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lish, in a language in which vows are so faithfully kept," some one asked Frere" What language, I wonder was she married in?" "Broken English, I suppose," answered Frere.'"

"A saying attributed to him, that he loved Spain as a country in which God had so much land in his own holding,' has the true tone of his humour about it."*

The third period of Mr. Frere's life, from 1809 to his death, was spent in the enjoyment of his taste for literature, and Judging by his existing remains, in in the dignified social pleasures, of which prose and verse, he would have excelled in he was the life and centre. On his return almost any species of composition. He to England he took up his residence at his took part, as we have already said, in the country-house at Roydon, his father hav- foundation of this Review; and Sir Waling died in 1807. A letter written by a ter Scott, in his long and interesting letter lady who was staying at Roydon in 1813 to Mr. Gifford in 1808, discussing the prosdescribes him as "a very odd creature, but pects of the new periodical, and the pervery good and very entertaining;" getting sons whom they might secure as contribuup early in the morning to teach two little tors, writes "In Mr. Frere we have the nephews grammar, taking one still smaller hopes of a potent ally." But, though he a walk during which he completed teach- took a warm interest in the success of the ing him his letters, and "spending an hour Review, he wrote only one_article in it, — after dinner in reading to them the ballad a critique of Mitchell's Translations of of William of Cloudesley, which delighted Aristophanes, which appeared in 1820, † them very much." But "his favourite and of which we have to speak presently. pursuits and early friendships all con- On other occasions Scott bore the warmest spired to draw him to the capital. London society his polished wit and play- Frere's earliest literary efforts testimony to Frere's powers. One of ful fancy his varied learning and great| power of conversation, joined to the easy courtesy of a travelled English gentleman of the old school, made him everywhere a welcome guest." He was, in fact, one of the most popular men in the brilliant literary society of that period. But he, or rather the future generations whom he might have amused and instructed, paid the penalty of this elegant social life.

In

It is much to be regretted that Mr. Frere wrote so little. His extreme fastidiousness and, we fear we must add, his constitutional indolence, disinclined him to the labour of the pen, and, as his biographer

observes :

"The most characteristic and valuable results of his reading and thinking were lost in every day use; what little remains owes its preservation to contemporary friends, and the care of their biographers, who have noted a few of the sayings and anecdotes which survived in the memory of his companions long after Mr. Frere had ceased to be among them. Such are the anecdotes preserved by Moore.

"At one time he is pleased with Frere's comparison of O'Connell's eloquence to the aerial potato, described by Darwin in his Phytologia and with his severe criticism on Erskine's verses, The muses and graces will just make a jury.'

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66

was

a

Metrical Version of an Ode on Athel

stan's Victory," originally published in
Ellis's " Specimens of Ancient English
Poetry." Scott, writing in 1830, says that
this is the only poem he has met with in
his researches into these matters "which,
if it had been produced as ancient, could
not have been detected on internal evi-
dence." It was written by Frere, when
an Eton schoolboy, during the controversy
occasioned by the poems attributed to
Rowley, and was intended as an imitation
of the style and language of the fourteenth
century. At an earlier period, Scott had
expressed the same opinion in a letter to
Ellis (1804):-
:-"Frere is so perfect a
master of the ancient style of composition,
that I would rather have his suffrage than
that of a whole synod of your vulgar an-
tiquaries." In another letter to Ellis
(1806) having subsequently made the ac-
quaintance of Frere, he says:-"I met
and claimed his acquaintance as a friend
with your friend, Mr. Canning, in town,
of yours,
and had my claim allowed; also
Mr. Frere, both delightful companions,
far too good for politics, and for winning
and losing places. When I say I was more
pleased with their society than I thought

Another time he refers to Frere's beautiful saying that " next to an old friend, the best Sir H. Holland's "Recollections of Past Life," thi g is an old enemy," and again he relates P. 273. † See Quarterly Review," vol. xxiii. p 474 seq. ho Madame de having said in her inLockhart's Life of Scott," vol. ii. p. 207, Ed. tense style, "I should like to be married in Eng- 1869.

