active life, my
walks have been confined, with now and then a short excursion, to
the neighbourhood of the Never Sink hills, and under some old
hereditary trees, and on some fields, which I well recollect for
sixty years. During the last Seven Years my pen could not be
entirely idle, and for amusement only now and then I had recourse
to my old habit of scribbling verses. A Bookseller in New York, Mr.
Longworth, by some means discovered this, and has prevailed on me
to put my papers into his hands for publication. With some
reluctance I consented to gratify his wish, altho' I think after
the age of fifty, or thereabouts, the vanity of authorship ought to
cease, at least it has been the case with myself. Mr. Longworth
informs me the work will be published early in February in two
duodecimo volumes. I have directed him, when done, to forward a
copy to yourself, of which I beg your acceptance. I do not know
that the Verses are of any superior or very unusual merit; but he
tells me the Town will have them: and of course, have them they
will, and must, it seems. The Work cannot be very tedious, for in
two small Volumes there will be upwards of one hundred and thirty
Poems on different subjects, moral, political, or merely amusing,
and not a few upon the events of the times since May 1812. However,
you know a short production may sometimes be tedious, and a long
one very lively and captivating. None of my effusions in these
Volumes much exceed two hundred lines, and several do not reach
more than the fourth part of that number of lines.
"When I left Philadelphia, about the middle of September 1809, the
ten copies of the Revolutionary Poems, which you subscribed for,
were put into a box well secured, and forwarded according to your
direction, under the care of General Steele, then Collector of the
Port of Philadelphia: I have not since heard whether they reached
you or not.
"That Edition was published by _Subscription_ merely for the
benefit of, and to assist Mrs. Bailey, an unfortunate but deserving
widowed female, niece to General Steele, and this consideration
alone induced me to pay some attention to that third Edition.
"But, in mentioning these matters I fear I am intruding both on
your time and patience, constantly, or always perpetually engaged,
as you undoubtedly are, in the duties of your station at a stormy
period, a tempestuous Presidency indeed: May you weather all the
conflicts of these mighty times, and return safe at the proper
period to your Virginian Groves, fields and streams: sure I am,
different very different indeed from your long intercourse with
political Life and the affairs of a 'grumbling Hive.' My best
wishes attend Yourself, and Mrs. Madison, to whom, tho' I never had
the pleasure of her acquaintance, I beg you to present my best
compliments and regards."
On March 3d following, he writes again to Madison:[26]
"SIR,--When I mentioned in my few lines to you, dated from my
residence in New Jersey on the 22d of January last, the two Volumes
of Poems publishing in this city by Mr. Longworth, I did really
think to have had a small box of them at Washington by the middle
of February at farthest, with a particular direction of a couple of
copies to Yourself bound in an elegant manner. Finding, however,
that the business went on slowly here, and a little vexed to be
under the necessity of leaving my Solitude and the wild Scenes of
nature in New Jersey for the ever execrated streets and company of
this Capital, I embarked near Sandy Hook in a snow storm, about the
last of January, and shortly after arrived here, fortunately
unnoticed and almost unknown--At my time of life, 63!!! abounding
however in all the powers of health and vigour, though I consider
my poetry and poems as mere trifles, I was seriously out of humour
on my arrival here to see my work delayed, as well from the
severity of the cold, which has been unremitting for more than a
month past, and perhaps to some other causes it would not be
prudent _here_ to explain. By my incessant exertions in spurring on
the indolence of typography, the work, such as it is, is now
finished, in two small Volumes of about 180 pages each.--The moment
they are out of the bookbinder's hands, Mr. Longworth will forward
you a Copy, and by the first Vessel to Alexandria, Georgetown, or
Washington a Box of them to his correspondents in these places. A
Copy or two of the Revolutionary poems will be forwarded to your
direction--I am sorry the Copies you had were doomed to the flames,
but the author had nearly suffered the same fate in the year
1780.--Yesterday I received from New Jersey a Copy of your friendly
Letter of the 1st February: a Copy, I say, for my wife, or some one
of my four Girls, daughters, would not forward me the original, but
keep it until my return for fear of accidents.
"To-morrow morning I embark again for Monmouth, and among other
cares, when I arrive at my magical grove, I shall hasten to exert
all the poetical energy I possess, on the grand Subject of the
Repulse of the British Army from New Orleans. There is a subject
indeed! far above my power, I fear. If there be anything in
inspiration, it will be needful on such a theme. Eight hundred
lines in Heroic Measure I mean to devote to this animating
subject.--In due time you shall hear more from me on this business,
if I am not anticipated by some one more muse beloved than
myself.--Hoping that all health and happiness may attend you, and
that your libraries in future may escape the ravages and flames of
Goths and Barbarians--I remain, etc."
Madison's reply has been lost. On May 10, 1815, Freneau wrote his last
letter, as far as we know, to Madison:[27]
"SIR,--Mrs. Anna Smyth, the Lady of Charles Smyth Esquire, a
respectable Citizen of this place, being to set out in a few days
on a tour to Virginia, and expecting to be in your neighbourhood,
either at Washington, or at Montpelier, does me the favour to take
under her particular care, to put, or transmit into your hands, the
two little Volumes I mentioned to you in my letter last Winter, and
to which I received your friendly and obliging Answer.
"Be pleased to accept them as a mark of my attention, respect, and
esteem, in regard to your private as well as public character.
"I have written to Mr. Carey, in Philadelphia, Book-seller there,
to forward on to you, if he has them, the two Volumes of the
Revolutionary Poems, published in Philadelphia in the Summer of
1809, and which you wished to regain, since the loss of your Copies
in the conflagration at Washington last year. I flatter myself, the
arrangement I have made with him will replace them in your
hands.--I will only add, that any attention paid by you to Mrs.
Smyth, I will consider as conferred on myself."
