career, from the
depressing indifference of his public to the true spirit of poetry.
"An old college mate of mine," said James Madison--who was by tradition
Freneau's roommate at Princeton in the class of 1771--"a poet and man
of literary and refined tastes, knowing nothing of the world." When
but three years out of college, the cautious Madison wrote to another
friend: "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." Madison was then at the ripe age of
twenty-three! Professor Pattee, Freneau's editor, quotes these words to
illustrate the "common sense" atmosphere of the age which proved fatal
to Freneau's development. Yet the sturdy young New Yorker, of Huguenot
descent, is a charming figure, and his later malevolence was shown only
to his political foes. After leaving Princeton he tries teaching,
the law, the newspaper, the sea; he is aflame with patriotic zeal; he
writes, like most American poets, far too much for his own reputation.
As the editor of the "National Gazette" in Philadelphia, he becomes
involved in the bitter quarrel between his chief, Jefferson, and
Alexander Hamilton. His attachment to the cause of the French Revolution
makes him publish baseless attacks upon Washington. By and by he retires
to a New Jersey farm, still toying with journalism, still composing
verses. He turns patriotic poet once more in the War of 1812; but the
public has now forgotten him. He lives on in poverty and seclusion,
and in his eightieth year loses his way in a snowstorm and perishes
miserably--this in 1832, the year of the death of the great Sir Walter
Scott, who once had complimented Freneau by borrowing one of his best
lines of poetry.

It is in the orations and pamphlets and state papers inspired by the
Revolutionary agitation that we find the most satisfactory expression
of the thought and feeling of that generation. Its typical literature is
civic rather than aesthetic, a sort of writing which has been incidental
to the accomplishing of some political, social, or moral purpose,
and which scarcely regards itself as literature at all. James Otis's
argument against the Writs of Assistance in Massachusetts in 1761, and
Patrick Henry's speech in the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1765, mark
epochs in the emotional life of these communities.