had been possible on so short an acquain- the most elegant Italian scholars of the past tance, I pay them a very trifling compli- generation, addressed Mr. Frere two years afterment, and myself a very great one." * wards as

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In 1808 Southey writes to Scott: "I saw Frere in London, and he has promised to let me print his translations from the Poema del Cid.' They are admirably done. Indeed I never saw anything so difficult to do, and done so excellently, except your supplement to Sir Tristrem." Some of these translations appeared in Southey's "Chronicle of the Cid," and deserve all the praise which Southey bestowed upon them; but others are now printed for the first time by his nephews. A specimen of them will be given further on.

O thou that hast revived in magic rhyme
That lubber race, and turn'd them out, to
turney

And love after their way; in after time
To be acknowledged for our British Berni;
Oh send thy giants forth to good men's feasts,
Keep them not close.'"

The humour and versification as well as

the poetical beauty of many passages were appreciated by men of taste and letters, but the poem never achieved the popularity that might have been expected. As the work is now almost forgotten, we subjoin one extract, which will convey As an original poet, Mr. Frere is best some idea of its style, and probably inknown by his "Monks and Giants," which duce our readers to turn to the poem itbore the pseudonym of Whistlecraft as its self. The cause of the quarrel between author. The first part was published by the monks and the giants is thus deMr. Murray in 1817 as the "prospectus scribed: :and specimen of an intended national work by William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Stowmarket, in Suffolk, harness and collar makers, intended to comprise the most interesting particulars relating to King Arthur and his Round Table." A second part appeared along with the first in the following year, with the title of the "Monks and Giants." In the subject of the poem Mr. Frere anticipated Mr. Tennyson's Idylls, but the metre he adopted, and his mode of treatment of the subject were very different.

"In this jeu d'esprit," observes his biographer, "Mr. Frere introduced into English poetry the octave stanza of Pulci, Berni, and Casti, which has since been completely naturalized in our tongue. Men of letters were not slow to recognize the service thus rendered to English literature; and Italian scholars, especially, were delighted to see one of the most beautiful of their favourite metres successfully adopted in a language so different from the dialect in which it was first used. Its value was immediately recognized by Byron. He wrote to Murray, from Venice, in October, 1817, announcing 'Beppo,' and said, 'I have written a poem of eighty-four octave stanzas, humorous, in or after the excellent manner of Whistlecraft (whom I take to be Frere).' And ten days later, Mr. Whistlecraft has no greater admirer than myself. I have written a story in eightynine stanzas, in imitation of him, called " Верpo."

A few months later (March 26th, 1818) again writing to Murray of Beppo,' he says, The style is not English, it is Italian: - Berni is the original of all; Whistlecraft was my immediate model.'

"Mr. William Stewart Rose, himself one of

Lockhart's Life of Scott," vol. ii., p. 312.

"In castles and in courts Ambition dwells, But not in castles or in courts alone;

She breathed a wish, throughout those sacred cells,

For bells of larger size, and louder tone; Giants abominate the sound of bells,

And soon the fierce antipathy was shown, The tinkling and the jingling, and the clangour,

Roused their irrational gigantic anger.

"Unhappy mortals! ever blind to fate!

Unhappy Monks! you see no danger nigh; Exulting in their sound and size and weight, From morn till noon the merry peal you ply:

The belfry rocks, your bosoms are elate,

Your spirits with the ropes and pulleys fly; Tired, but transported, panting, pulling, hauling,

Ramping and stamping, overjoy'd and bawling.

"Meanwhile the solemn mountains that sur

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Discoursing with their echoes all day long, Their only conversation was ding-dong.' "Those giant-mountains inwardly were moved, But never made an outward change of place:

Not so the mountain-giants

(as behoved

A more alert and locomotive race), Hearing a clatter which they disapproved, They ran straight forward to besiege the place

With a discordant universal yell,

Like house-dogs howling at a dinner-bell."

