[1] The organization of the new government was largely the work of E.
N. Roume (b. 1858), governor-general 1902-1907, an able and energetic
official, formerly director of Asian affairs at the colonial
ministry.
FRENTANI, one of the ancient Samnite tribes which formed an independent
community on the east coast of Italy. They entered the Roman alliance
after their capital, Frentrum, was taken by the Romans in 305 or 304 B.C.
(Livy ix. 16. 45). This town either changed its name or perished some
time after the middle of the 3rd century B.C., when it was issuing coins
of its own with an Oscan legend. The town Larinum, which belonged to the
same people (Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ iii. 103), became latinized before 200
B.C., as its coins of that epoch bear a legend--LARINOR(VM)--which cannot
reasonably be treated as anything but Latin. Several Oscan inscriptions
survive from the neighbourhood of Vasto (anc. _Histonium_), which was in
the Frentane area.
On the forms of the name, and for further details see R. S. Conway,
_Italic Dialects_, p. 206 ff and p. 212: for the coins id. No.
195-196.
FREPPEL, CHARLES EMILE (1827-1891), French bishop and politician, was
born at Oberehnheim (Obernai), Alsace, on the 1st of June 1827. He was
ordained priest in 1849 and for a short time taught history at the
seminary of Strassburg, where he had previously received his clerical
training. In 1854 he was appointed professor of theology at the
Sorbonne, and became known as a successful preacher. He went to Rome in
1869, at the instance of Pius IX., to assist in the steps preparatory to
the promulgation of the dogma of papal infallibility. He was consecrated
bishop of Angers in 1870. During the Franco-German war Freppel organized
a body of priests to minister to the French prisoners in Germany, and
penned an eloquent protest to the emperor William I. against the
annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. In 1880 he was elected deputy for Brest
and continued to represent it until his death. Being the only priest in
the Chamber of Deputies since the death of Dupanloup, he became the
chief parliamentary champion of the Church, and, though no orator, was a
frequent speaker. On all ecclesiastical affairs Freppel voted with the
Royalist and Catholic party, yet on questions in which French colonial
prestige was involved, such as the expedition to Tunis, Tong-King,
Madagascar (1881, 1883-85), he supported the government of the day. He
always remained a staunch Royalist and went so far as to oppose Leo
XIII.'s policy of conciliating the Republic. He died at Angers on the
12th of December 1891. Freppel's historical and theological works form
30 vols., the best known of which are: _Les Peres apostoliques et leur
epoque_ (1859); _Les Apologistes chretiens au II^e siecle_ (2 vols.,
1860); _Saint Irenee et l'eloquence chretienne dans la Gaule aux deux
premiers siecles_ (1861); _Tertullien_ (2 vols., 1863); _Saint Cyprien
et l'Eglise d'Afrique_ (1864); _Clement d'Alexandrie_ (1865); _Origene_
(2 vols., 1867).
There are interesting lives by E. Cornut (Paris, 1893) and F.
Charpentier (Angers, 1904).
FRERE, SIR HENRY BARTLE EDWARD (1815-1884), British administrator, born
at Clydach in Brecknockshire, on the 29th of March 1815, was the son of
Edward Frere, a member of an old east county family, and a nephew of
John Hookham Frere, of _Anti-Jacobin_ and _Aristophanes_ fame. After
leaving Haileybury, Bartle Frere was appointed a writer in the Bombay
civil service in 1834, and went out to India by way of Egypt, crossing
the Red Sea in an open boat from Kosseir to Mokha, and sailing thence to
Bombay in an Arab dhow. Having passed his examination in the native
languages, he was appointed assistant collector at Poona in 1835. There
he did valuable work and was in 1842 chosen as private secretary to Sir
George Arthur, governor of Bombay. Two years later he became political
resident at the court of the rajah of Satara, where he did much to
benefit the country by the development of its communications. On the
rajah's death in 1848 he administered the province both before and after
its formal annexation in 1849. In 1850 he was appointed chief
commissioner of Sind, and took ample advantage of the opportunities
afforded him of developing the province. He pensioned off the
dispossessed amirs, improved the harbour at Karachi, where he also
established municipal buildings, a museum and barracks, instituted
fairs, multiplied roads, canals and schools.
