USA > New Jersey > Monmouth County > Old times in old Monmouth > Part 20
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From one sketch of Freneau's we ex- tract the following :
OUTLINE OF HIS LIFE.
Philip Freneau, the popular poet of the days of the Revolution, who cheered the hearts of the citizens by his ready rhymes in behalf of the good cause, and opposition to its foes, while patriots were struggling for independence, was born in Frankfort street, in New York city, January 2nd, 1752. The family was of French Hugenot des- cent. Pierre Freneau the father of Philip and of Peter Freneau, distinguished in the history of South Carolina, bought an es- tate of a thousand acres at Mount Pleas- ant, Monmouth county, New Jersey, a fam- ily inheritance which his son afterwards occupied, and where he wrote many of his poems. Both the father and grandfather of Philip Freneau are buried in a vault in Trinity Churchyard, New York, by the side of their family relations.
Of the boyhood of Philip Freneau we know little, but we may infer from the po- sition of his family and his subsequent at tainments, that he was well instructed at the schools of the city, for we find him, in 1767, a student at Princeton College, N. J., where he graduated with credit after the usual four years course, in 1771. He be- gan early the practice of versification ; for in his sophomore year, at the age of seven- teen, he composed a rhymed poem of de- cided promise, entitled "The Poetical His- tory of the Prophet Jonah," which appears at the head of his first general collection of poems. Other compositions in various metres, on classical and historical themes. preserved in the same volume, were writ- ten during his collegiate course.
It was a creditable year for the institu- tion when he graduated, for in his class were James Madison, afterwards President, and other men ot note.
The commencement exercises at Prince- ton, in 1771 were of unusual interest. It was in the Presidency of that eminent pa- triot John Witherspoon, who, though born in Scotland, was proving himself, by his enlightened sagacity and devotion to free- dom, an " American of the Americans." The political independence of the country, though not yet formally proclaimed, was ripening in Massachusetts and elsewhere, to its great declaration and invincible re- solve. The young patriots of "Princeton, on a spor destined to become memorable in the struggle, were already animated by the kindling promise of the future. Hugh
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Henry Brackenridge, a graduate with Fre- neau, afterwards a celebrated Judge and author, and Freneau, had already developed a taste for poetry, and they united, for their commencement exercise, in the com- position of a dialogue : " A Poem on the Rising Glory of America," which they pro- nounced together, sounding in animated blank verse, the achievements of coloniza- tion in the past and the visionary grandeur of empire hereafter. This joint poem was published in Philadelphia, in 1772. The portion written by Fieneau opens the col- lection of his poems published in 1865 by W. J. Middleton, New York.
The next information we have of Fre- neau is gathered from the dates of the poems which he contributed to the jour- nals published by Hugh Gaine and Ander- son, in New York, in 1775. They exhibit his interest in the important military af- fairs of the year in Boston and are found in the work above named.
In a poem of this year, " Mac Sniggen," a satire on some hostile poetaster, he ex- presses a desire to cross the Atlantic :
" Long have I sat on this disast'rous 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 ;"
An inclination for foreign travel, which was gratified in 1776, by a voyage to the West Indies, where he appears to have re- mained some time in a mercantile capaci- ty, visiting Jamaica and the Danish island of Santa Cruz. Several of his most strik- ing poems, as the " House of Night," and the " Beauties of Santa Cruz," were writ- ten on these visits.
In 1779, Freneau was engaged as a lead- ing contributor to "The United States Magazine : A Repository of History, Poli- tics and Literature," edited by his college friend and fellow patriot, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, and published by Francis Bailey, Philadelphia. It was issued month- ly from January to December, when its discontinuance was announced "until an established peace and a fixed value of the money shall render it convenient or pos- sible to take it up again." The volume forms a most interesting memorial, in its literary as well as historical matter, of this important year of the war. Freneau wrote much for it in prose and verse and with equal spirit in both.
His poem on " Santa Cruz," in this mag- azine, is prefaced by an interesting prose pescription of the island. In it occurs al
noticeable testimony of the author on the subject of negro slavery.
