SOME PROMINENT NAMES 271 



ent a nature to allow his paper to become a mere tool in 

 the hands of his able friends, it was recognized, never- 

 theless as the semi-official organ of Jefferson and Madi- 

 son. Towards the latter part of his life, Freneau for- 

 sook journalism, and in partnership with one of his 

 brotheis ventured his fortune in trade with the West 

 Indies, the poet himself acting as commander of a brig. 

 He seems, indeed, to have been decidedly proud of his 

 title as "Captain Freneau." His death, which was a 

 tragic one, occurred in December of the year 1832. 



Of Freneau, Professor Brouson, one of the best of 

 recent critics of American literature, writes : "In poems 

 of fancy and imagination he was the most original and 

 truly poetical poet in America before the nineteenth cen- 

 tury. . . . The ' Wild Honeysuckle ' is the high- 

 water mark of American poetry of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, in delicacy of feeling and felicity of expression be- 

 ing at least the equal of Bryant's 'To the Fringed 

 Gentian.' When such lines were possible in the very 

 infancy of the national life, there was no reason to de- 

 spair for the future of American literature." 



V 

 Henky David Thoeeau 

 In connection with Freneau we may properly speak of 

 Thoreau, though he was a New Englander. Henry David a New 

 Thoreau, born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1817, was chfil«er 

 the great-grandson of Philij)pe Thoreau and his wife 

 Marie le Gallais, French refugees who settled at St. 

 Helier in the Island of Jersey. The events of his life 

 are few and simple. At school and at Harvard Univer- 

 sity he did not distinguish himself as a student, but yet 

 managed to pick up enough Latin and Greek to qualify 

 himself as a quondam schoolmaster. The profession of 

 teaching, however, proved to be extremely distasteful to 

 him, and abandoning it after a short trial he devoted 

 himself to the family occupation — pencil-making. But 



