With Freneau the case is different. Some of his choicest verse did not appear until 1786, when he published a collection containing “The House of Night”; and in 1795 he brought together in another collection what he apparently considered best in his output for twenty-five years or more preceding. This was very uneven, including much that might better have been left unprinted, and other work which stamps Freneau as the one American of true poetical genius before 1800. He was not unaware of his powers, and aimed to develop them by frequent perusal of good models in ancient and modern literature; but he was not sufficiently self-critical. He prolonged a career of travel and rapid composition, in both poetry and prose, beyond the normal span of life, making still another collection of his works in 1815. His latter years were darkened by the thought that he was being unwarrantably neglected for men of lesser talent. A man of great bodily vigour, he was meditating yet another, a final, edition of his writings, when he came to his unfortunate end. In 1832 he lost his way as he was returning home through a snow-storm, and died from exposure. His once maligned personality has of late been duly vindicated, and his work has received generous praise. It is claimed that Scott and Campbell were content to borrow lines from him. Furthermore, he has been deemed a co-worker with Coleridge and Wordsworth in bringing about in literature the so-called “return to nature.” The parallel might easily be carried too far. Until literary scholarship has broadened and deepened its knowledge of the entire period in which Freneau was active, neither the worth of his poetry nor the possible extent of his influence can be judicially determined. There can be no question that such poems as “The Wild Honeysuckle,” “The Hurricane,” “The Dying Indian,” and “Eutaw Springs” have more than a transitory value. However, it is by his satirical verse that Freneau might seem more likely to persist; for the nature of satire tolerates in some measure a free and easy style such as he developed.