Freneau has also recorded his detesta- tion of the cruelties of West India slavery in verse, in the poem, a terrific picture of slave life, addressed " To Sir Toby, a sugar planter in the interior parts of Jamaica :"
" If there exists a HELL-the case is clear- Sir Toby's slaves enjoy that portion here."
In another poem "On the Emigration to America, and Peopling the Western Country," published in his volume of 1795, Freneau comes nearer home, in the decla- ration of his opinions on this subject, when he writes : -
" O eome the time and haste the day, When man shall man no longer crush,
When reason shall enforce her sway, Nor these fair regions raise our blush, Where still the African complains, And mourns his yet unbroken chains."
In after life, when the poet himself, un- der the mild system of Northern servitude, became the owner of slaves in New Jersey, he uniformly treated them with kindness, manumitted them in advance of the Eman- cipation Act in the State, and supported on the farm those of them who were not able to take care of themselves. One of these, a veteran mammy, proud of having opened the door in her day to General Washington and been addressed by him in a word or two on that important occa sion, long survived the poet.
In the year following the publication of the Magazine, Freneau, having embarked as passenger in a merchant vessel from Philadelphia, on another voyage to the West Indies, was captured by a British cruiser off the Capes of the Delaware and carried with the prize to New York. There he was confined, on his arrival, in the Scor- pion, one of the hulks lying in the harbor used as prison-ships. The cruel treatment which he experienced on board, with the aggravated horrors of foul air and other privations, speedily threw him into a fever, when he was transferred to the hospital ship, Hunter, which proved simply an ex- change of one species of suffering for anoth- er more aggravated. How long Freneau was confined in this hideous prison we are not informed, nor by what influences he gained his discharge. He carried with him. however, on his escape, a burning memory of the severities and indignities he had en- dured, which he gave expression to in one of the most characteristic of his poetical productions, "The British Prison Ship,"
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which was published by Francis Bailey, { quently visited in the course of his mer- Philadelphia, 1781.
Freneau now became a frequent contrib- utor of patriotic odes and occasional poems, celebrating the incidents of the war, to " The Freeman's Journal " of Philadelphia. Literature was, however, not then a profit- able occupation ; and Government, which had exhausted its resources in keeping an army in the field, had scant opportunity of rewarding its champions. The poet, looking to other means of subsistence, re- turned to his seafaring and mercantile hab its and became known by his voyages to the West Indies as "Captain Freneau." He still however, kept up the use of the pen. In 1783, besides his poetical contrib- utions to the newspapers, including several New Years Addresses, written for the car- riers of the Philadelphiajournals, a species of rhyming for which he had great facility. we find him publishing in that city a trans- lation of the travels of M. Abbe Robin, the chaplain of Count Rochambeau, giving an account of the progress of the French ar my from Newport to Yorktown. In 1784 Freneau was at the island of Jamaica, writ- ing a poetical description of Port Royal.
The first collection of his poetical writ- ings which he made, entitled " The Poems of Philip Freneau, written chiefly during the late War," was published by Francis Bailey "at Yorrick's Head, in Market street, " Philadelphia, in 1786. It is pre- faced by a brief " Advertisement " signed by the publisher, in which he states the pieces now collected had been lett in his hands by the author more than a year pre- viously, with permission to publish them whenever he thought proper.
The success of this volume led to the publication, by Mr. Bailey. of another col- lection of Freneau's writings in 1788. It is entitled "The Miscellaneous Works of Mr. Philip Freneau, containing his Essays and Additional Poems." This volume, as not uncommon even with works of very limited extent in that early period of the nation, was published by subscription. Among the subscribers were De Witt Clin- ton, Edward Livingston and other distin- guished citizens of New York ; Matthew Carey, David Rittenhouse, John Parke A. M., and others of Philadelphia ; thirty cop- ies were taken in Maryland; but the larg- est number was contributed by South Car- olina, that State supplying two hundred and fifty, or more than half the entire list. Captain Freneau was well known and high- ly appreciated at Charieston, which he tre-
cantileadventures to the West Indies, and where his younger brother, Peter, who sub- sequently edited a political journal in that city, and was in intimate correspondence with President Jefferson, was already es- tablished as an influential citizen.