The 1815 edition contains no poems previously published in the poet's
earlier collections. The work shows no falling off in vigor from the
earlier martial standard set by the poet in his more vigorous years.
Some critics have declared that the poet's best work is in this
collection. Certain it is that a few of the lyrics of battle have a
spirit and swing that make them notable productions.
Freneau placed upon the title-page the ringing challenge:
"Then England come!--a sense of wrong requires
To meet with thirteen stars your thousand fires:
Through these stern times the conflict to maintain,
Or drown them, with your commerce, in the main."
He introduced the work as follows:
"The poetical pieces contained in these volumes were composed at
different periods, and on a variety of occasions, between the years
1797 and 1815, and are now presented to the public, printed from
the author's original and corrected manuscripts, and, it is hoped,
in such a style of typography, as will not be unacceptable to the
reader.--Several of the performances, comprised in this collection,
and chiefly those on political subjects, and other events of the
times, have heretofore appeared in several periodical publications
of _this_ and other STATES of the union. It is presumed, however,
that the poems of this description will not be the less acceptable
to the friends of the muses, now they are collected in these
volumes; with the advantage of having at one view what were before
scattered in those bulky vehicles of information, whose principal
object can be little more than to record the common events and
business of the day, and soon descend into comparative
oblivion.--Whatever may be the fate of the work, they are
respectfully offered to the world, in hopes it may obtain a share
of their attention, and particularly, from the friends of poetical
composition; and in a country where it may be expected, the fine
arts in general will, with the return of peace, find that share of
encouragement, which they seem entitled to demand, in every nation
that makes any pretensions to refinement and civilization.--It is
only necessary to add, that care has been taken to execute the
typographical part as _correctly_ as possible."
The poems were reviewed for the _Analectic Magazine_ by Mr. Gulian C.
Verplanck, who said in part:
"He depicts land battles and naval fights with much animation and
gay coloring; and being himself a son of old Neptune, he is never
at a loss ... when the scene lies at sea. His martial and political
ballads are free from bombast and affectation, and often have an
arch simplicity in their manner that renders them very poignant and
striking. If the ballads and songs of Dibdin have cheered the
spirits and incited the valor of the British tars, the strains of
Freneau, in like manner, are calculated to impart patriotic
impulses to the hearts of his countrymen, and their effect in this
way should be taken as the test of their merit, without entering
into a very nice examination of the rhyme or the reason. For our
own part, we have no inclination to dwell on his defects; we had
much rather--
"'With full applause, in honor to his age,
Dismiss the veteran poet from the stage,
Crown his last exit with distinguished praise,
And kindly hide his baldness with the bays.'"
The last lines used by Verplanck are from "American Bards," a poem
published in Philadelphia in 1820. The reference to Freneau is not
without interest:
"Let Freneau live, though Flattery's baleful tongue,
Too early tuned his youthful lyre to song,
And ripe old age, in ill directed zeal,
Has made an enervated last appeal;
His song could fire the sailor on the wave,
Raise up the coward,--animate the brave,
While wit and satire cast their darts around,
And fools and cowards tremble at the sound.
Although ambition never soared to claim
The meed of polished verse, or classic fame,
And caustic critics honor but condemn,
A strain of feeling, but a style too tame.
Let the old bard whose patient voice has fanned
The fire of freedom that redeemed our land,
Live on the scroll with kindred names that swell
The page of history, where their honors dwell;
With full applause, in honor to his age,
Dismiss the veteran poet from the stage,
Crown his last exit with distinguished praise,
And kindly hide his baldness with the bays."
The last years of Freneau's life were eventless, passed quietly at Mount
Pleasant, and varied only with frequent visits to New York. Shortly
after the issue of the 1815 edition of his poems, the ancestral home was
completely destroyed by fire, together with most of the poet's papers,
manuscript poems, valuable letters and books--the collection of a
lifetime. During his last years he contemplated a complete and final
edition of his poetical works. He wrote Dr. Mease of Philadelphia
whether there was "enough of the old spirit of patriotism abroad to
insure the safety of such an adventure;" and it was the testimony of
Alexander Anderson, the once celebrated engraver on wood, that Freneau
once consulted with him as to the cost of an illustrated volume of his
poems, and departed sadly remarking that his purse was not equal to the
venture.
The best picture of the poet in his old age is from the pen of the
genial Dr. John W. Francis of New York, who knew him well during his
last years:[28]
"I had, when very young, read the poetry of Freneau, and as we
instinctively become attached to the writers who first captivate
our imaginations, it was with much zest that I formed a personal
acquaintance with the revolutionary bard. He was at that time about
seventy-six years old, when he first introduced himself to me in my
library. I gave him an earnest welcome. He was somewhat below the
ordinary height; in person thin yet muscular, with a firm step,
though a little inclined to stoop; his countenance wore traces of
care, yet lightened with intelligence as he spoke; he was mild in
enunciation, neither rapid nor slow, but clear, distinct, and
emphatic. His forehead was rather beyond the medium elevation, his
eyes a dark grey, occupying a socket deeper than common; his hair
must have once been beautiful, it was now thinned and of an iron
grey. He was free of all ambitious displays; his habitual
expression was pensive. His dress might have passed for that of a
farmer. New York, the city of his birth, was his most interesting
theme; his collegiate career with Madison, next. His story of many
of his occasional poems was quite romantic. As he had at command
types and a printing press, when an incident of moment in the
Revolution occurred, he would retire for composition, or find
shelter under the shade of some tree, indite his lyrics, repair to
the press, set up his types, and issue his productions. There was
no difficulty in versification with him. I told him what I had
heard Jeffrey, the Scotch Reviewer, say of his writings, that the
time would arrive when his poetry, like that of Hudibras, would
command a commentator like Gray. On some of the occasions when
Freneau honored me with a visit, we had within our circle one of my
earliest friends, that rare Knickerbocker, Gulian C. Verplanck. I
need not add that the charm of my interview with the bard was
heightened by the rich funds of antiquarian lore possessed by the
latter.
