delphia, editing for FRANCIS BAILEY "The United States Magazine." This periodical was not successful, and on its discontinuance he again turned his attention to the sea. He sailed for St. Eustatia in May, 1780, in the ship Aurora, which soon after leaving the Delaware was captured by a British cruiser. FRENEAU with his companions was taken to New York, and in the hot weather of June and July confined seven weeks on board the Scorpio. and the Hunter, those floating hells in which so many of our country men experienced the extremest horrors of the war. On being released he returned to Philadelphia, and in the family of his friend BAILEY gradually regained the health lost during his confinement. He now published "The British Prison Ship," in four cantos, in which he described, with indignant energy, the brutalities to which he had been subjected, and urged the people to new efforts against the cruel and remorseless enemy. In 1783, a few months after its appearance in Paris, FRENEAU translated and published in Philadelphia, the Nouveau Voyage dans l'Ameriqui Septentrionale en l'année 1781, by the Abbe RoBIN, a chapiain in the army of the Count de ROCHAMBEAU, and he was much occupied during this and the two following years in various literary services for Mr. BAILEY, who was his warm friend as well as liberal employer. In 1784 he left Philadelphia, and after a few months spent in travel, and in visiting his old friends, become master of a vessel which sailed between New York and the West Indies, and New York and Charleston. In a letter to BAILEY he gives a striking account of a disastrous shipwreck which he suffered in one of his voyages, in the summer of 1788. Writing from Norfolk in Virginia, he says: "After leaving New York, on the twenty-first of July, I had the misfortune to have my vessel dismasted, thrown on her beam ends, the bulk of her cargo shifted and ruined, and every sail, mast, spar, boat, and almost every article upon deck, lost, oa the Wednesday afternoon following, in one of the hardest gales that ever blew on this coast. Captain William Cannon, whom I think you know, and who was going passenger with me to Charleston, and Josiah Stilwell, a lad of a reputable family in the state of New Jersey, were both washed overboard and drowned, notwithstand On the twenty-fifth of April, 1781, appeared the first number of "The Freeman's Journal," printed and published by BAILEY, and edited or in a large degree written by FRENEAU. For three or four years his hand is apparent in its most pungent paragraphs of prose, as well as in numerous pieces of verse, on public characters and passing events, and particularly in a succession of satires on the New York printers, HUGH GAINE and ing every effort to save them. All my people besides, except JAMES RIVINGTON, whom he delighted in assailing with all the resources of his abusive wit. Of GAINE, a sort of Vicar of Bray, "who lied at the sign of the Bible and Crown," he wrote a " Biography," and of RIVINGTON, who edited "The Royal Gazette," in which the Whigs were treated with every species of absurd and malicious vituperation, he gave the" Reflections," the "Confessions," the Last Will and Testament," &c. The following lines are characteristic of these productions: "Occasioned by the title of Mr. Rivington's Royal Gazette being scarcely legible. Says Satan to Jemmy, "I hold you a bet, Now, being connected so long in the art, A remonstrance against the worn-out vignettethe king's arms-is too gross for quotation, but when the appearance of the "Gazette" was sufficiently improved— "From the regions of night, with his head in a sack, who looks over the paper, and the printing-room, and gone overboard. an old man who stuck fast in one of the scuttles, were seve After FRENEAU left Philadelphia BAILEY issued the first collection of his poems, in a volume of more than four hundred pages, entitled "The Poems of PHILIP FRENEAU, written chiefly during the late War." In his advertisement, dated the sixth of June, 1786, the publisher says: pursue. At a cabinet council, he says, WASHINGTON remarked that "That rascal, FRENEAU, sent him three copies of his papers every day, as if he thought he (WASHINGTON) would become the distributor of them; that he could see in this nothing but an impudent design to insult him: he ended in a high tone." Again, speaking of the President, Mr. JEFFERSON says, "He adverted to a piece in FRENEAU'S paper of yesterday; he said he despised all their attacks on him personally, but that there had never been an act of the government, not meaning in the executive line only, but in any line, which that paper had not abused. He was evidently sore and warm, and I took his intention to be, that I should interpose in some way with FRENEAU, perhaps withdraw his appointment of translating clerk in my office. But I will not do it. His paper has saved our Constitution, which was galloping fast into monIn the following October notice was given in archy, and has been checked by no one means the Freeman's Journal, that "An Additional Col-versally known that it has been that paper which so powerfully as by that paper. It is well and unilection of Entertaining Original Performances, in Prose and Verse, by