Returning to India in 1857 after a well-earned rest, Frere was greeted
at Karachi with news of the mutiny. His rule had been so successful that
he felt he could answer for the internal peace of his province. He
therefore sent his only European regiment to Multan, thus securing that
strong fortress against the rebels, and sent further detachments to aid
Sir John Lawrence in the Punjab. The 178 British soldiers who remained
in Sind proved sufficient to extinguish such insignificant outbreaks as
occurred. His services were fully recognized by the Indian authorities,
and he received the thanks of both houses of parliament and was made
K.C.B. He became a member of the viceroy's council in 1859, and was
especially serviceable in financial matters. In 1862 he was appointed
governor of Bombay, where he effected great improvements, such as the
demolition of the old ramparts, and the erection of handsome public
offices upon a portion of the space, the inauguration of the university
buildings and the improvement of the harbour. He established the Deccan
College at Poona, as well as a college for instructing natives in civil
engineering. The prosperity--due to the American Civil War--which
rendered these developments possible brought in its train a speculative
mania, which led eventually to the disastrous failure of the Bombay Bank
(1866), an affair in which, from neglecting to exercise such means of
control as he possessed, Frere incurred severe and not wholly undeserved
censure. In 1867 he returned to England, was made G.C.S.I., and received
honorary degrees from Oxford and Cambridge; he was also appointed a
member of the Indian council.
In 1872 he was sent by the foreign office to Zanzibar to negotiate a
treaty with the sultan, Seyyid Burghash, for the suppression of the
slave traffic. In 1875 he accompanied the prince of Wales to Egypt and
India. The tour was beyond expectation successful, and to Frere, from
Queen Victoria downwards, came acknowledgments of the service he had
rendered in piloting the expedition. He was asked by Lord Beaconsfield
to choose between being made a baronet or G.C.B. He chose the former,
but the queen bestowed both honours upon him. But the greatest service
that Frere undertook on behalf of his country was to be attempted not in
Asia, but in Africa. Sir Bartle landed at Cape Town as high commissioner
of South Africa on the 31st of March 1877. He had been chosen by Lord
Carnarvon in the previous October as the statesman most capable of
carrying his scheme of confederation into effect, and within two years
it was hoped that he would be the first governor of the South African
Dominion. He went out in harmony with the aims and enthusiasm of his
chief, "hoping to crown by one great constructive effort the work of a
bright and noble life." In this hope he was disappointed. As he stated
at the close of his high commissionership, a great mistake seemed to
have been made in trying to hasten what could only result from natural
growth, and the state of South Africa during Frere's tenure of office
was inimical to such growth.