"It is remarkable how tenaciously Freneau preserved the
acquisitions of his early classical studies, notwithstanding he had
for many years, in the after portion of his life, been occupied in
pursuits so entirely alien to books. There is no portrait of the
patriot Freneau; he always firmly declined the painter's art, and
would brook no 'counterfeit presentiment.'"
Freneau's frequent visits to New York were the chief solace of his last
years. Says Dr. Francis:
"Freneau was widely known to a large circle of our most prominent
and patriotic New Yorkers. His native city, with all his
wanderings, was ever uppermost in his mind and in his affections.
While in the employment of Jefferson, as a translator in the
department of state, upon the organization of Congress, with
Washington at its head, he had the gratification of witnessing the
progress of improvement, and might have enjoyed increased
facilities had he not enlisted with an indiscreet zeal as an
advocate of the radical doctrines of the day. Freneau was,
nevertheless, esteemed a true patriot; and his private worth, his
courteous manner, and his general bearing won admiration with all
parties. His pen was more acrimonious than his heart. He was
tolerant, frank in expression, and not deficient in geniality. He
was highly cultivated in classical knowledge, abounding in
anecdotes of the revolutionary crisis, and extensively acquainted
with prominent characters.
"It were easy to record a long list of eminent citizens who ever
gave him a cordial welcome. He was received with the warmest
greetings by the old soldier, Governor George Clinton. He, also, in
the intimacy of kindred feeling, found an agreeable pastime with
the learned Provoost, the first regularly consecrated Bishop of the
American Protestant Episcopate, who himself had shouldered a musket
in the Revolution, and hence was sometimes called the fighting
bishop. They were allied by classical tastes, a love of natural
science, and ardor in the cause of liberty. With Gates he compared
the achievements of Monmouth with those at Saratoga. With Col. Fish
he reviewed the capture of Yorktown; with Dr. Mitchell he
rehearsed, from his own sad experience, the physical sufferings and
various diseases of the incarcerated patriots of the Jersey
prison-ship; and descanted on Italian poetry and the piscatory
eclogues of Sannazarius. He, doubtless, furnished Dr. Benjamin
Dewitt with data for his funeral discourse on the remains of the
11,500 American martyrs. With Pintard he could laud Horace and talk
largely of Paul Jones. With Major Fairlie he discussed the tactics
and chivalry of Baron Steuben. With Sylvanus Miller he compared
notes on the political clubs of 1795-1810. With Dewitt Clinton and
Cadwallader D. Colden he debated the projects of internal
improvement and artificial navigation, based on the famous
precedent of the Languedoc canal."
The death of Freneau was a sad one. On the evening of the 18th of
December, 1832, he had gone on an errand to Freehold, some two miles
distant. When he set out to return, late in the evening, a fierce and
blinding storm was in progress. His friends sought to dissuade him, but
he insisted on returning. Instead of taking the long way round by the
road, he took the usual short way through the fields, and was soon lost
in the roaring "blizzard." He circled into a swamp, and doubtless, after
hours of wandering, sank down benumbed and hopeless, to be found by his
friends a few hours later, still breathing but nearly lifeless. For the
whispered tradition that he was intoxicated when he left the town, there
is no foundation.
The next issue of the _Monmouth Press_ contained a notice of his death:
"Mr. Freneau was in the village and started, towards evening, to go
home, about two miles. In attempting to go across he appears to
have got lost and mired in a bog where his lifeless corpse was
discovered yesterday morning. Captain Freneau was a stanch Whig in
the time of the Revolution, a good soldier, and a warm patriot. The
productions of his pen animated his countrymen in the darkest days
of '76 and the effusions of his muse cheered the desponding soldier
as he fought the battles of freedom."
His old friend, John Pintard, wrote a biographical notice of the poet in
the _New York Mirror_ for January 12, 1833, in which he dwelt largely
upon his mental endowments and accomplishments:
"He was a man of great reading and extensive acquirements; few
were more thoroughly versed in classical literature, and fewer
still who knew as much about the early history of our country, the
organization of the government, and the use and progress of
parties."
The house which Freneau occupied during his last years is still
standing. His remains rest in the little cemetery at Mount Pleasant,
which recently, in honor of the poet, has been rechristened Freneau.
VII.
The personality of Philip Freneau, if we judge from contemporary
testimony and the effect which his personal presence invariably exerted,
was a singularly winning one. The bluff, hearty old sailor breathed out
good-will and honesty with every breath. He was the soul of honor, and,
despite his caustic pen, the kindest hearted creature in the world. All
that one of his grand-daughters can remember of him is that once he took
her upon his knee and chided her for having killed a fly. "Surely," he
said, "it was not made without some wise end, and its little life was as
dear to him as is yours to you." It reminds one of "My Uncle Toby."
There is a cheery optimism in many of his poems. A stanza like this
might have been written by Browning:
"All nature must decay, 'tis true,
But nature shall her face renew,
Her travels in a circle make,
Freeze but to thaw, sleep but to wake,
Die but to live and live to die."
His temperament was Celtic. He inherited with his French blood a
passionate love for beauty, a sensuous, dreamy delight in the merely
poetic, in the weird and romantic. He had not the Teutonic stability; he
was easily exalted, easily depressed; he went often to extremes; he was
sensitive to a degree that made criticism a torture, and he was proud
beyond all reason. He had been deeply touched by the principles of the
Revolution; he had suffered personally at the hands of the enemy; he
had followed Paine in his democratic doctrines even to the extremes, and
he tried to live consistently with these exalted ideals. His honesty and
his ignorance of the world prevented him from seeing how greatly these
principles must be modified to become of really practical value.
