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:
"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,
But a fig for the anger of such petty rogues,
To the devil we pitch them without shoes or brogues!
[A] He commanded the Rose sloop.
"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,
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.
[B] David Rittenhouse, Esq., the Ingenious inventor of the celebrated perpendicular Orrery.
"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."
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 Slates 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 letter8 to Bailey, written from Norfolk, Va., in the summer of 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,