After several years spent in voyaging, we find Freneau again in active literary employment in 1791, as editor of the " Dai- ly Advertiser," a journal printed in New York, the superintendence of which he presently exchanged for that of the " Na- tional Gazette," at Philadelphia, the first number of which appeared under his direc- tion in October of the same year. He was employed at the same time by Jefferson, the Secretary of State,-the seat of govern- ment being then at Philadelphia,-as translating clerk in the State Department, with a salary of two hundred and fifty dol- lars a year. It was a time of fierce politi- cal excitement, when the newly framed Constitution, not yet fully established in its working, was exposed to the fierce crit- icism of its adversaries ; while popular opin- ion was greatly excited by the rising tu- mult of ideas generated in the French Rev- olution. In this strife of parties Freneau was an active partisan of the new French ideas, was a supporter of Genet, the minis- ter who sought to entangle the country in the great European struggle, and, as might be expected, was an unsparing assailant of the policy of Washington, whose character he had heretofore eulogized. Washington was annoyed, and Hamilton attacked Jef- ferson for his official support of the troub- lesome editor. Jefferson replied that he had befriended Freneau as a man of gen- ius ; but that he had never written for his paper. It is unquestionably true, however, that Freneau's political writings, at this time, had Jefferson's warmest sympathy.
The "Gazette " came to an end with its second volume and second year, in 1793, after which Freneau became a resident of New Jersey. He had still, however, an in- clination to editorial life, and we accord ingly find him, in the spring of 1795, pub- lishing at Mount Pleasant, near Middle- town Point, a new journal entitled " The Jersey Chronicle," before alluded to.
The same year from his press at Mount Pleasant lie "issued a volume of his poems entitled " Poems, written between the years 1768 and 1794, by Philip Freneau, of New Jersey." There are other editions of his poems. but this one is so rare that it is highly prized by antiquarians. In a late
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catalogue of a London bookseller it is ad vertised for sale, price £ 3.10 s. The last copy we have heard of for sale in this coun- try was one in a Washington antiquarian bookstore for which the dealer asked some forty odd dollars, and finally got down to thirty-five, for a small octavo volume of 456 pages !
In 1797 he edited and aided in printing and publishing in New York, a miscellane- ous periodical entitled "The Time Piece and Literary Companion." It was printed in quarto form and appeared three times a week. In 1799 he published in Philadel- phia a thin octavo volume of " Letters on various subjects, de .. " under the nom de plume of " Robert Slender, A M."
For some years after this we have no par- ticular account of his occupation, but he appears to have resided still in New Jer- sey, penning occasional verses on topics suggested by the day. In 1809 he published the fourth collection of his writings enti. tled " Poems published during the Ameri- can Revolution," &c.
( Remainder of the article on Freneau next week. )
Freneau lived to commemorate the in- dents of the second war with Great Britain in 1812. He wrote various poems celebra ting the naval actions of Hull, Porter, Macdonough and others. His traditionary hatred of England survives in these and other compositions which he puolished in New York. in 1815, in two small volumes entitled " A Collection of Poems on Ameri- can Affairs and a variety of other subjects. &c." A distinguished writer says in re- viewing this volume: " He depicts land battles and naval fights with much anima- tion and gay coloring ; and being himself an old sun of Neptune, he is never at a loss for appropriate circumstance and ex- pressive diction, when the scene lies at sea."
After witnessing and chronicling in his verse the conflicts of two wars, Freneau had yet many years of life before him .- They were mostly passed in rural retire ment at Mount Pleasant. He occasionally visited New York, keeping up acquaint- ance with the leaders of the Democratic party. H.s appearance and conservation at this time has been graphically described by the late Dr. John W. Francis, in whom the genius and history of Freneau excited the warmest interest, and which was pub lished in the "Cyclopedia of American Literature."