His kindly heart made him a fierce foe to all kinds of tyranny and
oppression. He saw sights in the West Indies that made him a bitter
opponent of human slavery. Again and again in his poems and prose
sketches does he condemn the evil. His message is almost as intense as
Whittier's:
"O come the time and haste the day
When man shall man no longer crush,
When reason shall enforce her sway,
Nor these fair regions raise the blush
Where still the African complains
And mourns his yet unbroken chains."
Not only slavery, but every other form of oppression and wrong received
his condemnation. He wrote boldly against intemperance in a day when the
use of intoxicating liquors was well-nigh universal and wholly
uncriticised; he spoke eloquently on cruelty to animals; and he was one
of the earliest to demand equal rights for man and woman.
Freneau's religious inclinations have been sometimes harshly criticised
by those of puritanic creed. The school of Dr. Dwight could speak of him
only in contempt, yet it is true that the poet was a deeply religious
man. His love of freedom and his perfect sincerity affected his creed.
He had an intense dislike for hollow formalism. In his "Jamaica Funeral"
he has pictured a hypocritical priest in colors as vivid almost as
Chaucer's. He detested
"The holy man by Bishops holy made."
He loved sincerity, and the creed that came not from dry formalism, but
from reason and from an honest heart.
It has often been overlooked by his critics that Freneau was a widely
read and thoroughly cultured man; that he was a linguist of more than
ordinary powers; and that he knew intimately the chief writings in
Latin, Italian, French, and English. He was no ignorant, careless
scribbler, tossing into the ephemeral columns of the press hasty rhymes
of which he never thought again. He revised and corrected with patient
care, and he took a deep interest in the children of his pen, rescuing
at one time or another almost every one of them from the oblivion of the
newspaper.
VIII.
As to the absolute literary value of Freneau's literary remains, there
is room for honest difference of opinion. He is certainly not, if we
judge him from what he actually produced, a great poet. But he must in
fairness be viewed against the background of his age and his
environment. Nature had equipped him as she has equipped few other men.
He had the poet's creative imagination; he had an exquisite sense of the
beautiful; and he had a realization of his own poetic endowments that
kept him during a long life constantly true to the muse. Scarcely a
month went by in all his life, from his early boyhood, that was not
marked by poetic composition. Few poets, even in later and more
auspicious days, have devoted their lives more assiduously to song.
Freneau was the first to catch what may be called the new poetic impulse
in America--the new epic note. Previous to the Revolutionary era,
America was destitute even of the germs of an original literature.
Before she could produce anything really strong and individual, there
was necessary some great primal impulse that should stir mightily the
whole people; that should strike from their hands the old books and the
old models; that should arouse them to a true realization of themselves;
and that should clear the atmosphere for a new and broader view of human
life. Such new forces are always needed by society, but they stalk with
long strides over the centuries.
In pre-Revolutionary America such an upheaval was near at hand. It came
with appalling suddenness. The colonists had had no gradual preparation
for the idea of separation from England. As late as 1775, Franklin
declared before the House of Commons that in all of his journeyings up
and down the colonies he had not heard expressed one single wish for
complete independence. Even after Concord and Bunker Hill, Freneau, the
radical, could write:
"Long may Britannia rule our hearts again,
Rule as she ruled in George the Second's reign."
The idea of independence came all in a moment; but once it had come, it
went with leaps and bounds to its extreme. Never in all history has a
whole people been lifted by such rapid stages into a region of such vast
outlook. We can trace the growth of the new spirit, not decade by
decade, but month by month: Justice, Freedom, Independence, and then the
radiant vision of perfect Liberty and the Rights of Man, and then like a
torrent the sense of boundless possibilities and glorious destiny:
"No pent-up Utica contracts our powers,
But the whole boundless continent is ours."
The soul of man stirred by such ideals, and successful in realizing them
beyond all dreams, struggled for utterance. It is such upheavals in
human society that make poets and bring outbursts of song and periods in
the history of literature. But there was no burst of song in America;
instead there followed one of the most pathetic spectacles in all
literary history--a people with a vision that transported them into the
clouds, yet powerless through environment and early education to
transmute that vision into song. The South, thrilled by the new spirit,
turned it at once into action, and took the leadership in war and
statesmanship. New England lifted up her voice, but she could speak only
through the medium of old spiritual conceptions and worn-out poetic
forms. A young Connecticut parson, thrilled through and through, pours
his enthusiasm into an epic of the wars of Joshua done in the heroics of
Pope; a brilliant Boston lad would sing of "War and Washington," but he
must set it to the tune of Dryden; and a gifted Connecticut satirist,
overflowing with the true poetic spirit, is content simply to add new
American stanzas to "Hudibras." With all her rhymers and all her
inspiration, New England gave forth not a single original note. It was
the repeating of the old spectacle of a heavenly anthem sung unto
shepherds,--unto those utterly unable to give it utterance.
We see them, however, struggling heroically with the burden. From 1774,
when Dwight completed his "Conquest of Canaan," "the first piece of this
kind ever attempted in this country," as he observed in his preface,
until 1808, which ends the period with Barlow's "Columbiad"--the
"Polyolbion" of American poetry--the years are strewn thick with the
wrecks of epics. Every poet of the era felt his soul burn with the epic
fire. Charles Brockden Brown, when only sixteen, had started no less
than three of these Homeric efforts: one on the discovery of America,
and one each on the conquests of Mexico and Peru. It was our heroic era,
but it yielded almost nothing of value. Mere exaltation availeth little
unless it be grounded either upon genius or long-continued culture.
America, however, was not without her genius. Before Dwight and Barlow
and Trumbull had written a line, Freneau at Princeton was planning epics
American in scene and spirit. He had dreamed, over his Virgil, of a
greater Aeneas who had sailed into the pathless West to discover a new
world, and to plant there the seeds of a greater than Rome; he had
translated with beating heart the words of Seneca:
"The time shall come, when numerous years are past,
When ocean shall unloose the bands of things,
And an extended region rise at last;
"And Typhis shall disclose the mighty land
Far, far away, where none have rov'd before;
Nor shall the world's remotest region be
Gibraltar's rock, or Thule's savage shore."