Discord or a policy of blind drifting seemed to be the alternatives
presented to Frere upon his arrival at the Cape. He chose the former as
the less dangerous, and the first year of his sway was marked by a
Kaffir war on the one hand and by a rupture with the Cape
(Molteno-Merriman) ministry on the other. The Transkei Kaffirs were
subjugated early in 1878 by General Thesiger (the 2nd Lord Chelmsford)
and a small force of regular and colonial troops. The constitutional
difficulty was solved by Frere dismissing his obstructive cabinet and
entrusting the formation of a ministry to Mr (afterwards Sir) Gordon
Sprigg. Frere emerged successfully from a year of crisis, but the
advantage was more than counterbalanced by the resignation of Lord
Carnarvon early in 1878, at a time when Frere required the steadiest and
most unflinching support. He had reached the conclusion that there was a
widespread insurgent spirit pervading the natives, which had its focus
and strength in the celibate military organization of Cetywayo and in
the prestige which impunity for the outrages he had committed had gained
for the Zulu king in the native mind. That organization and that evil
prestige must be put an end to, if possible by moral pressure, but
otherwise by force. Frere reiterated these views to the colonial office,
where they found a general acceptance. When, however, Frere undertook
the responsibility of forwarding, in December 1878, an ultimatum to
Cetywayo, the home government abruptly discovered that a native war in
South Africa was inopportune and raised difficulties about
reinforcements. Having entrusted to Lord Chelmsford the enforcement of
the British demands, Frere's immediate responsibility ceased. On the
11th of January 1879 the British troops crossed the Tugela, and fourteen
days later the disaster of Isandhlwana was reported; and Frere, attacked
and censured in the House of Commons, was but feebly defended by the
government. Lord Beaconsfield, it appears, supported Frere; the majority
of the cabinet were inclined to recall him. The result was the
unsatisfactory compromise by which he was censured and begged to stay
on. Frere wrote an elaborate justification of his conduct, which was
adversely commented on by the colonial secretary (Sir Michael Hicks
Beach), who "did not see why Frere should take notice of attacks; and as
to the war, all African wars had been unpopular." Frere's rejoinder was
that no other sufficient answer had been made to his critics, and that
he wished to place one on record. "Few may now agree with my view as to
the necessity of the suppression of the Zulu rebellion. Few, I fear, in
this generation. But unless my countrymen are much changed, they will
some day do me justice. I shall not leave a name to be permanently
dishonoured."
The Zulu trouble and the disaffection that was brewing in the Transvaal
reacted upon each other in the most disastrous manner. Frere had borne
no part in the actual annexation of the Transvaal, which was announced
by Sir Theophilus Shepstone a few days after the high commissioner's
arrival at Cape Town. The delay in giving the country a constitution
afforded a pretext for agitation to the malcontent Boers, a rapidly
increasing minority, while the reverse at Isandhlwana had lowered
British prestige. Owing to the Kaffir and Zulu wars Sir Bartle had
hitherto been unable to give his undivided attention to the state of
things in the Transvaal. In April 1879 he was at last able to visit that
province, and the conviction was forced upon him that the government had
been unsatisfactory in many ways. The country was very unsettled. A
large camp, numbering 4000 disaffected Boers, had been formed near
Pretoria, and they were terrorizing the country. Frere visited them
unarmed and practically alone. Even yet all might have been well, for he
won the Boers' respect and liking. On the condition that the Boers
dispersed, Frere undertook to present their complaints to the British
government, and to urge the fulfilment of the promises that had been
made to them. They parted with mutual good feeling, and the Boers did
eventually disperse--on the very day upon which Frere received the
telegram announcing the government's censure. He returned to Cape Town,
and his journey back was in the nature of a triumph. But bad news
awaited him at Government House--on the 1st of June 1879 the prince
imperial had met his death in Zululand--and a few hours later Frere
heard that the government of the Transvaal and Natal, together with the
high commissionership in the eastern part of South Africa, had been
transferred from him to Sir Garnet Wolseley.
When Gladstone's ministry came into office in the spring of 1880, Lord
Kimberley had no intention of recalling Frere. In June, however, a
section of the Liberal party memorialized Gladstone to remove him, and
the prime minister weakly complied (1st August 1880). Upon his return
Frere replied to the charges relating to his conduct respecting
Afghanistan as well as South Africa, previously preferred in Gladstone's
Midlothian speeches, and was preparing a fuller vindication when he died
at Wimbledon from the effect of a severe chill on the 29th of May 1884.
He was buried in St Paul's, and in 1888 a statue of Frere upon the
Thames embankment was unveiled by the prince of Wales. Frere edited the
works of his uncle, Hookham Frere, and the popular story-book, _Old
Deccan Days_, written by his daughter, Mary Frere. He was three times
president of the Royal Asiatic Society.
His _Life and Correspondence_, by John Martineau, was published in
1895. For the South African anti-confederation view, see P. A.
Molteno's _Life and Times of Sir John Charles Molteno_ (2 vols.,
London 1900). See also SOUTH AFRICA: _History_.
