This was the opening voyage of his last period at sea. His brother Peter had fitted out at Charleston a new brig for the Madeira trade, and until 1807 Freneau was busy plying between Charleston and the Azores. In one of his books of navigation is inscribed the following:
"Sailed from Charleston for Maderia with brig Washington, May 12, 1803. Got there June 23. Arrived back at Charleston Aug. 16.
"Sailed in ditto from Charleston Jan. 25, 1804. Arrived in Maderia March 7th following. A hurricane of wind the whole way. April 12, sailed from Funchal Road for Teneriff. Arrived at Santa Cruz the 15th; at Arasava, 22nd. Sailed May 11th. Arrived in Charleston, June 10."
On June 30, 1806, he was in Savannah, Georgia, as Master of the sloop Industry. He made his last voyage to the Azores in the Washington in 1807. During this last period of sea life we find evidences everywhere that this old enthusiasm for nautical adventure had greatly waned. He was a sailor now from sheer necessity; he was approaching old age and he longed for the quiet of his home and his family. In one of his books of navigation of this period is penned a verse made in mid Atlantic:
"In dreams condemned to roam
He left his native home
O'er land and ocean vast and wide
With oar and sail, with wind and tide,
Proceeding an imaginary way."
In 1809, Freneau now in retirement at Mount Pleasant, began a new edition of his poems. On April 8, he wrote Madison:19
"Sir, – I do myself the pleasure to enclose to you a copy of Proposals for the publication of a couple of Volumes of Poems shortly to be put to the Press in this city. Perhaps some of your particular friends in Virginia may be induced from a view of the Proposals in your hands to subscribe their names. If so, please to have them forwarded to this place by Post, addressed to the Publisher at No. 10 North Alley, Philadelphia. "Accept my congratulations on your late Election to the Presidency of the United States, and my hopes that your weight of State Affairs may receive every alleviation in the gratitude and esteem of the Public whom you serve in your truly honourable and exalted Station."
Madison's reply has been lost, but on May 12th, Freneau answered from Philadelphia:20
"Sir, – After a month's ramble through the States of New Jersey and New York, I returned to this place on Saturday last, and found your friendly Letter on Mr. Bailey's table, with the contents. There was no occasion of enclosing any Money, as your name was all I wanted to have placed at the head of the Subscription list. – I hope you will credit me when I say that the republication of these Poems, such as they are, was not a business of my own seeking or forwarding. I found last Winter an Edition would soon be going on at all events, and in contradiction to my wishes, as I had left these old scribblings, to float quietly down the stream of oblivion to their destined element the ocean of forgetfulness. However, I have concluded to remain here this Summer, and have them published in a respectable manner, and free as possible from the blemishes imputable to the two former Editions, over which I had no controul, having given my manuscripts away, and left them to the mercy of chance. – I am endeavouring to make the whole work as worthy of the public eye as circumstances will allow. 1500 copies are to be printed, only; but I have a certainty, from the present popular frenzy, that three times that number might soon be disposed of. – I will attend to what you direct on the subject, and will forward the ten you mention by the middle of July or sooner. – I will consider of what you say relative to the insertion of a piece or two in prose, but suspect that anything I have written in that way is so inferior to the Poetry, that the contrast will be injurious to the credit of the Publication. – I feel much in the humour of remaining here about two years, to amuse myself, as well as the Public, with such matter as that of the fat man you refer to, and if the public are in the same humour they shall be gratified. – But I am intruding on your time and will add no more at present. – I had almost said —
"'Cum tot sustineas et tanta negotia solus
Res Italas armis tuteris, moribus ornes
Legibus emendes, in publica commoda peccem
Si longo sermone mores21 tua tempora, Caesar – '
"My best wishes, Sir, will ever await you, and in particular that your Presidential Career may be equally honourable though less stormy than that of your predecessor."
It is evident that Freneau wrote also to Jefferson, for on May 22, 1809, the latter wrote from Monticello.22
"Dear Sir, – I subscribe with pleasure to the publication of your volumes of poems. I anticipate the same pleasure from them which the perusal of those heretofore published has given me. I have not been able to circulate the paper because I have not been from home above once or twice since my return, and because in a country situation like mine, little can be done in that way. The inhabitants of the country are mostly industrious farmers employed in active life and reading little. They rarely buy a book of whose merit they can judge by having it in their hand, and are less disposed to engage for those yet unknown to them. I am becoming like them myself in a preference of the healthy and cheerful employment without doors, to the being immured within four brick walls. But under the shade of a tree one of your volumes will be a pleasant pocket companion.
"Wishing you all possible success and happiness, I salute you with constant esteem and respect."
The reply to Freneau's second letter to Jefferson has also been lost, but Freneau's letter dated Philadelphia, May 27th, has escaped destruction:23
"Sir, – Yesterday your Letter, dated May 22d came to hand. – Perhaps you a little misunderstood me, when I wrote to you from this place in April last, inclosing the Proposal Paper, respecting the Poems. – I only wished your name to be placed at the head of the list, and did not wish you to be at the pains of collecting Subscriptions, further than as any of your neighbours might choose to put down their names – Indeed, the whole Subscription plan was Set a going without my knowledge or approbation, last Winter. But as I found the matter had gone too far to be recalled, I thought it best to submit, in the present Edition, to the course and order of things as they are and must be. – Sir, if there be anything like happiness in this our State of existence, it will be such to me, when these two little Volumes reach you in August ensuing, if the sentiments in them under the poetical Veil, amuse you but for a single hour. – This is the first Edition that I have in reality attended to, the other two having been published, in a strange way, while I was wandering over gloomy Seas, until embargoed by the necessity of the times, and now again, I fear, I am reverting to the folly of scribbling Verses.
"That your shades of Monticello may afford you complete happiness is the wish and hope of all the worthy part of Mankind, and my own in particular. In such the philosophers of antiquity preferred to pass life, or if that was not allowed, their declining days.
"Will you be so good as to read the inclosed Verses? They were published early in March last in the Trenton True American Newspaper, and in the Public Advertiser, of New York."
On August 7, 1809, Freneau wrote finally to Madison:24
"Sir, – The two Volumes of Poems that in April last I engaged to have published, are finished, and will be ready for delivery in two or three days. The ten Setts you subscribed for I am rather at a loss how to have safely transmitted to you at your residence in Virginia, where I find by the Newspapers, you mean to Continue until the end of September. Will you on receipt of this, send me a line or two, informing me whether you