"Fired at the theme," he had mapped out the epic of a new world; but his
work of this era, like all schoolboy epics, had resulted only in
fragments which were to strew his earlier volumes. How strong and
original was this youthful dream one can judge from the ringing lines of
"Columbus to Ferdinand," "Discovery," and the "Pictures of Columbus,"
which are mere epic fragments. There is an originality and a fire in
them utterly new in American poetry. There is poetry of a high order in
such a climax as that recording the soliloquy of the dying Columbus,
beginning:
"The winds blow high; one other world remains,
Once more without a guide I find the way."
But Commencement was at hand. Here was a chance, indeed; here was a
theme commensurate with the occasion. The two young dreamers would
outline an epic poem; they would essay "Things unattempted yet in prose
or rhyme":
"Now shall the adventurous Muse attempt a theme
More new, more noble, and more flush of fame
Than all that went before."
Never was graduating exercise based on broader foundations. The young
graduates bewail at every step their limitations of space. The plan they
suggest is the plan of a "Columbiad." They would begin with all the tale
of Columbus; they would rehearse the story of Cortez and Pizarro; they
would discuss at learned length the origin and the characteristics of
the Indians; they would tell the story of the early colonies; and would
trace the course of settlement and review the progress and the promise
of agriculture and commerce; they would peer into the future and mark
the time
"When we shall spread
Dominion from the North and South and West,
Far from the Atlantic to Pacific shores,
And shackle half the convex of the main."
But, alas, the time! An epic cannot be condensed into a graduation
exercise. Suddenly the poet bursts into true prophetic rapture:
"I see, I see
A thousand kingdoms rais'd, cities, and men
Num'rous as sand upon the ocean shore;
Th' Ohio then shall glide by many a town
Of note: and where the Mississippi stream,
By forests shaded now runs weeping on,
Nations shall grow and States not less in fame
Than Greece and Rome of old: we too shall boast
Our Alexanders, Pompeys, heroes, kings
That in the womb of time yet dormant lye
Waiting the joyful hour of life and light.
O snatch us hence, ye muses! to those days
When, through the veil of dark antiquity,
Our sons shall hear of us as things remote,
That blossom'd in the morn of days, alas!
How could I weep that we were born so soon,
In the beginning of more happy times!
It is not a great poem when we measure it by absolute standards, but
"The Rising Glory of America" is a very great poem if we view it in
connection with the conditions and the environment that produced it.
Full as it is of Latin influence and Commencement day zeal, it is the
first real poem that America ever made--the first poem that was impelled
hot from a man's soul. It is more than this, it is the first real fruit
of a new influence in the world of letters--the first literary product
of that mighty force that was to set in motion the American and French
Revolutions, with all that they mean in human history.
America should have recognized this new and original voice, and should
have encouraged it to sing the new message which it had to proclaim to
the world, but she was not yet ready.
How the young dreamer, who had seen life from his earliest years only
through the medium of his books, was gradually disillusioned, we have
endeavored to show. His first book, put forth in the enthusiasm of
inexperience, with his name on the title-page, was "damned by all good
and judicious judges." So was Wordsworth's; so have been the earliest
ventures of every innovator in the field of song. Gradually the young
poet awoke to a realization of his position: America was unprepared for
her prophet; she would not listen. The discovery disheartened him; his
Celtic temperament would not patiently wait for recognition, as did
Wordsworth; he was too proud to force his poetry upon an unwilling
public. He would leave the scene, for three years to dwell in the dreamy
seclusion of the tropic islands.
This was his period of pure invention, where he showed the possibilities
of his genius. With the "House of Night" he became one of the earliest
pioneers in that dimly-lighted region which was soon to be exploited by
Coleridge and Poe. The poem is the first distinctly romantic note heard
in America. Moreover, one may search in vain in the English poetry of
the early romantic movement for anything that can equal it in strength
of conception, in mastery of weird epithet, and in sustained command
over the vaguely terrible. The page that recounts the poet's departure
from the house of night, quaking with fear,--
"Beneath my feet substantial darkness lay,
And screams were heard from the distempered ground,"
his timid look behind him to find the windows of the infernal dome a
"flaming hell-red," the fearful shrieks of the dying monster within the
walls, the "hell-red wandering light" that led him to the graves, the
sudden peal of the iron bell above him in the darkness, and then the
troop of spectres galloping fiercely on Death's horses, while "their
busy eyes shot terror to my soul,"--all this is worthy of Poe. As a
product of pure imagination, the poem is most remarkable, especially
when we view it in connection with the English literature of its day.
In its weird supernaturalism it anticipated Scott, and in its unearthly
atmosphere it clearly anticipated Coleridge.
In the "Jamaica Funeral" the poet outlined his early philosophy of life.
He was fast breaking from the influence of Gray, his early master. It is
a Gallic philosophy that he outlines; he is becoming infected with
Deism; he is a true bacchanalian. Is there not a ring of the "Rubaiyat"
in a stanza like this:
"Count all the trees that crown Jamaica's hills,
Count all the stars that through the heavens you see,
Count every drop that the wide ocean fills,
Then count the pleasures Bacchus yields to me?"