PHILIP FRENEAU," would be issued as soon as a sufficient number of copies "The pieces now collected and printed in the following sheets were left in my hands by the author, above a year ago, with permission to publish them whenever I thought proper. A considerable number of the performances contained in this volume, as many will recollect, have appear ed at different times in newspapers, (particularly the Freeman's Journal) and other periodical publications in the dif ferent states of America, during the late war, and since; and from the avidity and pleasure with which they generally appear to have been read by persons of the best taste, the printer now the more readily gives them to the world in their present form, (without troubling the reader with any affected apologies for their supposed or real imperfections,) in hopes they will afford a high degree of satisfaction to the lovers of poetical wit, and elegance of expression." should be subscribed for; but such a time did not arrive, and it was not until the twenty-seventh of April, 1788, that Mr. BAILEY gave the public The Miscellaneous Works of PHILIP FRENEAU, containing his Essays and Additional Poems." Nearly half the copies of this volume were subscribed for in Charleston. On the twenty-fourth of April, 1789, General WASHINGTON arrived in New York from Mount Vernon, to enter upon his duties as President of the United States. As the procession of boats oy which he was attended from Elizabethtown Point approached the city, it is mentioned in the journals of the day, that the schooner Columbia, Captain PHILIP FRENEAU, eight days from Charleston, came up the bay. This was the poet's last voyage for several years. He now engaged with the printers, CHILDS and SWAINE, to edit the New York "Daily Advertiser," and continued in this employment until the removal of the government to Philadelphia, when he became a translating clerk in the Department of State, under Mr. JEFFERSON, and editor of the "National Gazette," which gained an infamous reputation by its attacks on WASHINGTON'S administration. FRENEAU made oath to a statement that Mr. JEFFERSON did not compose or suggest any of the contents of his paper, but in his old age he acknowledged to Dr. JOHN W. FRANCIS that the Secretary wrote or dictated the most offensive articles against WASHINGTON and his friends, and to Dr. JAMES MEASE he exhibited a file of the "Gazette," in which what were alleged to be his contributions were marked. This matter has been much and angrily debated, but it has not been denied that the conduct of the clerk was in the main, at least, approved by his employer. The President could not forbear speaking to Mr. JEFFERSON of FRENEAU'S abuse, and requesting him, as a member of his cabinet, to administer him some rebuke. Mr. JEFFERSON tells us in his Anas" what course he chose to has checked the career of the monocrats," &c. During the prevalence of the yellow fever in Philadelphia, in 1793, the publication of the " Na tional Gazette" was suspended; and Mr. JEF FERSON having retired from the cabinet, it was not resumed. FRENEAU was for a few months without any regular occupation. I have seen two letters, one written by JEFFERSON and the other by MADISON, in which he is commended to certain cittzens of New York, for his "extensive information, sound discretion," and other qualities, as a candidate for the editorship of a journal which it was intended to establish in that city. The project was abandoned, or his application unsuccessful, and on the second of May, 1795, he commenced 66 The Jersey Chronicle," at Mount Pleasant, near Middletown Point, in New Jersey, which was continued every week for one year, the fiftysecond number having appeared on the thirtieth of April, 1796. In the Chronicle" he maintained his opposition to the administration of WASHINGTON, and the unpopularity of its politics with the reading classes doubtless prevented its success. He now again turned his attention to New York, and on the thirteenth of March, 1797, issued there the first number of " The TimePiece and Literary Companion," which was published tri-weekly, and devoted more largely than any other paper in the country to belles-lettres, while it embraced news and frequent discussions of public affairs. FRENEAU himself contributed to almost every number one or more copies of verses, and he had many poetical correspondents. After six months, MATTHEW L. DAVIS, then a very young man, became his partner, and at the end entirely to his direction.