country in which we live." The paper is dated "Mount-Pleasant, near Middletown Point:-printed by P. Freneau-by whom Advertisements, Hand Bills, &c., are done at the shortest notice, and on the most reasonable terms." With the third number it grew in dimensions, and extended to a third column in width. To the foreign affairs and "American advices" were added the essays entitled Tomo Cheeki and an occasional poem-the Republican Genius of Europe, the Rival Suitors for America. Apropos to the national anniversary of 1795 at Monmouth, he publishes one of the English songs of the day, this

HYMN TO LIBERTY.

God save the rights of man!
Give us a heart to scan
Blessings so dear:

Let them be spread around
Wherever man is found,
And with a welcome sound
Ravish each ear.

See, from the universe
Darkness and clouds disperse,
Mankind awake;
Reason and truth appear,
Freedom advances near,
Monarchs, with terror, hear-
See how they quake.
Long have we felt the stroke,
Long have we bore the yoke,
Sluggish and tame:
But now the lion roars
And a loud note he pours,
Spreading to distant shores
Liberty's fame.

Godlike and great the strife,
Life will, indeed, be life

When we prevail.
Death, in so just a cause,
Crown us with loud applause
And from tyrannic laws

Bid us-ALL HAIL!

O'er the Germanic powers
Big indignation lours

Ready to fall

Let the rude savage host
Of their long numbers boast,
Freedom's almighty trust

Laughs at them all!

Fame, let thy trumpet sound-
Tell all the world around

Frenchmen are free!
Tell ribbons, crowns and stars,
Kings, traitors, troops and wars,
Plans, councils, plots and jars,
America's free.

About the same time he announces the edition of his poems of 1795, which he published at the same press. With the fifty-second number at the close of the year, April 30, 1796, Freneau winds up the paper with a notice "to subscribers" stating 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 (it was published at

twelve shillings per annum) 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.

It is from some such printing-office as that which sent forth his Jersey Chronicle, that we may fancy Freneau inditing his poem of the Country Printer, a purely American description of the village and associations of the place: the arrival of the old-time coach, the odd farrago of the editor's page, the office itself:—

Here lie the types, in curious order rang'd,
Ready alike to imprint your prose or verse;
Ready to speak, their order only chang'd,
Creek-Indian lingo, Dutch or Highland Erse;
These types have printed Erskine's Gospel Treat,
Tom Durfey's songs, and Bunyan's works, complete :
and the editor himself,-with something more
than a suggestion of Philip Freneau. The change
from the State House to Saratoga in the last
stanza which we quote is a powerful thrust of
satire.

He, in his time, the patriot of his town,
With press and pen
attack'd the royal side,
Did what he could to pull their Lion down,
Clipp'd at his beard, and twitched his sacred hide,
Mimick'd his roarings, trod upon his toes,
Pelted young whelps, and tweak'd the old ones nose.
Rous'd by his page, at church or court-house read,
From depths of woods the willing rustics ran,
Now by a priest, and now some deacon led,
With clubs and spits to guard the rights of man;
Lads from the spade, the pick-axe, or the plough
Marching afar to fight Burgoyne or Howe."

Where are they now?-the Village asks with grief, What were their toils, their conquests, or their gains?

Perhaps, they near some State-House beg relief,
Perhaps, they sleep on Saratoga's plains;
Doom'd not to live, their country to reproach
For seven-years' pay transferred to Mammon's coach.

Freneau was probably at all times busy, more or less, with the newspapers. His next important venture of this kind was of a literary character at New York.

