Philip Freneau, an American poet, born in New York, Jan. 13, 1752, died near Freehold, N. J., Dee. 18, 1832. He was educated at Nassau Hall, Princeton, N. J., where James Madison was Lis room mate, and where he wrote his " Poetical History of the Prophet Jonah." He intended to study law, but finally followed a seafaring: life. During the revolution his political burlesques in verse and prose were very popular with the patriots. While on a voyage to the West Indies in 1780 he was captured by the British and confined for a long time in the Scorpion prison ship at New York, which he commemorated in his poem The British Prison Ship." When Jefferson was secretary of state Freneau became French translator under him, and at the same time editor of the "National Gazette," a paper hostile to Washington's administration. It was discontinued in October, 1793, and in 1795 he began a newspaper near Middletown Point, N. J., which he continued for a year, and published there an edition of his poems. He next edited for a year in New York The Time Piece," a tri-weekly, after which he again became master of a merchant vessel. During the second war with Great Britain he recorded in stirring verse the triumphs of the American arms. The close of his life was spent in retirement.

Many of his smaller poems possess great elegance of diction, and Scott and Campbell borrowed whole lines from him. Several editions of his poems were published during his life, and E. A. Duyckinck has edited his Poems of the Revolution" (New York, 1865).