Mutato nomine
Fabula de te narratur—Hor.
Change but the name
The story's told of you.
MDVIILXX."
The adventures of the hero read like chapters from the "Arabian Nights." He has been for seven days a close captive on a French man-of-war, but he is rescued by an Irish privateer, only to be taken for a wizard and thrown overboard in a cask which is finally washed ashore on the north coast of Ireland. It would be useless to recount all of his adventures both afloat and ashore. He finally succeeds in reaching Mecca, and in returning safely home to America. The final chapter recounts the details of his death and moralizes on his life and character.
The work is crude and hasty. Whole chapters of it were evidently written at one sitting. The part signed H. B. is unquestionably the best; the prose is vigorous and the movement rapid. The only merit in Freneau's section lies in its lyric lament at the close of one of the chapters. The hero suddenly bursts into minor song, the opening stanzas of which are:
Sweet are the flow'rs that crown the Vale
And sweet the spicy breathing Gale
That murmurs o'er the hills:
See how the distant lowing throng
Thro' verdant pastures move along,
Or drink the Limpid Streams and crystal rills.
Ah see in yonder gloomy Grove
The Shepherd tells his tale of Love
And clasps the wanton fair:
While winds and trees and shades conspire
To fann with Love the Gentle Fire,
And banish every black and boding care.
But what has Love to do with me
Unknown ashore, distress'd by sea,
Now hast'ning to the Tomb:
Whilst here I rove, and pine and weep,
Sav'd from the fury of the deep
To find alas on shore a harder doom.
The nature of the undergraduate work done by Princeton in Freneau's time was thus summed up by President Witherspoon in his "Address to the Inhabitants of Jamaica," published in Philadelphia in 1772:
"In the first year they read Latin and Greek, with the Roman and Grecian antiquities, and Rhetoric. In the second, continuing the study of the languages, they learn a compleat system of Geography, with the use of the globes, the first principles of Philosophy, and the elements of mathematical knowledge. The third, though the languages are not wholly omitted, is chiefly employed in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. And the senior year is employed in reading the higher classics, proceeding in the Mathematics and Natural Philosophy and going through a course of Moral Philosophy. In addition to these, the President gives lectures to the juniors and seniors, which consequently every Student hears twice over in his course, first, upon Chronology and History, and afterwards upon Composition and Criticism. He has also taught the French language last winter, and it will continue to be taught to all who desire to learn it. * * *
"As we have never yet been obliged to omit or alter it for want of scholars, there is a fixed Annual Commencement on the last Wednesday of September, when, after a variety of public exercises, always attended by a vast concourse of the politest company, from the different parts of this province and the cities of New York and Philadelphia. * * *"