" I had, says Dr. Francis, when very young, read the poetry of Freneau, and as we instinctively became attached to the writers who first captivate our imagina- tions, it was with much zest that I formed a personal acquaintaince with the Revolu- tionary bard. He was at that time about seventy-six years old, when he first intro- duced himself to me in my library. I gave him an earnest welcome. He was some- what below the ordinary height ; in per- son thin yet muscular; with a firm step though a little inclined to stoop ; his coun- tenance 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 gray, occupying a socket deeper than common ; his hair must have once been beautiful ; it was now thinned and of an iron gray. He was free of all ambitious displays ; his habitual expression was pensive. Ilis 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 com- mand types and a printing press, when an incident of moment in the Revolution oc- curred, 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 Hudilras, would command a commentator like Grey. 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 painters art and would brook no " counterfeit present- ment." ( Cyclopedia of Amer. Lit.)
The aversion of Freneau to sitting for his portrait, noticed by Dr. Frrncis, was one of his peculiarities, for which it is not easy to suggest a sufficient explanation. As an author he was careful of the preser- vation of his fame. Certainly the cause was not to be found in any unfavorable impression his likeness might create, for he was, as accurately described by Dr. Francis, of an interesting appearance in
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rge. In youth 'he was regarded as hand- some. His brother Peter was renowned in South Carolina for his personal beauty. But whatever the motive, Freneau reso- lutely declined to have his portrait painted. He was once waited upon by the artist, Rembrandt Peale, with a request for this purpose, by a body of gentlemen in Phila- delphia ; but be was inexorable on the sub- ject. On another occasion, the elder Jar. vis, with a view of securing his likeness, was smuggled into a co' ner of the room at a dinner party at Dr. Hosack's, to which the poet had been invited ; but the latter detected the design and arrested its ac- complishment. In late years, the neglect has been in a measure repaired. The por- trait prefixed to the volume of his " poems with a memoir by Evert A. Duyckinck," published in 1865, was sketched by an ar- tist, at the suggestion and dictates of sev- eral members of the poet's family, who re- tained the most vivid recollection of his personal appearance. It was pronounced by them a fair representation of the man in the maturity of his physical powers, previous to the inroads of old age. His daughter, Mrs. Leadbeater, and his grand- son and adopted son, Mr. Philip L. Fre- neau, of New York, were among those who pronounced it a satisfactory likeness.
The poems of Philip Freneau, if we may be allowed here to repeat an estimate of his powers from a sketch written some years ago, represent his times, the war of wit and verse no less than of sword and stratagem of the Revolution ; and he su- peradds to this material a humorous, home- ly simplicity, peculiarly his own, in which he paints the life of village rustics, with their local manners fresh about them ; of days when tavern delights were to be free- ly spoken of, before temperance societies and Maine laws were thought of; when men went to prison at the summons of in- exorable creditors, and when Connecticut deacons rushed out of meeting to arrest and waylay the passing Sunday traveller. When these humors of the day were ex- hausted, and the impulses of patriotism were gratified in sung ; when he had paid his respects to Rivington and Hugh Gaine, he solaced himself with remoter themes ; in the version of an ode of Horace, a vis- ionary meditation on the antiquities of America or a sentimental effusion on the lives of Sapplio. These show the fine tact and delicate handling of Freneau, who de serves much more consideration in this re- spect from critics than he has received. A
writer from whom the fastidious Campbell in his best day thought it worth while to borrow an entire line, is worth looking in- to. It is from Freneau's Indian Burying Ground, the last image of that fine vision- ary stanza :
" By midnight moons, o'er mnoistening dews, In vestments for the ehase arrayed,
The hunter still the deer pursues, The hunter and the deer-a shade."
Campbell has given the line a rich set- ting in the lovelorn fantasy of O'Conor's Child :
" Bright as the bow that spans he tstorm In Erin's yellow vesture elad,
A son of light-a lovely form, Ile eomes and makes her glad ;
Now on the grass green turf he sits,
His tassell'd horn beside him laid,
Now o'er the hills in ehase he flits The hunter and the deer a shade."
