surance 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 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 (Scott) 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.

"Freneau surprises us often by his neatness of execution and skill in versification. He handles a triplerhymed stanza in the octosyllabic measure particularly well. His appreciation of nature is tender and sympathetic, one of the pure springs which fed the more boisterous current of his humour 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 itself in those days when most writers were languidly leaning upon the old foreign school of Pope and Dryden. He was not afraid of home things and incidents. Dealing with facts and realities, and the life around him, wherever he was, his writings have still an interest where the vague expressions 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 sometimes misdirected; and his verses are unequal in execution. Yet it is not too much to predict that, through the genuine nature of some of his productions, and the historic incidents of others, all that he wrote will yet be called for, and find favour in numerous editions." 1

"Freneau's originality was very marked. He fol

1 Cyclopædia of American Literature. The remainder of this chapter is taken from Mr. Edward Delancey's address to the Huguenot Society.

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lowed not in the steps of Dryden, nor any other of the poets of the Augustan age; nor, like his contemporaries Trumbull and Barlow, in those of Young and Pope. Not only did he not follow classic example, but he struck out a style of his own. Free, clear, and expressive, he cast aside the trammels of the stately verse in which his predecessors and contemporaries delighted, and wrote just as he seems to have felt, and in whatever way he deemed most appropriate to his subject. Although careless in his rhymes at times, he was, nevertheless, always effective.

"So long was his life that he wrote some of his finest poems after the advent of that brilliant galaxy of poets who burst forth in the early part of this nineteenth century. But not a trace of Moore, Southey, Campbell, Rogers, Scott, Wordsworth, or Byron, is to be found in the last two small volumes of his poems which he gave to the world in 1815.

"Freneau's prose writings were of two kinds: brief essays on many subjects, after the manner of the Spectator and the Tatler; and travels and reports of an imaginary character, related and made to their kings by an inhabitant of Otaheite and a Creek Indian, after their return from civilized lands, after the example of Voltaire. To these may be added his political disquisitions and translations from French historical writers. The best of the former were written over the pen-name of Robert Slender.' All are pleasing, witty, humorous, easy and agreeable, and show great and close power of observation. His political writings, action, and opinions are a most interesting theme, but they would require a full essay to be adequately presented. The ardor of his nature and the firmness of his opinions, with the vigor and terseness of his style, made him an adversary to be feared.

"During the period of his sea life is to be ascribed

some of his finest and most perfect descriptions of nature, especially of nature in the tropics. Two poems, one styled The Beauties of Santa Cruz,' and the other descriptive of the shores of Carolina and Charleston, are instinct with true poetic fire. His versified translations from the Latin show how well his college days were spent, and how late in life he kept up his classic studies. No finer rendition of the fifteenth ode of the first book of Horace, Nereus's prophecy of the destruction of Troy, than Freneau's exists; while his translation of Gray's famous 'Ode written at the Grande Chartreuse,' is as striking and beautiful as the original itself.

"Freneau's poetry may be considered in three classes, -war lyrics and satires; poems on general subjects and descriptions of nature; and translations from the classic poets and those of Italy and France; with a few which do not strictly fall under either of these heads. They vary greatly in style and finish, some wanting much of the latter quality. Freneau was naturally impulsive, inclined to indolence, and often careless; and his verse sometimes reflects his moods. He seems to have written just as the incident or event happened which formed his theme, or as the idea he expressed occurred to him. Like many men of active intellect and quick perceptions, he lacked application. Content to write for the hour, and satisfied if the effect or object aimed at was secured, he little regarded the future of the children of his brain. Hence he has left us no great narrative poem and no epic.

"His verse is wonderful for its ease, simplicity, humor, great command of language, and delicacy of handling. Except Dryden and Byron no poet of America or England has shown himself a greater master of English or of rhyme. The luxuriance of his stanzas is something amazing. Only to the tem

porary nature of the subjects of most of his verse, especially of his satires, can be ascribed the desuetude into which his poems have fallen. In vigor, sentiment, playfulness, and humor, many of them cannot be surpassed, and their beauties of form and expression are as great now as when they were first given to the world.

"But Freneau possessed other and deeper poetic gifts. We have all wondered at and admired the poems of that strange son of genius of our day, the late Edgar Allan Poe. Yet the strange power of that extraordinary man existed also in the earlier poet. His House of Night-a Vision' prefigured the wondrous conceptions of the author of 'The Raven.' Though not at all alike, there is in the supernatural weirdness of each a similarity. Freneau's dreamer, wandering at midnight in a dark wood, comes upon a noble dome. Entering and ascending, he hears 'a hollow voice of loud lament' from out a vaulted chamber, which proves to be that of Death personified in human form, stretched on his dying bed. He is attended by the castle's lord, who has just suffered a heavy affliction; and who, in obedience to the divine precept,' If thine enemy hunger feed him, if he thirst give him drink,' tries to assuage his sufferings, but at the same time tells him that his end is inevitable. Death gives him certain directions, orders his own burial, and dies in the greatest agony. Then follows a most vivid description of the burial. The vision ends; the dreamer awakes, and the poem closes with some reflections on Death.

Another, and very different gift which Freneau possessed in an extraordinary degree was his power of invective. In this, some of his satires rival the Absalom and Achitophel,' and 'English Bards and Scotch Reviewers' in vigor, as well as in the torrentlike flow of the verse. Listen to these lines upon an

opponent who had attacked him in abusive rhyme, and whom, under an odd name, he has immortalized :

"Hail, great Mac Swiggen,'" etc.

As Mac Swiggen has already been served up to our readers we will spare them the remainder of the quotation.

"This is certainly equal to Dryden," that is, Mac Swiggen's eulogy, not our digression,- "yet Freneau wrote it when only twenty-three."

In speaking of another of Freneau's early poems, one written at the age of eighteen while at Nassau Hall, and which we have mentioned in his college life, this author, after quoting several portions of it,

says:

"Is not this true poetry? Is it not extraordinary as the work of a youth of eighteen years? But one other American poet ever wrote anything to compare with it so early in life. Bryant wrote at nineteen his Thanatopsis,' and never later did he surpass that poem, although it contains but eightyone lines.

Totally dissimilar as these two poets were, in almost every characteristic, physical and mental, Freneau being as warm as Bryant was cold, there was yet a singular parallelism in their literary careers. Both were educated men, both college graduates, Freneau of Princeton, Bryant of Williams; both wrote as mere youths, and wrote then as men of twice their ages might be proud to write. Both studied law and then threw it aside. Both became hot politicians and fierce political writers. Both had an irresistible desire to publish newspapers, and both became editors of their own papers, and editors of power. Both wrote vigorous, nervous, yet polished prose. Both continued to write poetry during their whole lives. Both were eminent as translators of the ancient classics. Both made purely