The first number of his Time-Piece and Literary Companion was issued at New York, March 13, 1797. It was printed three times a week-on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings, in a neat folio form, paged, at the price of thirty shillings, New York currency, per annum. Its editor seems to have formed a partnership in the printing business, for the purpose of its publication. "In order," he says, "to render this work the more interesting and acceptable to the public at large, in regard to neatness and elegance of mechanical execution, the subscriber informs all who have or may favor him with their names, that he has associated himself as a partner in the typographical line of business with Mr. Alexander Menut, of that profession, some time since from Canada, and who is become, and means to con

the social circles, now sleep the sleep ordained to mortality. The national ballads and songs of colonial strife, which were enriched with additional charms by the vocal displays of the very actors of those scenes, may occasionally be recognised in the Metrical Miscellany, or printed in the Songster's Museum; but the echo of applauding admirers which was consequent upon the melodist's strains is not now to be heard. Even the great Hamilton might have been joined in such a confederacy; and I have listened to Gates, of Saratoga, in similar efforts. In short our city abounded with the heroes of revolutionary fame, citizens, and natives of remote parts of the Union; add to all these the scores of old Tories, and the multitudes of the once disaffected, who had escaped the trials of the revolutionary contest by the ingenuity of self-interest, and the sagacious use of their fiscal resources, and we have at least one view of the diversified population of those incipient days of the American Republic.

"It was natural that a participator in the occurrences of those times of trial consumed in the war of Independence, who was an eye-witness to many of the hardest impositions of that eventful period; who had, moreover, borne a notable share of its sufferings, who had felt the horrors of the Jersey prison-ship, and had become intimate with that glorious band of warriors and statesmen, should desire in after times, when the fruits of peace were secured, to renew the associations of past events, recount the tale of patriotism, and find consolation in the retrospect by converse among kindred spirits.

"Philip Freneau was eminently a character who would not heedlessly let pass such opportunities, and we accordingly find him, when not engrossed with other avocations, constantly associated with those who gratified his most cherished sympathies in his often repeated visits to New York. The various editions of his poetical writings bear testimony to his continued ardor as a cultivator of the patriotic muse, and if we examine the productions of the periodical press we must be satisfied that he was comparatively indifferent to fame in his selection, as many of his best products are to be found elsewhere than in his collections. An unpretending popular weekly contains his beautiful address to the Isle of Madeira; and in his poem on the Carolinas he gives utterance to his emotions on revisiting the scenes of his earlier days with the warmth and tenderness of an enthusiast.

"It is chiefly by the several dates of his numerous productions that we are enabled to trace his diversified employments and sojourns.

As

a marine captain, he was employed for many years subsequent to the publication of his large octavo selection of 1795 until about the war of 1812.

"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 of languages 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 in

discreet 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 cha

racters.

"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. Mitchill 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. He shared Paine's visions of an ideal democracy. 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.

"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 composi

tion, 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 Frenean 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 presentment.'

Some time after the conclusion of the war of 1812, a number of Freneau's MS. poems, of which he had many, were consumed by fire, in the destruction of his house at Mount Pleasant.

That he was not indifferent to his reputation, the several collections of his writings prove, and we learn from the venerable engraver on wood, Alexander Anderson, that Freneau once applied to him to calculate the cost of an illustrated volume of the poems, which he found too great for his purse. *

Freneau died Dec. 18, 1832. The circumstances of his death were thus announced in the Monmouth (New Jersey) Inquirer :—“ 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 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."

The house which Freneau occupied at the time of his death is still standing. It is about a mile from Freehold. The house in which he lived before he came to Freehold, and the old tavern in which he and his club of friends met, are also in existence at Middletown Point.t

Alexander Anderson, who still survives in a hale old age, was born in April, 1775, near Peck Slip, in New York. He studied medicine, and received his degree of Doctor of Medicine from Columbia College, in 1796, delivering a dissertation on Chronic Mania upon the occasion. He preferred art to physic, and having already been a pupil of a universal genius" of the times, John Roberts, entered upon the business of wood-engraving. His copies of Bewick's engravings were celebrated, and for the first quarter of the present century he executed most of the better engravings then published, from the illustrations for a Bible to the cuts of a primer and spellingbook. His lights and shades were strongly marked, and he worked with precision and effect. The collection of specimens of his thousands of engravings in his scrap-books is a pleasing and curious exhibition of the resources of booksellers in the last generation. There is a notice of Anderson in Dunlap's Arts of Design, fi. p. 8, and his friend, Mr. Benson J. Lossing, has recently paid him a handsome tribute in an article in the Home Journal.