FRERE, JOHN HOOKHAM (1769-1846), English diplomatist and author, was
born in London on the 21st of May 1769. His father, John Frere, a
gentleman of a good Suffolk family, had been educated at Caius College,
Cambridge, and would have been senior wrangler in 1763 but for the
redoubtable competition of Paley; his mother, daughter of John Hookham,
a rich London merchant, was a lady of no small culture, accustomed to
amuse her leisure with verse-writing. His father's sister Eleanor, who
married Sir John Fenn (1739-1794), the learned editor of the _Paston
Letters_, wrote various educational works for children under the
pseudonyms "Mrs Lovechild" and "Mrs Teachwell." Young Frere was sent to
Eton in 1785, and there began an intimacy with Canning which 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 Grenville, and sat from
1796 to 1802 as member of parliament for the close borough of West Looe
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_, edited by
Gifford. He contributed, in collaboration with Canning, "The Loves of
the Triangles," a clever parody of Darwin's "Loves of the Plants," "The
Needy Knife-Grinder" and "The Rovers." 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 in September 1802 he was transferred to Madrid, where he
remained for two years. He was recalled on account of a personal
disagreement he had with the duke of Alcudia, but the ministry showed
its approval of his action by a pension of L1700 a year. He was made a
member of the privy council in 1805; in 1807 he was appointed
plenipotentiary at Berlin, but the mission was abandoned, and Frere was
again sent to Spain in 1808 as plenipotentiary to the Central Junta. The
condition of Spain rendered his position a very responsible and
difficult one. 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 Portgual 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 recalled, and the
marquess of Wellesley was appointed in his place.
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 literature, 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. He died at the Pieta Valetta on the 7th of
January 1846. Frere's literary reputation now rests entirely upon his
spirited verse translations of Aristophanes, which remain in many ways
unrivalled. 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.
Cornewall Lewis in the _Classical Museum_ for 1847. They were followed
some time after by _Theognis Restitutus, or the personal history of the
poet Theognis, reduced from an analysis of his existing fragments_. In
1817 he published a mock-heroic Arthurian poem entitled _Prospectus 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_. William Tennant in _Anster Fair_ had used
the _ottava rima_ as a vehicle for semi-burlesque poetry five years
earlier, but Frere's experiment is interesting because Byron borrowed
from it the measure that he brought to perfection in _Don Juan_.
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 Gabrielle Festing, _J. H. Frere and his Friends_
(1899).
FRERE, PIERRE EDOUARD (1819-1886), French painter, studied under
Delaroche, entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1836 and exhibited first
at the Salon in 1843. The marked sentimental tendency of his art makes
us wonder at Ruskin's enthusiastic eulogy which finds in Frere's work
"the depth of Wordsworth, the grace of Reynolds, and the holiness of
Angelico." What we can admire in his work is his accomplished
craftsmanship and the intimacy and tender homeliness of his conception.
Among his chief works are the two paintings, "Going to School" and
"Coming from School," "The Little Glutton" (his first exhibited picture)
and "_L'Exercice_" (Mr Astor's collection). A journey to Egypt in 1860
resulted in a small series of Orientalist subjects, but the majority of
Frere's paintings deal with the life of the kitchen, the workshop, the
dwellings of the humble, and mainly with the pleasures and little
troubles of the young, which the artist brings before us with humour and
sympathy. He was one of the most popular painters of domestic genre in
the middle of the 19th century.