Mr. Frere's reasons for not continuing the work, which he had promised to do, were given by him at a later period (1844) | in conversation with a friend."

"You cannot go on joking with people who won't be joked with. Most people who read it at the time it was published, would not take the work in any merely humorous sense; they would imagine that it was some political satire, and went on hunting for a political meaning; so I thought it was no use offering my jokes to people who would not understand them. Even Mackintosh once said to me " Mr. Frere, I have had the pleasure of reading your Monks and Giants' twice over" - and then he paused; I saw what was in his mind, and could not help replying with a very mysterious look, "And you coul not discover its political meaning?" Mackintosh said, " Well, indeed, I could not make out the allegory;" to which I answered, still looking very mysterious," Well, I thought

you would not."""

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In connection with this poem, Sir Bartle relates an amusing anecdote illustrative of his uncle's frequent absence of mind, of which his friends told many stories. Mr. Frere was married in September, 1816, to the Dowager Countess of Erroll, and on his marriage day called upon Mr. Murray to propose the publication of his "Monks and Giants."

"It is related that the late Mr. John Murray having for once relaxed his usual rule never to ask an author to read or recite in the sanctum in Albemarle Street, got so interested in some verses which Mr. Frere was repeating and commenting on, that his dinner hour was at hand. He asked Mr. Frere to dine with him, and continue the discussion; but the latter, startled to find it was so late, excused himself on the plea that he had been married that morning, and had already overstayed the time when he promised Lady Erroll to be ready for their journey into the country.''

Another story of his absence of mind rests on the authority of Lady Erroll herself:

"Mr. Frere had just been introduced to her at an evening party, and offered to hand her

down stairs and procure some refreshment; but getting much interested in conversation by the way, became so engrossed in the train of thought he was pursuing, that he drank himself a glass of negus that he had procured for her, and then offered his arm to help her upstairs without any idea of their not having achieved the errand on which they came; and was only reminded of his mistake by her laughing remonstrance with him on his forgetfulness of her existence.

This,' she added, convinced me that my new acquaintance was, at any rate, very different from most of the young men around us!'"'

Mr. Frere settled at Malta in 1821 in consequence of the failing health of Lady Erroll, and there he passed the remaining twenty-five years of his life. As in the first stage of his life he was a type of the best style of youth trained by an English public school, so in this third stage he may be viewed as representing the happy and graceful leisure of the finished English gentleman, diffusing "light and sweetness among his friends, and producing work the more perfect and precious as it was done to satisfy his own refined taste, not for fame or money. Visitors to his elegant retreat bear witness to the vast extent and variety of the knowledge which he was constantly improving. We find him at one time "immersed in Hebrew," at another writing to England for profound theological works, and again throwing out

subtle criticisms on the traces of Phoenician civilization in the islands of the Mediterranean.

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His chief anxiety was the failing health of his wife, whom he tended with the most affectionate care. In 1825 he paid a short visit to England. On this occasion we are told that, while staying with his brother, he took his night's rest chiefly by sleeping early in the evening, from seven till eleven, and that then he awoke, and entertained his brother and nieces by repeating verses which he had translated or composed, till two o'clock in the morning, which did not prevent his rising early next day."

The unexpected death of Canning, in 1827, affected him deeply. "The depth of his unselfish fraternal affection for Mr. Canning was apparent even to comparative strangers whenever, during the many years for which he survived his friend, Canning's name was mentioned." He naturally resented the conduct of the Tories, who deserted Canning upon the formation of his Government, and thus hastened his death. He attributed this desertion to their feeling of jealousy of Canning's great ability.

