SOURCE: Eberwein, Jane Donahue. “Philip Freneau (1752-1832).” In Early American Poetry: Selections from Bradstreet, Taylor, Dwight, Freneau, and Bryant, pp. 190-20. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978.

In the following excerpt, Eberwein discusses Freneau's life and career, suggesting that his various activities as editor, farmer, and sea captain influenced his writing in various ways.

Born the same year as Timothy Dwight and, like him, a revolutionary patriot, Philip Freneau was nonetheless a distinctly different poet—different in values, voice, and literary style. He represented a newer strain in American thought: more liberal, more secular, and more attuned to change than the wit from Connecticut, a place where, Freneau once wrote, rhymes “Come rattling down on Greenfield's reverend son” and where the climate somehow encouraged large families, huge pumpkins, and lengthy poems.¹ By his attempts to establish himself as a professional writer in a republic with no established literary class...