Freneau's early dream of a purely poetic career was rudely broken by the
sudden clash of war and by the sternly practical nature of the American
people. Circumstances decided for him his career. There was needed a
poetic voice to arouse the common people to action. There was no demand
for an imaginative creator, for a sensuous singer of love and
wine,--America needed a popular voice, one that could be understood by
the unlettered, one that with satire and patriotic appeal could arouse
and fire the land. Freneau laid aside for a time the harp and the lyre
and took up the trumpet and the bagpipes, and of his influence on the
stormy period of the Revolution there can be no two opinions. His
ballads and satires were scattered far and wide; they were sold in
broadsides in every port and city and camp. Even in the war of 1812 his
poems flew like leaves everywhere that men were gathered together. To be
the lyrist of a righteous revolution, and above all to be the people's
poet, is in itself no small distinction.
His poems of the war are in themselves a running history of the
struggle, especially of its last years. His heart was in his work; the
prison ship had blotted for a time all memories of the old criticisms of
his early work, all his early dreams, everything save "the insulting
foe" who was making desolate his dear mother land. He lampooned without
mercy Clinton, Cornwallis, Carleton, and the royalist printers,
Rivington and Gaine. He sang tender lyrics of the patriot dead at Eutaw
Springs, who
"Saw their injured Country's woe;
The flaming town, the wasted field;
Then rushed to meet the insulting foe;
They took the spear,--but left the shield."
He sang peans of victory over the downfall at Yorktown; he exalted the
fame of Washington; he called down maledictions on the ship that bore
the "worthless Arnold" from American shores. These are more than the
fleeting voices of a newspaper muse; they are true poems, and they are
American to the core. Scott declared that "Eutaw Springs [was] as fine a
thing as there is of the kind in the language."
With a few fiery songs he placed himself at the head of the small group
of naval lyrists, a position which even to-day he has not wholly lost.
In dash and fire, in ability to catch and reproduce the odors and the
atmosphere of the ocean, in enthusiasm and excitement that is contagious
and that plunges the reader at once into the heart of the action, and in
glowing patriotism that makes the poems national hymns, no American poet
has excelled this earliest singer of the American ocean. No true patriot
can read without a thrill of pride such songs as "Captain Jones's
Invitation" and "The Death of Captain Biddle," a song of the intrepid
seaman who from the _Randolph_ poured death into the British ship:
"Tremendous flash! and hark, the ball
Drives through old Yarmouth, flames and all,"
and then in a fatal moment was blown up by his own magazine, and
"Stanzas on the New Frigate Alliance," the gallant ship "who walks the
ocean like its queen," and "Barney's Victory over the General Monk,"
that rollicking song of battle and of triumph, and best of all, perhaps,
"The Sailor's Invitation," which is full of the very salt and vigor of
the western seas. "The Memorable Victory of Paul Jones," written when
America was ringing with the first news of the battle, is one of the
glories of American literature. Longfellow or Whittier never wrote a
more stirring ballad. It moves with leaps and bounds; it is full of the
very spirit of battle.
"She felt the fury of her ball,
Down, prostrate down, the Britons fall;
The decks are strew'd with slain:
Jones to the foe his vessel lash'd;
And while the black artillery flash'd
Loud thunders shook the main."
It is not impertinent to observe that Thomas Campbell was but four years
of age when this appeared. It was not Scott or Cooper who added the
domain of the ocean to literature; it was Freneau. His books are full of
the roar and the sweep of the open sea, which he knew as the farmer
knows his ancestral acres. There is no more true and vigorous picture of
an ocean voyage and a naval combat than that contained in Canto I of
"The British Prison Ship." The episode of the boatswain's fiery prayer,
just before the conflict, is unique in literature.
The war over, Freneau would return to his dream; he would pour forth the
poetic message that was in him; but his countrymen, delighting in his
hard blows and biting sarcasm, refused to listen to the merely poetic.
They demanded jingles and clever hits. The poet turned fiercely upon
them. "For men I keep a pen," he cried, "for dogs a cane." The time for
using the cane was past; he would use it no more. But who would listen
to anything that was not rant and bombast? Fate had thrown him into a
"bard-baiting clime." A wave of the old bitterness swept over him:
"Expect not in these times of rude renown
That verse like yours will have the chance to please:
No taste for plaintive elegy is known,
Nor lyric ode,--none care for things like these."
How he at length deliberately turned from the muse of his choice, and
how after a long experience with the world of actual affairs he
exchanged his old poetic ideals for those of mere reason and common
sense, we have attempted to show.
Here was a man equipped by nature for a true poet, a man with a message,
yet dwarfed and transformed by his environment. America was not ready
for her singer. It took half a century more to make way in the
wilderness for the new message that had been whispered to Freneau in his
young manhood. Had he been a great world-poet, he would have been heard
despite all difficulties; he would have trampled down the barriers about
him and have compelled his age to listen, but the task was beyond him.
America, to this day, has produced no poet who single-handed and alone
could have performed such a labor of Hercules. Sadly Freneau turned to
other things.
He has never been adequately recognized. Had the first edition of his
poems, published the same year as the Kilmarnock edition of Burns, been
an English book, it long ago would have figured largely in the histories
of the romantic and naturalistic movement which made possible the great
outburst of the nineteenth century. That Freneau was the most
conspicuous pioneer in the dim romantic world that was to be explored by
Coleridge and Poe, we have already shown; that he was a pioneer in the
movement that succeeded in throwing off the chain forged by Pope is
evident to any one who will examine his early work. "The Wild Honey
Suckle," for instance, which was written in 1786, twelve years before
the "Lyrical Ballads," is as spontaneous and as free from Pope as
anything written by Wordsworth. It is a nature lyric written with the
eye upon the object, without recollection of other poetry, and it draws
from the humble flower a lesson for humanity in the true Wordsworthian
manner. Before Freneau, American poetry had been full of the eglantine,
the yew, the Babylonian willow, the lark--the flora and fauna of the
Hebrew and British bards. In our poet we find, for the first time, the
actual life of the American forest and field--the wild pink, the elm,
the wild honeysuckle, the pumpkin, the blackbird, the squirrel, the
partridge, "the loquacious whip-poor-will," and in addition to this the
varied life of the American tropic islands. We find for the first time
examples of that true poetic spirit that can find inspiration in humble
and even vulgar things; that, furthermore, can draw from lowly nature
and her commonplaces deep lessons for human life. Freneau sees the
reflection of the stars in the bosom of the river,
"But when the tide had ebbed away
The scene fantastic with it fled,
A bank of mud around me lay
And sea-weed on the river's bed,"
and from this he draws the obvious moral for human life. Consider what
Pope would have said of mud. Indeed, to appreciate Freneau, one must
come to him after a careful reading of the classic poets who preceded
him. What a shock to this school would have been the vividly realistic
poem on "Logtown." Just how much Freneau influenced the school of poets
who in England broke away from the trammels of the eighteenth century,
we can never know; yet no one can read long in the American poet and not
be convinced that his influence was considerable. His poems were known
and read freely in England at the very dawn of the critical period in
British poetry, and their echoes can be detected more than once.
