"Can we never be thought To have learning or grace Unless it be brought From that damnable place?" he cried. But he reckoned without his countrymen. Not until Emerson's day did it dawn upon America that it was possible for her to think for herself and make poetry that did not echo the English bards. Thus did America reject her earliest prophet; thus did she stop her ears and compel him to lay aside his seven-stringed lyre for the horn and the bagpipes. Freneau lived to see his discarded harp in full tune in other hands, first in England and then in his own land. There is something truly pathetic in the figure of the old minstrel, who had realized almost nothing of his early dreams, and yet who had been told by the great Jeffries that the time would surely come when his poems would command a commentator like Gray, who had been extravagantly praised by such masters as Scott and Campbell, who had written to Madison as late as 1815, "my publisher tells me the town will have them [his verses] and of course have them they will," it is pathetic to see this poet, in his hoary old age, for he lived until 1832, realizing that he had been utterly forgotten, witnessing the triumph of the very songs that had haunted his youth, and seeing those who had not half his native ability crowned by those who had rejected and forgotten him. Such ever is the penalty of being born out of due time. The present age has also been unjust to Freneau. It has left his poems in their first editions, which are now extremely rare and costly; it has scattered his letters and papers to the winds; it has garbled and distorted his life in every book of reference; it has left untold the true story of his career; it has judged him from generalizations that have floated from no one knows where. But time works slowly with her verdicts; true merit in the end is sure to receive its deserts; and Freneau may even yet be given the place that is his. [1] Ann Maury's _Memoirs of a Huguenot_. [2] In the possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. [3] Madison Papers, Vol. XIII. p. 9. [4] Introduction to the 1846 edition of "Modern Chivalry." [5] The _United States Magazine_, February number. [6] A perfectly preserved copy is in the possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. [7] In the possession of Miss Adele M. Sweeney, Jersey City. [8] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, August 20, 1788. [9] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, July 8, 1789. [10] _American Historical Review_, January, 1898. [11] Randall's _Life of Jefferson_, vol. ii, 78. [12] Randall's _Life of Thomas Jefferson_, ii, 81. [13] _Writings of Jefferson_, i, 231. [14] _Writings of Jefferson_, i, 251. [15] Wallace Papers, vol. i. Pa. Hist. Soc. [16] Madison Papers, vol. xxi, p. 70. [17] In the possession of Adele M. Sweeney. [18] In the possession of Mrs. Helen K. Vreeland. [19] Madison Papers, xxxiv, p. 77. [20] Madison Papers, vol. xxxv, p. 17.