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this country." There is, however, in this country," said Laurens in reply," a facility in murdering a man by inches: I have experienced it in a degree not to be paralleled in modern British history.'

All this hard experience of his as a prisoner of state in the hands of the British, was borne by him not only with fortitude, but with gayety, and with a quick discomfiture of all devices for his intimidation or corruption. Such experience, also, furnished the subject and the materials for his "Narrative," a modest and fascinating story of an heroic episode in the history of the Revolution, a fragment of autobiography fit to become a classic in the literature of a people ready to pay homage to whatever is magnanimous, exquisite, and indomitable in the manly character.

"A Narrative," etc. 56.

In "Collections of the South Carolina Historical Society," i. 69-83, at the end of the "Narrative," is given an "Appendix, containing Documents, Letters, etc., relating to Mr. Laurens's Imprisonment in the Tower." In 'The Magazine of American History" for December, 1884, may be seen a rebus letter written by Laurens to Lord George Gordon, whom he knew as a fellow-prisoner in the Tower.

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CHAPTER XXXIV.

PHILIP FRENEAU AS POET AND SATIRIST IN THE WAR

FOR INDEPENDENCE: 1778-1783.

I. Two periods of Freneau's activity in immediate contact with the Revolution-The first period embraces the latter half of the year 1775—The second period extends from 1778 to 1783-Freneau's abandonment of the country in 1776 and his stay in the West Indies till 1778-His poetic work there-Denounces slavery.

II. His return to his country, and to literary activity in its service, in 1778His confidence in the success of the Revolution-"Stanzas on the New American Frigate 'Alliance'"-"America Independent"-Fierce onslaughts upon King George the Third-His invectives against Burgoyne and the American Loyalists.

III. His poem "To the Dog Sancho."

IV. His contributions to "The United States Magazine" in 1779-Two more attacks on the King.

V. His capture and imprisonment by the British—He is stimulated thereby to new and fiercer satires against the enemy-" The British Prison Ship." VI. His principal poems for the years 1781, 1782, and 1783.

VII." The Political Balance; or, The Fates of Britain and America Compared."

VIII.- The Prophecy."

IX. His final word to the British King.

X.-Freneau's proper rank as a poet-A pioneer in the reform of eighteenthcentury English verse-The first American poet of Democracy, and his fidelity to that character.

I.

THE work of Philip Freneau as poet and satirist in direct contact with the American Revolution, was broken into two periods, these periods being separated from each other by an interval of about two years. The first period, which has been dealt with in a former part of this work,' embraces those months of the year 1775 wherein his own fierce pas

'See chapter ix.

sions, like the passions of his countrymen, were set aflame by the outbreak of hostilities. Thereafter occurred a mysterious lapse in his activity as a writer on themes connected with the great struggle, to which he had professed his undying devotion; he was absent from the country until some time in the year 1778. With the middle of the year 1778 began the second period of his work as Revolutionary poet and satirist, and it did not come to an end, except with the end of the Revolution itself. If we are right in assigning to the later months of the year 1775 Freneau's" MacSwiggen, a Satire," we shall find in that poem some clew to the mood of literary disgust and discouragement which seems then to have seized him, impelling him for a time to leave his native land:

Long have I sat on this disastrous shore,
And, sighing, sought to gain a passage o'er
To Europe's towns, where, as our travellers say,
Poets may flourish-or perhaps they may."'

Not to Europe, however, did the down-hearted political prophet make his escape,-the Tarshish to which he fled was in the West Indies:

Sick of all feuds, to Reason I appeal

From wars of paper, and from wars of steel;
Let others here their hopes and wishes end,
I to the sea with weary steps descend;

In distant isles some happier scene I'll choose,
And court in softer shades the unwilling Muse.'

This resolution, which seems weak-spirited enough and wholly unworthy of him, Freneau carried out, sailing away to the tropics some time in the year 1779, and remaining there, probably, during the remainder of that year, and the

1 "The Poems of Philip Freneau," 83.

2 Ibid. 87-88.

99 1 66

year 1777, and even a part of the year 1778. Then it was that he wrote some of his longest and most powerful nonpolitical poems," The House of Night, The Beauties of Santa Cruz," and "The Jamaica Funeral," '—the latter notable for one passage of scorching satire on the frivolity and sensuality then so often to be met with in the clergy of the colonial Church. Even in his remoteness from the scene of his country's danger and anguish, he could not forget either that anguish or that danger; and his fine little poem "On the Death of Captain Nicholas Biddle, Commander of the Randolph' Frigate," is some token of Freneau's continued remembrance of the cause of his countrymen-whom, however, he seemed to have abandoned. There is one stanza of this poem over which the reader will be tempted to linger as having a weird beauty, a sort of spectral suggestiveness, quite characteristic of Freneau in his nobler work. Referring to the American ship, which had been blown up and sunk in the very moment of its victory over the British cruiser, he says:

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The 'Randolph' soon on Stygian streams
Shall coast along the land of dreams,

The islands of the dead!

But fate, that parts them on the deep,
Shall save the Briton, still to weep
His ancient honors fled." ↑

Even his long poem, "The Beauties of Santa Cruz,' wherein he tries to give himself up to the delights of tropical nature, is not without some touch revealing his sorrowful consciousness of the disasters which, in the summer and autumn of that year, 1776, were overwhelming his native land:

"Far o'er the waste of yonder surgy field
My native climes in fancied prospect lie,

1" Poems of Philip Freneau," 88-108.

3. Ibid. 109-117.

2 Ibid. 117-133.

4 Ibid. 147.

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Now hid in shades, and now by clouds concealed,
And now by tempests ravished from my eye.

There, triumphs to enjoy, are Britain, thine,
There thy proud navy awes the pillaged shore ;
Nor sees the day when nations shall combine
That pride to humble, and our rights restore."'

Perhaps it was in mere disgust, perhaps it was in anger and despair, that the poet had been able to persuade himself to leave behind him what he calls the "bloody plains and the "iron glooms" of his country, and, as he says,

"Quit the cold northern star, and here enjoy

Beneath the smiling skies, this land of love";'

yet even in that "land of love" his heart was soon embittered by sights and sounds of hate,-sights and sounds which seemed to transform that paradise into a pandemonium:

"If there exists a hell-the case is clear-
Sir Toby's slaves enjoy that portion here.

Here whips on whips excite a thousand fears,
And mingled howlings vibrate on my ears:
Here nature's plagues abound, of all degrees,
Snakes, scorpions, despots, lizards, centipees."'

Chiefly, the ineffable horrors of slavery in the West Indies gave to this poet of liberty such sorrow as made it impossible for him there to enter without reserve into the mere enjoyment of nature. In a bit of noble prose with which, three years afterward, he prefaced his poem on "The Beauties of Santa Cruz," he said: "The only disagreeable circumstance attending this island, which it has in common

"The Poems of Philip Freneau," 131.

344 Poems on Several Occasions," 391.

? Ibid.