In his use of his native land and his familiar surroundings as a
background for art, Freneau discovered the poetical side of the Indian,
and thus became the literary father of Brockden Brown, Cooper, and the
little school of poets which in the early years of the century fondly
believed that the aboriginal American was to be the central figure in
the poetry of the new world. To the little real poetry that there is in
the Indian, Freneau did full justice, but he went to no such absurd
lengths as did Eastburn and Whittier. The "Indian Death Song," if it
indeed be his, is full of the wild, stoical heroism of the brave who is
dying beneath the torture of his enemies. In "The Indian Student" he has
covered fully the Indian's love for the pathless forest, and to the
untamable wildness of his nature. "The Dying Indian" and "The Indian
Burying-Ground" sum up what is essentially poetic in Indian legend and
all that is pathetic in the fate of the vanishing race. Poetry, if it is
to confine itself to the truth, can do little more for the Indian.
Such was Philip Freneau, a man in every respect worthy to bear the title
of "the father of American poetry." He was the first true poet born upon
our continent; he realized in his early youth his vocation; he gave
himself with vigor and enthusiasm to his calling; he fitted himself by
wide reading and classic culture; he received the full inspiration of a
great movement in human society; he lifted up his voice to sing, but he
was smothered and silenced by his contemporaries. He was all alone; he
had about him no circle of "Pleiades" to encourage and assist; he had no
traditions, religious or otherwise, that would compel silence. He was
out of step with the theology of his generation; he was out of tune with
the music of his day; he was beating time a half century ahead of the
chorus about him. The people have to be educated to revolution, and
America had not yet learned to take the initiative in things
intellectual and æsthetic. She must follow the literary fashions beyond
the sea. Freneau was for breaking violently away from England and for
setting up a new standard of culture and literary art on this side the
water.
"Can we never be thought
To have learning or grace
Unless it be brought
From that damnable place?"
he cried. But he reckoned without his countrymen. Not until Emerson's
day did it dawn upon America that it was possible for her to think for
herself and make poetry that did not echo the English bards. Thus did
America reject her earliest prophet; thus did she stop her ears and
compel him to lay aside his seven-stringed lyre for the horn and the
bagpipes.
Freneau lived to see his discarded harp in full tune in other hands,
first in England and then in his own land. There is something truly
pathetic in the figure of the old minstrel, who had realized almost
nothing of his early dreams, and yet who had been told by the great
Jeffries that the time would surely come when his poems would command a
commentator like Gray, who had been extravagantly praised by such
masters as Scott and Campbell, who had written to Madison as late as
1815, "my publisher tells me the town will have them [his verses] and of
course have them they will," it is pathetic to see this poet, in his
hoary old age, for he lived until 1832, realizing that he had been
utterly forgotten, witnessing the triumph of the very songs that had
haunted his youth, and seeing those who had not half his native ability
crowned by those who had rejected and forgotten him. Such ever is the
penalty of being born out of due time.
The present age has also been unjust to Freneau. It has left his poems
in their first editions, which are now extremely rare and costly; it has
scattered his letters and papers to the winds; it has garbled and
distorted his life in every book of reference; it has left untold the
true story of his career; it has judged him from generalizations that
have floated from no one knows where. But time works slowly with her
verdicts; true merit in the end is sure to receive its deserts; and
Freneau may even yet be given the place that is his.
[1] Ann Maury's _Memoirs of a Huguenot_.
[2] In the possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
[3] Madison Papers, Vol. XIII. p. 9.
[4] Introduction to the 1846 edition of "Modern Chivalry."
[5] The _United States Magazine_, February number.
[6] A perfectly preserved copy is in the possession of the Historical
Society of Pennsylvania.
[7] In the possession of Miss Adele M. Sweeney, Jersey City.
[8] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, August 20, 1788.
[9] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, July 8, 1789.
[10] _American Historical Review_, January, 1898.
[11] Randall's _Life of Jefferson_, vol. ii, 78.
[12] Randall's _Life of Thomas Jefferson_, ii, 81.
[13] _Writings of Jefferson_, i, 231.
[14] _Writings of Jefferson_, i, 251.
[15] Wallace Papers, vol. i. Pa. Hist. Soc.
[16] Madison Papers, vol. xxi, p. 70.
[17] In the possession of Adele M. Sweeney.
[18] In the possession of Mrs. Helen K. Vreeland.
[19] Madison Papers, xxxiv, p. 77.
[20] Madison Papers, vol. xxxv, p. 17.
[21] Morer. Horace, _Epistles_, Lib. ii, lines 1-4.
[22] Jefferson Papers, series 2, vol. 34, p. 135.
[23] Jefferson Papers, series 2, vol. 34, p. 134.
[24] Madison Papers, vol. liv, p. 49.
[25] Madison Papers, vol. liv, p. 49.
[26] Madison Papers, vol. lv, p. 5.
[27] Madison Papers, vol. lv, p. 77.