"It was the same kind of feeling," said Mr. Frere, "with which Pitt often had to contend. I remember old W, the father of the present old Lord, a fine specimen of a thoroughgoing old country Tory, coming to call on my father to tell him that Pitt was out of office, and that Addington had formed a Ministry. He went through all the members of the new Cabinet, and rubbing his hands at the end, with an evident sense of relief, said, Well, thank God, we have at last got a Ministry without one of those confounded men of genius in it.'"'

.

The death of his dearest friend was followed a few years afterwards by that of his wife (1831), which was a terrible blow to him. He tried to find distraction from his grief in literary pursuits, and especially by prosecuting with renewed diligence his translations of Aristophanes, which now formed his chief occupation, and of which we shall speak more at length presently. In November of the same year he had the melancholy pleasure of welcoming to Malta his old friend Sir Walter Scott, who had had a paralytic seizure in the preceding April.

There where Bermuez fought, amidst the foe they brake,

Three hundred banner'd knights, it was a gallant show:

Three hundred Moors they kill'd, a man with every blow;

When they wheel'd and turn'd, as many more lay slain,

You might see them raise their lances and level them again.

There you might see the breastplates, how they were cleft in twain,

And many a Moorish shield lie shatter'd on the plain.

The pennons that were white mark'd with a crimson stain.

The horses running wild whose riders had
been slain.

The Christians call upon Saint James, the
Moors upon Mahound,

There were thirteen hundred of them slain

on a little spot of ground."

66

In 1836 Mr. Frere made the acquaintance of Mr. (afterwards Sir) George Cornewall Lewis, who came to Malta as one of the Commissioners appointed by Lord Melbourne's Government to examine Mrs. Davy, who has left us some inter- into the state of public affairs in the esting memorials of Scott's stay in that island. Although Mr. Lewis was then island, says: "On joining us in the draw- barely thirty, Mr. Frere formed the highing-room after dinner, Sir Walter was est opinion of him. Lewis," he said, very animated, spoke much of Mr. Frere, "is one of the very few really learned Engand of his remarkable success, when quite lishmen I have met with of late years, and a boy, in the translation of a Saxon ballad. his fairness is as remarkable as his learnThis led him to ballads in general, and he ing. It is a great pity he is such a desgravely lamented his friend Mr. Frere's perate Whig; but I think, if we could heresy is not esteeming highly enough that have kept him in Malta a little longer, of Hardyknute.' He admitted that it we might have made a very decent Tory was not a veritable old balled, but 'just of him." old enough,' and a noble imitation of the After Lady Erroll's death, many of his best style. In speaking of Mr. Frere's friends had hoped that he would have retranslations, he repeated a pretty long pas-turned to England; but he seems to have sage from his version of one of the Ro- acted wisely in making Malta his permamances of the Cid,' and seemed to enjoy nent home. a spirited charge of the knights therein described as much as he could have done in his best days, placing his walking-stick in rest like a lance, to suit the action to the word.'"

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"If in Malta," observes his biographer, "he was cut off from the literary and political society of London, he would on the other hand, had he returned to England, have missed from the circle of his early associates most of the friends of his youth and manhood whose society he valued. In the perfect quiet and uninterrupted leisure of his life at Malta, he enjoyed, to an extent rarely attainable elsewhere, that intellectual communion with the great authors of other times and countries which has been so often described as the privilege and consolation of scholars in their old age; and he lived, among a simple and grateful people, a life of singular ease and dignity, rendered conspicuously useful by his large-hearted liberality and intelligent benevolence."

