In one short week should glad your maws and mine;
On mutton we will sup—on roast beef dine.
Sometimes it is full of the hate which war always engenders. Freneau wrote no more bitterly about the king, Lord North, and the leading generals in active service against the colonists than did Jonathan Odell—the foremost Tory satirist—about Washington and his associates. As the war went on, and the likelihood of American success became stronger, Freneau’s tone softened, as he could well afford to have it, and in such a product as “The Political Balance” he wrote with nothing more offensive than the mockery of a rather ungenerous victor. This poem, characterized by well-maintained humor, is one of the best of its kind. It represents Jove as one day looking over the book of Fate and of coming to an incomplete account of Britain, for the Fates had neglected to reveal the outcome of the war. In order to find out for himself, he directs Vulcan to make an exact model of the globe, borrows the scales from Virgo, and plans to foretell the future by setting the mother country on one side and the States on the other. When, after many difficulties, the experiment is tried, of course the States overbalance the little island. Then, to make sure, he adds the foreign dominions on Britain’s side,
But the gods were confounded and struck with surprise,
And Vulcan could hardly believe his own eyes!
For (such was the purpose and guidance of fate)
Her foreign dominions diminish’d her weight—
By which it appeared, to Britain’s disaster,
Her foreign possessions were changing their master.
Then as he replac’d them, said Jove with a smile—