+ The tavern has lately been repaired, and is now (1854) occupied as a private dwelling by Mr. Pittman, a dentist.

To this account of Freneau, we are enabled to add a notice of his brother, who was settled in South Carolina, at Charleston, from the pen of Dr. Joseph Johnson, of that city.

"Peter Freneau was a younger brother of Captain Philip Freneau. They were natives of New Jersey; but the first of their ancestors who came to this part of the world, was called De Fresneau, and settled in Connecticut, after effecting his escape from the persecutions against the Huguenots in France. In this province De Fresneau became the proprietor of a copper mine, but being restrained by the Colonial Regulations from smelting the ore, he shipped a load of it to England, calculating on profitable returns. In these expectations he was disappointed; the vessel was captured by a French cruiser; the adventure proved a total loss, and De Fresneau was so much reduced that he could no longer work the mine. By some means not well understood, this property came into the possession of the State of Connecticut, and became the site of their Penitentiary. The excavations that had been made for copper ore served extremely well for the safe keeping of their convicts.

On

"After completing his education, Mr. Freneau came to South Carolina, and soon attracted general and favorable notice from those best qualified for judging. He was elected Secretary of State, and embraced the opportunity thus afforded for securing to himself and Francis Bremar, the Surveyor-General, grants for various tracts of land then vacant. About the year 1795, he became the editor and proprietor of the City Gazette, a daily paper advocating the Democratic opinions then prevailing in the South. He was associated with Paine, an experienced printer, who took charge of that department, and the whole work was so well conducted, that it soon secured the patronage of the state and city governments. the election of Mr. Jefferson to the Presidency, in 1801, it also obtained that of the general government.* Mr. Freneau was particularly well qualified for the office of editor to such a paper. He was indefatigable in his studies and collections of matter, his style of writing was clear, comprehensive, and decided in advancing his own opinions, but always liberal and just to those who thought otherwise. Besides a due knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, he had acquired so much of the French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian languages, as enabled him to read, select, and translate from such publications, what other papers could not procure, and rendered the circulation of his the more extensive; but he could not converse in either of those languages.

"When Mr. Paine left the concern, the paper began to decline, and Mr. Freneau unfortunately engaged in some commercial adventures, that distracted his usual attention to the office. He became involved in a variety of ways, and in 1810 sold out his whole interest in the City Gazette.

"In person Mr. Freneau was tall, but so well

In an unpublished letter addressed to Peter Frenesu, dated Washington, May 20, 1803, Jefferson incloses "a small parcel of Egyptian rice" for plantation in South Carolina, and reviews closely the state of parties, stating the policy of the administration on appointments, assigning to the federalists their proportional share of them-communicating with Fre neau in confidential terms, and looking to him for a support of the government policy.

proportioned, that it was not remarked. His features bore so strong a resemblance to those of Charles James Fox, the celebrated English statesman, that all were struck with the likeness who had ever seen Mr. Fox, or compared his likeness with Freneau.

"When Mr. Freneau parted with his interest in the City Gazette, he endeavored to arrange his intricate accounts and money concerns, but did not succeed; he was still disappointed and harassed. He then anxiously sought for retirement, and having the lease of a saw-mill and cottage at Pinckney's Ferry, he was tempted to visit them early in October, 1813, before the autumnal frosts had cleared the atmosphere of malaria. He returned in good spirits, and apparently in good health, but was attacked in a few days with the bilious remittent, resulting from malaria, and died on the fifth day of the disease, in the fiftyseventh year of his age.

"Mr. Freneau was never married, he left no relative except his brother Philip, and died insolvent."