* of the first year "The Time-Piece" was resigned "The Time-Piece" was afterwards edited by JOHN D'OLEY BURKE, an Irishman, who, in 1798, was arrested under the Alien and Sedition law. Burke was a noisy Democrat, and possessed of but moderate abilities. He wrote "Bunker Hill, or the Death of Warren," a play; "The Columbiad, an Epic Poem;""The History of Virginia," &, and was killed in a duel, in 1808 In 1798 FRENEAU went again to South Carolina, and, becoming master of a merchant ship, he made several voyages, of which we have some souvenirs in his subsequently published poems. In 1799 and in 1801 he visited St. Thomas; in 1803 he was in the island of Madeira; in 1804 he declines in a copy of verses an invitation to visit & nunnery in Teneriffe, and in 1806 he leaves New York, in command of the sloop Industry, for Savannah, Charleston, and the West Indies. From some lines "To Hezekiah Salem," a name by which he frequently describes himself, it may be inferred that he also made a voyage to Calcutta. While conducting the "Jersey Chronicle," at Monmouth, in 1795, he had published a second edition of his collection of poems, in a closelyprinted octavo volume; and in 1809, after his final abandonment of the life of a sailor, he issued a third edition, in Philadelphia, in two duodecimo volumes, entiled "Poems written and published during the American Revolutionary War, and now republished from the original Manuscripts, interspersed with Translations from the Ancients, and other Pieces not heretofore in Print." In the last-mentioned year he addressed a short poem to his friend Mr. JEFFERSON, on his retirement from the Presidency of the United States, and celebrated in another the death of THOMAS PAINE, of whom he was an ardent admirer. When the second war with Great Britain came on, he restrung his lyre, and commemorated in characteristic verses the triumphs of our arms, especially our naval victories; and his songs and ballads relating to these events are still reprinted in "broadsides," and sold in every port. They were for the most part included in two small volumes which he published in New York, after the peace, under the title of " A Collection of Poems on American Affairs, and a Variety of other Subjects, chiefly Moral and Political, written between 1797 and 1815." He afterwards contemplated a complete edition of his works, and in a letter to Dr. MEASE inquires whether there is "still enough of the old spirit of patriotism abroad to insure the safety of such an adventure." His house at Mount Pleasant was destroyed by fire in 1815 or 1816, and he laments to the same correspondent the loss, by that misfortune, of some of his best compositions, which had never been given to the public. In his old age FRENEAU resided in New Jerrey, but made occasional visits to Philadelphia, where he was always welcomed by Mrs. LYDIA R. BAILEY, who was the daughter-in-law of his early friend and publisher, FRANCIS BAILEY, and had herself been his publisher in 1809. More frequently he passed a few days in New York, where he found living many of the companions of his active and ambitious life. Here too he became intimate with Dr. JOHN W. FRANCIS, to whom he was wont to recount the incidents of his varied history, and to discourse of his ancient associations, with a careless enthusiasm, such as only the genial inquisition of a FRANCIS could awaken. Mrs. BAILEY, who still curries on the printing house which her father-in-law established threequarters of a century ago, has described to me the poet as he appeared to her in his prime. "He was a small man," she says, "very gentlemanlike in his manners, very entertaining in his conversation, and withal a great favourite with the ladies;" the venerable ex-manager of the Philadelphia theatre, Mr. WILLIAM B. WOOD, now (in 1855) seventy-seven years old, also remembers him, and concurs in this description. Dr. FRANCIS's recollections of the bard are of a later date; he describes him as having dressed, in his later years, like a farmer, and as having had "a fine expression of countenance for so old a man-mild, pensive, and intelligent." FRENEAU perished in a snow-storm, in his eightieth year, during the night of the eighteenth of December, 1832, near Freehold. On the approach of evening he had left an inn of that village for his home, a mile and a half distant. He was unattended, and it is supposed he lost his way. The next morning, says Mr. WILLIAM LLOYD of Freehold, in a letter to Dr. MEASE, from which I derive these particulars, his body was found, partially covered by the snow, in a meadow, a little aside from his direct path. FRRNEAU was unquestionably a man of considerable genius, and among his poems are illustra tions of creative passion which will preserve hiɛ name long after authors of more refinement and elegance are forgotten. His best pieces were for the most part written in early life, when he was most ambitious of literary distinction. Of these, "The Dying Indian," "The Indian Student," and others copied into the following pages, are finely conceived and very carefully finished. It is worthy of notice that he was the first of our authors to treat the "ancients of these lands" with a just appreciation, and in a truly artistical spirit. His song of "Alknomock" had long the popularity of a national air. Mr. WASHINGTON IRVING informs me that when he was a youth it was familiar in every drawing-room, and among the earliest theatrical reminiscences of Mr. WILLIAM B. WOOD is its production, in character, upon the stage. The once well-known satire, entitled "A New England Sabbath-day Chase," was so much in vogue when Mr. IRVING was a school-boy, that he committed it to memory as an exercise in declamation. The political odes and pasquinades which he wrote during the revolutior possess much historical interest, and, with hi other works, they will some time undoubtedly be collected and edited with the care due to unique and curious