Studies in Philology

Inasmuch as Philip Freneau is commonly recognized as our first important American poet-as the first man in America to love beauty for beauty's sake-it becomes interesting to trace the influences which made him what he was. For the sake of convenience be well to divide this paper into two parts: one a search for external evidence of literary influence in his early education and in his reading; the other, a search for internal evidence in his most significant poems studied in relation to classical and contemporary literature.

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It was by no mere coincidence that the poet should have been born in New York and that he should have passed his life in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Of New England and New England's ways he knew little; toward Puritanism-crushing as it did the beauty from life-he remained forever hostile. His family from time immemorial had belonged to the prosperous trading classes and were chiefly concerned with rendering to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's without undue anxiety about the latter part of the injunction. If one may assert a polarity in American literature represented by Franklin and Edwards, Freneau may be described. as a Franklin grown lyrical and divorced from utilitarian ethics. For Freneau as for Emerson, "beauty is its own excuse for being." Philip Freneau was born in New York in 1752 of FrenchHuguenot parents. It appears that his grandfather, André Fresneau, had emigrated from France in 1707 on account of the insecurity of Protestants following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The family has been traced back for several generations; the mem

bers are described as "sturdy, industrious tradesmen, who stood high in the esteem of their community," the little town of La Chapelle. The poet's grandfather soon possessed a thriving shipping business, dealing especially in imported wines; he purchased a large estate in New Jersey-Mount Pleasant-which later became the beloved home of Philip. The father of the poet, who had inherited the prosperous business of the founder of the family in America, decided to retire to this estate in 1762. Here they lived in luxury resembling that of a southern plantation; the estate contained nearly a thousand acres and was operated by slaves. Evidently the childhood of the poet was favorable to his literary tastes and dreamy Celtic temperament.

The home of the Freneaus was one of comfort and even refinement. There was a large and well selected library, the pride of its owner. . . . He delighted in men of refinement, and his home became a social center for the lovers of books and of culture. He looked carefully after the education of his children; and all of them early became omnivorous readers. In such an environment the young poet passed his first ten years.1

This home was of course in New York. When the family moved to Mount Pleasant, N. J., the boy was placed under the care of a minister-Reverend William Tennant-to learn the rudiments of the Greek and Latin languages. After three years of study with this tutor, he entered the Penolopen Latin School, conducted by the Reverend Alexander Mitchell. Here he remained until 1768, when his preparation enabled him to enter Princeton as a sophomore. At the time of his entrance to college his latest biographer describes him as "a somewhat dreamy youth who had read very widely, especially in the English poets and Latin classics." would be interesting to speculate upon the influence upon his genius which his natural disposition and his love of nature must have exerted. Professor Pattee asserts that "He inherited with his French blood a passionate love of beauty, a sensuous, dreamy delight in the merely poetic, and in the weird and romantic." Miss Mary S. Austin describes the boy's habit of brooding upon the wide expanse of the sea and the beauties of nature so bountiful

1 Philip Freneau, F. L. Pattee (Princeton, 1902-1907), Vol. I, pp. xiv-xv. Pattee, op. cit., p. xvi.

Pattee, op. cit., p. xcvi.

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Studies in Philology, Volume 22