The poems of Philip Freneau represent his times, the war of wit and verse no less than of sword and stratagem of the Revolution; and he superadds to this material a humorous, homely 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 freely spoken of, before temperance societies and Maine laws were thought of; when men went to prison at the summons of inexorable creditors, and when Connecticut deacons rushed out of meeting to arrest and waylay the passing Sunday traveller. When these humors of the day were exhausted, and the impulses of patriotism were gratified in song, when he had paid his respects to Rivington and Hugh Gaine, he solaced

*

We have seen his treatment of Rivington (ante, pp. 282, 8). He frequently employed his pen with Hugh Gaine's humors and tergiversations. Hugh Gaine, a native of Ireland, commenced the printing business in New York in 1750. In 1752 he started a newspaper, The New York Mercury, which appeared every Monday. He soon after opened a book-store, with the sign of the Bible and Crown, in Hanover square, which remained in his hands for forty years-the crown, of course, disappearing after the Revolution. On the approach of the British in 1776, he removed his press to Newark, but soon after returned to the city. His paper was discontinued on the departure of the British. He received permission, on application to the legislature, to remain in New York, where he continued until his death. April 25, 1807, at the age of eighty-one. Dr. Francis, in his paper on Christopher Colles, tells a story of Freneau meeting Gaine at his book-store:-"While on one of his visits at Gaine's, a customer saluted him loudly by name, the sound of which arrested the attention of the old Royalist, who, lifting up his eyes, interrogated him-Is your name Freneau ?* 'Yes answered the Republican poet. Philip Freneau ?' rejoined Gaine. 'Yes, sir; the same.' Then, sir,' warmly uttered Gaine, you are a very clever fellow. Let me have the pleasure of taking you by the hand. Will you walk round the corner and join me in our parlor? We will take a glass of wine together. You, sir, have given me and my paper a wide and lasting reputation."" There is a good story of Gaine which we have never seen in print, showing his distaste for Frenchmen, and the manner in which he was confounded with a barber. On one occasion, when there was a French frigate in the harbor of New York, Huggins, the barber, whose poetical advertisements contributed largely to the small humors of his day, visited the vessel, and on taking leave, politely left his card with the officers, hoping for the honor of a visit, &c. These gentlemen one day landed, and making inquiry for Monsieur Hu-ganes as they pronounced the name-were directed to the old anti-Gallic bookseller, who turned the tables upon them by a reference to barber Huggins. Hugh Gaine was a pattern of old Dutch steadiness, and would never give a note in payment. A wager was once made that a note of hand would be got from him,and gained by a very low offer of goods on the condition of a

himself with higher themes, in the version of an ode of Horace, a visionary meditation on the antiquities of America, or a sentimental effusion on the loves of Sappho. These show the fine tact and delicate handling of Freneau, who deserves much more consideration in this respect from critics than he has ever received. A writer from whom the fastidious Campbell, in his best day, thought it worth while to borrow an entire line, is worth looking into. It is from his Indian Burying Ground, the last image of that fine visionary

stanza:

By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews,
In vestments for the chase array'd,
The hunter still the deer pursues,
The hunter and the deer-a shade.
Campbell has given the line a rich setting in the
"lovelorn fantasy" of O'Conor's Child:-

Bright as the bow that spans the storm,
In Erin's yellow vesture clad,
A son of light-a lovely form,

He comes and makes her glad;
Now on the grass-green turf he sits,

His tassel'd horn beside him laid;
Now o'er the hills in chace 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 canto of Marmion, 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 snatch'd the spear but left the shield.
In Freneau's poem on the heroes of Eutaw, we
have this stanza :-

They saw their injur'd country's woe;
The flaming town, the wasted field;
Then rushed to meet the insulting foe;

They took the spear-but left the shield.

An anecdote, which the late Henry Brevoort 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 it. Mr. Brevoort was asked by Scott respecting the authorship of certain verses on 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 correspondence between Nanny the Philadelphia House-Keeper, and Nabby her friend in New York, upon the subject of the removal of Congress to the former city, had hit upon some of the peculiar pleasantry of Moore's Epistles in verse of the present century.

Freneau surprises us often by his neatness of

note in payment; but the holder was knocked up after bedtime by a visit from Hugh Gaine. He had brought the cash with him and must have the note. He had never given one before in his life, he said, and could not sleep with it on his mind.