souvenirs of so remarkable an age. In an address "To the Americans of the United States," first published in November, 1797, FRENEAU himself evinces a sense of the proper distinc. tion of his writings: Catching our subjects," he says, "from the varying scene Of human things, a mingled work we draw, Chequered with fancies odd and figures strange, Such as no courtly poet ever saw Who writ, beneath some great man's ceiling placed,Traveled no lands, nor roved the watery waste." THE DYING INDIAN. "ON yonder lake I spread the sail no more! On whose black forests all the dead are cast:- Where all is strange and all is new; In dull and dreary dreams, All melancholy, must I rove along! To what strange lands must CHEQUI take his way! Do fruits as sickly bear, And apples a consumptive visage shew, Ah me! what mischiefs on the dead attend! But when did ghost return his state to shew; I too must be a fleeting ghost!-no moreNone, none but shadows to those mansions go; I leave my woods, I leave the Huron shore, For emptier groves below! Ye charming solitudes, Ye tall ascending woods Ye glassy lakes and purling streams, Whore aspect still was sweet, Whether the sun did greet, Or the pale moon embraced you with her beams- To all, that charm'd me where I strayed, Adieu the mountain's lofty swell, And seas, and stars, and skies-farewell, For some remoter sphere! [weep; Prepare the hollow tomb, and place me low, He spoke, and bid the attending mourners weep, Then closed his eyes, and sunk to endless sleep THE INDIAN BURYING-GROUND. In spite of all the learn'd have said, Points out the soul's eternal sleep. The Indian, when from life released, Again is seated with his friends, And shares again the joyous feast. His imaged birds, and painted bowl, And venison, for a journey dressed, Bespeak the nature of the soul, Activity that knows no rest. His bow, for action ready bent, And arrows, with a head of stone, Can only mean that life is spent, And not the old ideas gone. Thou, stranger, that shalt come this way, Here still a lofty rock remains, On which the curious eye may trace Beneath whose far-projecting shade (Pale SHEBAH, with her braided hair) The painted chief and pointed spear, And Reason's self shall bow the knee To shadows and delusions here. The North American Indians bury their dead in a sitting posture; decorating the corpse with wampum, the images of birds, quadrupeds, &c.: and (if that of a warrior) with bows, arrows, tomahawks, and other military Perplex'd with doubts, and tortured with despair, Beyond the Huron bay! weapons. CAMPBELL appropriated this line, in his beautiful poen "Now o'er the hills in chase he flitsThe hunter and the deer—a shade." TO AN OLD MAN. WHY, dotard, wouldst thou longer groan Beneath a weight of years and wo; Thy youth is lost, thy pleasures flown, And age proclaims, ""T is time to go." To willows sad and weeping yews With us a while, old man, repair, Nor to the vault thy steps refuse; Thy constant home must soon be there. To summer suns and winter moons Prepare to bid a long adieu; Autumnal seasons shall return, And spring shall bloom, but not for you. Why so perplex'd with cares and toil To rest upon this darksome road? "T is but a thin, a thirsty soil, A barren and a bleak abode. Constrain'd to dwell with pain and care, These dregs of life are bought too dear; "T is better far to die, than bear The torments of life's closing year. Subjected to perpetual ills, A thousand deaths around us grow: The frost the tender blossom kills, And roses wither as they blow. Cold, nipping winds your fruits assail; The grape receives a mortal wound. The breeze, that gently ought to blow, Once purling streams are dead and dry"T was Nature's work-'t is Nature's play, And Nature says that all must die. Yon flaming lamp, the source of light, In chaos dark may shroud his beam, And leave the world to mother Night, A farce, a phantom, or a dream. What now is young, must soon be old: Whate'er we love, we soon must leave; "T is now too hot, 't is now too cold To live, is nothing but to grieve. For, lo! the treasure is possess'd. Those monarchs proud, that havoc spread, (While pensive Reason dropt a tear,) Those monarchs have to darkness fled, And ruin bounds their mad career. The grandeur of this earthly round, Give me the stars, give me the skies, Those native fires, that warm'd the mind, And love itself, is changed to wo. The joys of wine are all your boast, These, for a moment, damp your pain The gleam is o'er, the charm is lostAnd darkness clouds the soul again. Then seek no more for bliss below, Where real bliss can ne'er be found; Aspire where sweeter blossoms blow, And fairer flowers bedeck the ground; Where plants of life the plains invest, And green eternal crowns the year:The little god, that warms the breast, Is weary of his mansion here. Like Phospher, sent before the day, His height meridian to regain, The dawn arrives-he must not stay To shiver on a frozen plain. Life's journey past, for fate prepare,— "T is but the freedom of the mind; Jove made us mortal-his we are, To Jove be all our cares resign'd. THE WILD HONEYSUCKLE No roving foot shall crush thee here, By Nature's self in white arrayed, Unpitying frosts and Autumn's power |