Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/804

 768 F R E F R E Toledo by rail. Steamers ply between the city and the principal ports of Lake Erie, and it has manufactories of woollens, sashes, and blinds, flour mills, and engineering works. The late Mr Burchard bequeathed to the city land for two public parks, and $50,000 for a public library, the building for which is to be erected on the Fort Stephenson property, the scene of the gallant and successful defence of General Crogher against a superior force of the British and Indians, August 1st and 2d, 1813. The population of Fremont in 1870 was 5455. FRENCH, NICHOLAS (1604-1678), an Irish political pamphleteer, was born in Wexford in 1604. After receiv ing ordination at Louvain, he became Roman Catholic priest at Wexford, and in 1643 he was appointed bishop of Ferns. Having taken a prominent part in the political disturbances of this period, he deemed it prudent, after the universal submission which followed the storming of Wex ford by Oliver Cromwell, to retire to Brussels, where, in 1652, he published his attack on Ormond, entitled Tlie, Unkind Deserter of Loyal Men and True Friends, and shortly afterwards The Bleeding Iphigenia. The most im portant of his other pamphlets is the Sale and Settlement of Ireland. Shortly before his death, which t )ok place August 23, 1678, he was nominated coadjutor-archbishop of Ghent. The Historical Works of Bishop French, com prising the pamphlets above named and several others, were published at London in 1846 in 2 vols., and a notice of him will be found in T. D. M Gee s Irish Writers of the, lth Century, London, 1846. FLIERE, JOHN HOOKHAM (1769-1841), an English diplomatist and author, was born in London, May 21, 1769. His father, John Frere, a gentleman of a good Suffolk family, had been educated at Caius College, Cam bridge, and would have been senior wrangler in 1763 but for the powerful competition of Paley ; his mother, daughter of Mr John Hookham, a rich London merchant, was a lady of no small ability and culture, accustomed to amuse her leisure with the pleasures of versification ; and his father s sister Ellinor was married to Sir John Fenu, the learned editor of the Paston Letters, and contributed with her own pen to the formation of a library of fiction for children. Young Frere was sent to Eton in 1785, and there began that intimacy with Canning which so greatly affected his after life. From Eton he went to his father s college at Cambridge, and graduated B. A. in 1792 and M.A. in 1795. He entered public service in the foreign office under Lord Grcnville, and sat from 1796 to 1802 as member of parliament for the close borough of Loos in Cornwall. From his boyhood he had been a warm admirer of Pitt, and along with Canning he entered heart and soul into the defence of his Government, and contributed freely to the pages of the Anti-Jacobin. On Canning s removal to the board of trade in 1799 he succeeded him as under secretary of state ; in October 1800 he was appointed envoy extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Lisbon ; and on Sep tember 1802 he was transferred to Spain, where he remained for two years. He was recalled on account of a personal disagreement he had with the &quot; Prince of Peace,&quot; but his conduct was approved by the ministry, and in 1808 he was again sent out as plenipotentiary to Ferdinand VII. The condition of Spain rendered his position a very responsible and difficult one, but had it not been for one unfortunate step he would have left the country with greatly increased reputation. When Napoleon began to advance on Madrid it became a matter of supreme importance to decide whether Sir John Moore, who was then in the north of Spain, should endeavour to anticipate the occupation of the capital or merely make good his retreat, and if he did retreat whether he should do so by Portugal or by Galicia. Frere was strongly of opinion that the bolder was the better course, and he urged his views on Sir John Moore with an urgent and fearless persistency that on one occasion at least overstepped the limits of his commission. After the disastrous retreat to Corunna ; the public accused Frere of having by his advice endangered the British army, and though no direct censure was passed upon his conduct by the Government, he was called home, and the Marquis of Wellesley was appointed in his placa Thus ended Frere s public life. He afterwards refused to undertake an embassy to St Petersburg, and twice declined the honour of a peerage. In 1816 he married Elizabeth Jemima, dowager countess of Erroll, and in 1820, on account of her failing health, he went with her to the Mediterranean. There he finally settled in Malta, and though he afterwards visited England more than once, the rest of his life was for the most part spent in the island of his choice. In quiet retirement he devoted himself to various literary labours, studied his favourite Greek authors, and taught himself Hebrew and Maltese. His hospitality was well known to many an English guest, and his charities and courtesies endeared him to his Maltese neighbours ; and when he died in 1841, his loss was evidently regarded by rich and poor as a common calamity. Frere s literary ability was early displayed. He was a contributor at Eton to the school magazine known as the Microcosm, and gained the members prize at Cambridge in 1792 by an essaj on the strange question, &quot; Whether it were possible to hope for improvement in morals and the cultivation of virtue in the rising republic of Botany Bay ? &quot; During the iirst period of liis public life he was one of the chief writers in the Anti- Jacob in, contributing, among other pieces, &quot;The Loves of the Triangles,&quot; a clever parody of Darwin s &quot;Loves of the Plants,&quot; and sharing with Canning the honour of &quot; The Needy Knife-Grinder&quot; and &quot;The Eovers.&quot; In 1817 he published a mock-heroic poem entitled, Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work by William and Robert Whistlccraft, of Stoiv-Afarkct, in Suffolk, Harness and Collar makers, intended to comjyrisc the most interesting jMrticulars relating to King A rthur and his Round Talk. It attracted considerable attention at the time, and though it was afterwards comparatively forgotten, it served to bring again into fashion the octave stanza of the Italians, and formed, as far at least as its versification was concerned, the acknowledged model of Byron s Brjypo. Much greater importance attached to the translations of Aristophanes, by which indeed Frere occupies an iilmost unrivalled position in English literature. The principles according to which he conducted his task were elucidated in an article on Mitchell s Aristophanes, which he contributed to The Quarterly Review, vol. xxiii. The translations of The Acharnians, The Knights, The Birds, and The Frogs were privately printed, and were first brought into general notice by Sir G. Corncwall Lewis in the Classical Museum for 1847. They were followed some time after by Thcognis Rrstitutus, or the personal history of the poet Thcognis, reduced from an analysis of his existing fragments. Frere s complete works were published in 1871, with, a memoir by his nephews, W. E. and Sir Bartle Frere, and reached a second edition in 1874. Compare also an article in the North American Review, vol. cvii., 1SC8. FRERET, NICOLAS (1688-1749), a French scholar, one of the most learned men of his age, was born at Paris, February 7 or 15, 1688. His father was procureur to the parliament of Paris, and destined him to the profession of the law. His passion for knowledge declared itself almost from his birth ; and so early did he appl} 7 himself to studies of the most diverse kind, and accumulate vast stores of in formation, that he scarcely seemed to have any childhood. His precocity in learning and literary labour appears to rival even that of John Stuart Mill. He had for his tutors the historian Rollin and Father Desmolets. Amongst his early studies history, chronology, and mythology held a prominent place. To please his father he studied law and began to practice as a pleader ; but the force of his genius soon carried him into his own path. At nineteen he was admitted to a society of learned men who sought more free dom of discussion than was to be had within the Academy, and he read before them memoirs on the religion of the Greeks, on the worship of Bacchus, of Ceres, of Cybele, and of Apollo. The astonishing reputation which he gained for learning, and the influence of the eminent men whose friend ship he enjoyed, opened the way for his recognition by the