[28] Contributed to Duyckinck's _Cyclopædia of American Literature_.
* * * * *
PART I
EARLY POEMS
1768--1775
THE
POEMS OF PHILIP FRENEAU
THE HISTORY OF THE PROPHET JONAH[29]
Versified (or rather paraphrased) from the sacred writings.
CANTO I.
In ages past, when smit with warmth sublime,
Their bards foretold the dark events of time,
And piercing forward through the mystic shade,
Kings yet to come, and chiefs unborn survey'd,
Amittai's son perceiv'd, among the rest,
The mighty flame usurp his labouring breast:--
For this, in dreams, the voice unerring came
Of Him, who lives through every age the same:
"Arise! and o'er the intervening waste,
"To Nineveh's imperial turrets haste;
"That mighty town to ruin I decree,
"Proclaim destruction, and proclaim from me:
"Too long it stands, to God and man a foe,
"Without one virtue left to shield the blow;
"Guilt, black as night, their speedy ruin brings,
"And hottest vengeance from the King of Kings."
The prophet heard--but dared to disobey,
(Weak as he was) and fled a different way;
In Joppa's port a trading ship he found
Far o'er the main to distant Tarshish bound:
The price of passage to her chief he paid,
And there conceal'd with wandering sailors stay'd,
His purpose fixt, at once perverse and blind,
To leave his country, and his God behind.
But He who spread the ocean's vast expanse,
And views all nature with a single glance,
Forth from its prison bade the tempest fly--
The tempest swell'd the ocean to the sky;
The trembling barque, as the fierce billow knocks,
Scarce bears the fury of repeated shocks;
Her crew distrest, astonish'd and afraid,
Each to his various god in anguish pray'd,
Nor trust alone to penitence and prayer,
They clear the decks, and for the worst prepare,
The costly lading to the deep they throw,
That lighter o'er the billows she may go,
Nor with regret the wealthy cargo spared,
For wealth is nothing when with life compared.
But to the ship's remotest chambers fled
There pensive Jonah droop'd his languid head,
And, new to all the dangers of the deep,
Had sunk, dejected, in the arms of sleep--
'Twas then the master broke the prophet's rest,
And thus exclaim'd, and smote his frantic breast--
"O sleeper, from thy stupid slumbers rise,
"At such an hour can sleep invade thine eyes?--
"If ever thou to heaven didst send a prayer,
"Now send thy warmest supplications there,
"Perhaps thy God may pity our distress,
"And save us, foundering in this dark abyss."
Thus warn'd, the seer his vows repentant paid--
Meantime, the seamen to their fellows said:
"No common waves our shatter'd vessel rend,
"There must be one for whom these storms impend,
"Some wretch we bear, for whom these billows rise,
"Foe to the gods, and hated by the skies;
"Come, since the billows all our arts defy,
"Come, let the lot decide for whom we die."
Instant the lots amidst the vase they threw,
And the markt lot dejected Jonah drew!
Then thus their chief the guilty man address'd,
"Say, for what crime of thine are we distrest?
"What is thy country, what thy calling, say,
"Whence dost thou come, what potentate obey?
"Unfold it all, nor be the truth deny'd."--
The master spoke, and Jonah thus reply'd:
"A Hebrew I, from neighbouring regions came,
"A Jewish prophet, of no vulgar fame:
"That God I fear who spread this raging sea,
"Who fixt the shores by his supreme decree,
"And reigns throughout immeasurable space,
"His footstool earth, the heaven his dwelling place.
"But I, regardless of his high command,
"His mandate slighting, fled my native land,
"Fool that I was, from Joppa's port to fly,
"Who thought to shun his all-pervading eye!
"For this the tempest rends each tatter'd sail,
"For this your vessel scarce supports the gale!"
The seamen heard, distracted and dismay'd;
When thus again their trembling pilot said:
"How couldst thou thus, ungenerous as thou art,
"Affront thy patron, and with us depart?--
"Lo! for thy crimes, and not our own, we die;
"Mark, how the wild waves threaten from on high,
"Our sails in fragments flit before the blast,
"Scarce to its station we confine the mast;
"What shall we do, unhappy man, declare,
"How shall we act, or how direct our prayer,
"That angry Neptune may his rage restrain,
"And hush once more these tumults of the main?"
The seer reply'd, "The means are in your power
"To still the tempest in this dreadful hour:--
"High on the sea-beat prow will I ascend,
"And let the boldest of your crew attend
"To plunge me headlong from that giddy steep
"Down to the bosom of the unfathom'd deep;
"So shall the ocean from its raging cease,
"And the fierce tempest soon be hush'd to peace:--
"'Tis for my crimes this angry ocean raves,
"'Tis for my sin we plough these fearful waves;
"Dislodge me soon--the storm shall then decay,
"Which still grows louder while on board I stay."
Thus he--but they, to save their vagrant guest,
Refus'd as yet to grant his strange request,
And though aloft on mountain waves they ride,
And the tost galley reels from side to side,
Yet to their breasts they drew the sweepy oar,
And vainly strove to gain the distant shore:
The ruffian winds refuse that wish'd retreat,
And fiercer o'er the decks the billows beat.
Then to the skies the chief his prayer addrest,
"Thou Jove supreme, the greatest and the best!
"Because thy sovereign pleasure doth require
"That death alone must satisfy thine ire,
"O spare us for thy dying prophet's sake,
"Nor let us perish for the life we take;
"If we are wrong, his lot was thy decree,
"And thou hast done as it seem'd best to thee."
Then from the summit of the washy prow,
They plunged the prophet to the depths below,
And straight the winds, and straight the billows cease,
And every threatening surge lay hush'd in peace;
The trembling crew adore the Power Supreme
Who kindly thus from ruin rescued them;
Their vows they send to his imperial throne,
And victims offer to this God unknown.