"I see by this day's paper that my verses on General Washington's arrival, etc., are to appear in your next Museum. If it is not too late, I would request the favour of you to rectify an error (which was entirely of the press) in the fifth line of the thirteenth stanza, as it materially affects the sense. Instead of 'whom' please to read 'who.'"
The 1795 edition is interesting from another standpoint. The resources of the little country office were taxed to the utmost in the production of the book. At best it is a crude piece of printing. There is manifest everywhere an effort to keep the work within bounds, to economize space. Titles are abbreviated, mottoes dropped, foot notes cut out, and many earlier poems reduced, or omitted entirely. The list of omissions is very suggestive: scenes one and two were cut from the "Pictures of Columbus," the long song of Ismenius was dropped from "The Monument of Phaon," "The Jamaica Funeral," and "The House of Night" were reduced to mere fragments, "Female Frailty" was dropped save for the opening lyric, and there were other notable changes. In every case it will be found that the poet threw overboard the light and imaginative element, the purely poetic.
The reason for these omissions has been often sought. Prof. C. F. Richardson in particular has wondered at the dropping of the intensely original and weirdly strong poem "The House of Night," – in his opinion the best thing Freneau ever did. It is not difficult to answer the question after a careful study of the evolution of Freneau's poetic ideals. He began to write poetry after a thorough course of reading in the Latin and English classics. His early work is redolent of Virgil's "Eclogues," of Horace, of Shakespeare, of Milton's minor poems, of Gray's "Elegy." If ever there was a sensitive, beauty-loving, poetic soul, the young Freneau was one. In his early inexperience he even dreamed of a poetic career in which he might perhaps win a place beside the great masters of song. His early work like the "Ode to Fancy," and similar pieces, and the strong and original "House of Night" and "Santa Cruz" show what he might have done in another environment.
But Revolutionary America had little encouragement for an imaginative poet. There was something in the air that seemed to put into men the Franklin spirit. It was the era of common-sense, of stern reality, of practical affairs. Madison voiced the age when in 1774 he advised Bradford, the cultured and imaginative young lover of poetry and all art, to turn to sterner things:
"I was afraid you would not easily have loosened your affections from the Belles Lettres. A Delicate Taste and warm imagination like yours must find it hard to give up such refined & exquisite enjoyments for the coarse and dry study of the Law. It is like leaving a pleasant flourishing field for a barren desert; perhaps I should not say barren either because the Law does bear fruit but it is sour fruit that must be gathered and pressed and distilled before it can bring pleasure or profit… I myself use to have too great a hankering after those amusing studies. 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. It would be exceeding improper for a labouring man to have nothing but flowers in his Garden or to determine to eat nothing but sweet-meats and confections. Equally absurd would it be for a Scholar and man of Business to make up his whole Library with Books of Fancy and feed his mind with nothing but such Luscious performances."15
The first half of Freneau's life, as we have seen, was one of disillusion. It took twenty-five years to kill the spark in his breast, but the process though slow was sure. After the fierce period of the National Gazette he thought of himself only as a worker in the tide of practical affairs, a champion of the rights of man, a protestor against tyranny and wrong, and his muse had become a mere drudge, aiding by satire and song what he now conceived to be his life work. He had taken a deliberate though sorrowful leave of his early muse in 1787, one year after the appearance of his first volume of poems:
"On these bleak climes by fortune thrown
Where rigid Reason reigns alone,
Where flowery Fancy holds no sway
Nor golden forms around her play,
Nor Nature takes her magic hue,
Alas what has the muse to do!
An age employed in painting steel
Can no poetic raptures feel;
No fabled Love's enchanting power
No tale of Flora's shady bower.
Nor wood-land haunt, or murmuring grove
Can its prosaic bosom move.
The muse of love in no request,
I'll try my fortune with the rest;
Which of the nine shall I engage
To suit the humor of the age?
On one, alas, my choice must fall,
The least engaging of them all!
Her visage stern, severe her style,
A clouded brow, a cruel smile,
A mind on murdered victims placed,
She, only she, can please the taste."
One cannot read long the columns of the Jersey Chronicle without realizing forcibly the change that had come over Freneau. The poet who emerged from the crucible of the National Gazette was not at all like the poet of "The House of Night" period. He could look upon this product of his early imagination much as Madison would have done, and he could in cold blood cut it down to a mere fragment which would voice his new French Deistic ideas, that he might have room for his Republican songs. The poem "To the Americans of the United States," written in 1797, gives us a true picture of this later Freneau. He would be no courtly singer "beneath some great man's ceiling placed," no solitary dreamer. He would be a man of action travelling over lands and seas, a poet who caught his subjects from the varying scene of human things.
"To seize some features from the faithless past;
Be this our care – before the century close:
The colours strong! for, if we deem aright,
The coming age will be an age of prose:
When sordid cares will break the muses' dream,
And common sense be ranked in seat supreme."
With the fifty-second number of the Chronicle, published April 30, 1796, the paper came to an end. Freneau's final editorial stated 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 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."
A letter16 written by Freneau from New York, to Madison, dated December 1, 1796, reveals what was in the poet's mind during the months following the abandonment of the Chronicle:
"Having three or four months since formed a resolution to bid adieu for a few years to some old Trees in Jersey under the shade of which I edited, amongst ditching and grubbing, a small weekly Paper entitled the Jersey Chronicle, I did not know how to employ that interval better than in striking out here with some printer, if such could be found, already