An interesting picture of his life at Malta is given by a friend, who stayed

some time with him during the later period of his life:

"The customs of the house are luxurious, Nobody is visible before eleven or twelve, at which hours a sort of breakfast goes forward, which you may or may not attend. Before this, coffee is brought, if you wish, to your bedroom; and if you are disposed for an early walk, there is the garden with its pleasant alleys and trellised paths, or if you prefer the sea, it flows clear and bright before the very doors. Between eleven and seven people do what they please. Mr. Frere is reading or writing in his own apartment. At seven dinner goes forward. Covers are laid for a table full, and usually some privileged and pleasant guests drop in. The charm of the party is the master of the house, who, though infirm in body, is not materially injured in mind or memory, and receives all with a fine old-fashioned courtesy that puts all at their ease. Other visitors come in the evening, usually good talkers, and the conversation becomes general. Mr. Frere, however, sees few strangers. After coffee comes a drive in the cool evening, perhaps from ten to midnight or even later, when the air is delightful." Sir Bartle Frere, who passed some weeks under his uncle's roof in 1834 and 1815, has preserved many of Mr. Frere's remarks upon politics, literature, and the current topics of the day. Take, for instance, his remarks on the danger of entrusting executive power to an assembly too exclusively composed of what are called "practical men." No warning is more needed in the present day than that uttered in the first sentence:

"Commenting on some innovations in music and vestments which had troubled an Anglican congregation in the See of Gibraltar, he said in reply to the argument that the change was justified by the custom in Edward the Sixth's time, -But if I were to appear at church in the costume of Queen Elizabeth's time, would the clergyman consider it a sufficient justification for my disturbing the gravity of the congregation that I could prove the dress to be in strict accordance with the usages and sumptuary laws of three hundred years back?'"

Still less sympathy had he with the custom of discussing the gravest questions of theology as subjects of merely ordinary table-talk.

"He complained that he sometimes found it difficult to evade such discussion, or to turn the conversation. One very enthusiastic lady, who had repeatedly pressed him for his opinions on purgatory, declared, sitting next him at dinner, that she must know what he thought on the subject. I told her,' he said, that I really knew very little about it, except what I had learned from the church in the Floriana, which I pass on my way into Valetta. The church, you remember, is surrounded with groups of figures carved in stone, and rising out of stone flames, and I told her that, if the reality were at all like that, I was clearly of opinion that the flames were necessary for the decent clothing of the figures. After that she managed to talk about something else.""

He took a very gloomy view of the political future.

"He viewed with alarm the growing tendency of statesmen of all parties to follow, instead of aspiring to lead and direct, public

-a tendency which he foresaw must often transfer the initiation of great measures from the wisest and best informed to those who were simply discontented with the existing order of things. He especially disliked the new name under which the broken ranks of the Tories had been rallied after the Reform Bill. Why do you talk of Conservatives?' he asked; a Conservative is only a Tory who is ashamed of himself." "

"They are apt,' he said to undervalue or ignore the teachings of history, and always dis-opinion trust any suggestion of that foresight which requires somewhat of the poetical faculty and imagination. If the " "practical men who were always inveighing against the war had had their way, Wellington would have been recalled, and Spain delivered over to France in 1810. The instinct of the English nation was right, as it often is, without knowing why; but comparatively few men, in or out of Parliament, really understood why it was certain that in the long run the Spaniards must succeed if they persevered, and why it was wise and safe for England to support them to the utmost. The greater part of the Whigs shut their eyes to the fact that the cause of the Spaniards was really the cause of national freedom and liberty. They were so charmed with the Revolution for destroying absolute monarchy, that they continued to worship it, after it had, as violent revolutions generally do, erected another and a worse tyranny.'

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Mr. Frere's chief literary occupation in Malta was, as we have already said, the translation of Aristophanes. He translated The Acharnians,' five plays in all: "The Knights," "The Birds," "The Frogs," and "The Peace." They were printed at Malta for private circulation, and were scarcely known beyond a limited circle of friends till Sir George Cornewall Lewis published considerable extracts from them in the first volume of the "Classical MuWith all his reverence for ancient un-seum," in 1814, with a critical eulogy, interrupted usage, he had little sympathy which, coming from so distinguished a with the revival of forms long obsolete. scholar and singularly cautious critic, pos

FIVING AGE.

VOL. XXIV.

1128

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