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Updated: June 9, 2025
But Freneau took pains to send him copies of his newspapers, a piece of impertinence which apparently led to a little vigorous denunciation, the account of which seems probable, although our only authority is in Jefferson's "Ana."
It was here, too, that was prominently displayed the "Sign of the Bible and Crown," before the house of Hugh Gaine. Freneau had flayed this man in his verse many a time. Gaine was an Irishman who published the New York Mercury, and changed his politics to whichever side was uppermost Whig to-day, Tory to-morrow.
The story of Freneau need not be repeated here at length, having been already told in another volume of this series of biographies. If there were anything in that affair, however, for which Jefferson could be fairly called to account, Madison may be held as not less responsible.
At a cabinet meeting Washington complained that "that rascal Freneau sent him three copies of his paper every day, as though he thought he would become a distributer of them. He could see in this nothing but an impudent design to insult him." So far the parties had been little more than personal followings; the mighty movements in Europe were now to crystallize them.
He lives on in poverty and seclusion, and in his eightieth year loses his way in a snowstorm and perishes miserably this in 1832, the year of the death of the great Sir Walter Scott, who once had complimented Freneau by borrowing one of his best lines of poetry.
That he had rather be on his farm than to be made emperor of the world and yet that they were charging him with wanting to be a king. That that rascal Freneau sent him 3 of his papers every day, as if he thought he would become the distributor of his papers, that he could see in this nothing but an impudent design to insult him. He ended in this high tone. There was a pause."
He suggests that a notice be given that the papers "will not be put into the mail, but sent as heretofore," meaning by that, probably, that they would be sent under the franks of members of Congress, or by any other chance that might offer. "Will you," he adds, "hint this to Freneau?
They had to draw the line somewhere; they drew it there; and an exceedingly sharp and fine line it was. For it is plain that Freneau knew very well what he was about and what was expected of him, and his powerful friends knew very well that he knew it.
Stanzas of Philip Freneau represent the feeling of the day: "What wonders there shall Freedom show, What mighty States successive grow. What charming scenes attract the eye On wild Ohio's savage stream. Here Nature reigns, whose works outvie The boldest pattern art can frame. The East is half to slaves consigned, And half to slavery more refined."
The friendship of Freneau and Lindley Murray might have ripened, but that in the year after their meeting Murray went to England, where he was to devote himself, for his own amusement, to horticulture, in a pretty little garden beside his home near York, and where he wrote his famous grammar for a young ladies' school. Even in the lifetime of Freneau, changes came to Hanover Square.
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