There is also a line of Sir Walter Scott which has its prototype in Freneau. In the introduction to the third cants of Mar- mion, in the apostrophe to the Duke of Brunswick, we read-
" Lamented chief !- not thine the power To save in that presumptuous hour, When Prussia hurried to the field, And snatched the spear but left the shield."
In Freneau's poem on the heroes of Eu- taw, we have this stanza :
" They saw their injured country's woe; The flaming town, the wasted fietd ;
Then rushed to meet the insulting foe
They took the spear-but lett the shield."
An anecdote which the late Henry Bre- voort was accustomed to relate of his visit to Scott, affords assurance that the poet was really indebted to Freneau, and that. he would not on a proper occasion, have hesitated to acknowledge the obligation. Mr. Brevoort was asked by Scott respect- ing the authorship of certain verses in the battle of Eutaw, which he had seen in a magazine, and had by heart, and which he knew were American. He was told that they were by Freneau, when he remarked " The poem is as fine a thing as there is of the kind in the language." Scott also praised one of the Indian poems.
We might add to these instances that in 1790 Freneau, in his poetical correspond- ence between Nanny, the Philadelphia Housekeeper, and Nabby her friend, in New York, upon the subject of the removal of Congress to the former city, hit upon some of the peculiar pleasantry of Moore's Epis- tles in verse, of the present century.
" Freneau surprises us often by his neat- ness of execution and skill in versification.
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He handles a triple-rhymed stanza in the octo syllabic measure particularly well. His appreciation of nature is tender and sym- pathetic,-one of the pure springs which fed the more boisterous current of his hu- mor when he came out among men, to deal with quackery, pretence and injustice. But what is, perhaps, most worthy of notice in Freneau is his originality, the instinct with which his genius marked out a path for it- self, in those days when most writers were languidly leaning upon the old foreign school of Pope and Darwin. He was not afraid of home things and incidents. Deal- ing with facts, realites, and the life around him, wherever he was. his writings have still an interest where the vague expres- sions of other poets are forgotten. It is not to be denied, however, that Freneau was sometimes careless. He thought and wrote with improvidence. His jests are sométimes misdirected ; and his verses are unequal in execution. Yet it is not too much to predict, that, through the genu- ine nature of some of his productions and the historic incidents of others, all that he wrote will yet be called for and find favor in numerous editions"-Cyclopedia of Amer. Literature.
This prediction was ventured nearly twenty years ago. It is in a measure ful- filled, an edition of his poems having been published in 1865. the only publication of any of his poems since 1815.
FRENEAU'S FAMILY.
Philip Freneau left a family of four daughters, all of whom were living in 1865. The mother of Governor Seymour of New York ( Mary, the daughter of General Jon- athan Forman ) was a niece of Mrs. Philip Freneau, the wife of the poet. The Fre- neaus, through the second marriage of the poet's mother, are connected with the Kearney family of New Jersey. Philip Frenean married at about the age of thir- ty Miss Eleanor Forman, daughter of Sam uel Foi man, a wealthy citizen of New Jer- sey. General Jonathan Forman and De nise Forman, who were much engaged in military affairs in the State during the Rev. olution, were her brothers. David Forman also in military life was her cousin. This lady, who shared her husband's talent for poetry, corresponding with him, for several years before their marriage, in verse, was of marked character ahd intelligence. She was devotedly attached to the Episcopal Church, which the family attended, having left the French Church in the lifetime of
the poet's father. Mrs. Freneau survived her husband many years, retaining in her latter days much of the most interesting memories of the days of the Revolution.
The remains of Mrs. Freneau repose. with those of her husband, in the family burial ground at Mount Pleasant, N. J. A monument to the poet's memory, within a few years has been erected on the spot.
Freneau lived nearly to the completion of his eightieth year. He lost his life, De cember 18th, 1833, " by exposure and cold while going on foot in the night during a snow storm to his residence near Free- hold."
The Monmouth Inquirer thus announced his death :
" Mr. Freneau was in the village and started, toward evening, to go home, about two miles. In attempting to go across he appears to have got lost and mired in a bog meadow, where his lifeless corpse was discovered yesterday morning. Captain Freneau was a staunch 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."
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