FRERE-ORBAN, HUBERT JOSEPH WALTHER (1812-1896), Belgian statesman, was
born at Liege on the 24th of April 1812. His family name was Frere, to
which on his marriage he added his wife's name of Orban. After studying
law in Paris, he practised as a barrister at Liege, took a prominent
part in the Liberal movement, and in June 1847 was returned to the
Chamber as member for Liege. In August of the same year he was appointed
minister of public works in the Rogier cabinet, and from 1848 to 1852
was minister of finance. He founded the Banque Nationale and the Caisse
d'Epargne, abolished the newspaper tax, reduced the postage, and
modified the customs duties as a preliminary to a decided free-trade
policy. The Liberalism of the cabinet, in which Frere-Orban exercised an
influence hardly inferior to that of Rogier, was, however, distasteful
to Napoleon III. Frere-Orban, to facilitate the negotiations for a new
commercial treaty, conceded to France a law of copyright, which proved
highly unpopular in Belgium, and he resigned office, soon followed by
the rest of the cabinet. His work _La Mainmorte et la charite_
(1854-1857), published under the pseudonym of "Jean van Damme,"
contributed greatly to restore his party to power in 1857, when he again
became minister of finance. He now embodied his free-trade principles in
commercial treaties with England and France, and abolished the _octroi_
duties and the tolls on the national roads. He resigned in 1861 on the
gold question, but soon resumed office, and in 1868 succeeded Rogier as
prime minister. In 1869 he defeated the attempt of France to gain
control of the Luxemburg railways, but, despite this service to his
country, fell from power at the elections of 1870. He returned to office
in 1878 as president of the council and foreign minister. He provoked
the bitter opposition of the Clerical party by his law of 1879
establishing secular primary education, and in 1880 went so far as to
break off diplomatic relations with the Vatican. He next found himself
at variance with the Radicals, whose leader, Janson, moved the
introduction of universal suffrage. Frere-Orban, while rejecting the
proposal, conceded an extension of the franchise (1883); but the
hostility of the Radicals, and the discontent caused by a financial
crisis, overthrew the government at the elections of 1884. Frere-Orban
continued to take an active part in politics as leader of the Liberal
opposition till 1894, when he failed to secure re-election. He died at
Brussels on the 2nd of January 1896. Besides the work above mentioned,
he published _La Question monetaire_ (1874); _La Question monetaire en
Belgique_ in 1889; _Echange de vues entre MM. Frere-Orban et E. de
Laveleye_ (1890); and _La Revision constitutionnelle en Belgique et ses
consequences_ (1894). He was also the author of numerous pamphlets,
among which may be mentioned his last work, _La Situation presente_
(1895).
FRERET, NICOLAS (1688-1749), French scholar, was born at Paris on the
15th of February 1688. His father was _procureur_ to the parlement of
Paris, and destined him to the profession of the law. His first tutors
were the historian Charles Rollin and Father Desmolets (1677-1760).
Amongst his early studies history, chronology and mythology held a
prominent place. To please his father he studied law and began to
practise at the bar; but the force of his genius soon carried him into
his own path. At nineteen he was admitted to a society of learned men
before whom he read memoirs on the religion of the Greeks, on the
worship of Bacchus, of Ceres, of Cybele and of Apollo. He was hardly
twenty-six years of age when he was admitted as pupil to the Academy of
Inscriptions. One of the first memoirs which he read was a learned and
critical discourse, _Sur l'origine des Francs_ (1714). He maintained
that the Franks were a league of South German tribes and not, according
to the legend then almost universally received, a nation of free men
deriving from Greece or Troy, who had kept their civilization intact in
the heart of a barbarous country. These sensible views excited great
indignation in the Abbe Vertot, who denounced Freret to the government
as a libeller of the monarchy. A _lettre de cachet_ was issued, and
Freret was sent to the Bastille. During his three months of confinement
he devoted himself to the study of the works of Xenophon, the fruit of
which appeared later in his memoir on the _Cyropaedia_. From the time of
his liberation in March 1715 his life was uneventful. In January 1716 he
was received associate of the Academy of Inscriptions, and in December
1742 he was made perpetual secretary. He worked without intermission
for the interests of the Academy, not even claiming any property in his
own writings, which were printed in the _Recueil de l'academie des
inscriptions_. The list of his memoirs, many of them posthumous,
occupies four columns of the _Nouvelle Biographie generale_. They treat
of history, chronology, geography, mythology and religion. Throughout he
appears as the keen, learned and original critic; examining into the
comparative value of documents, distinguishing between the mythical and
the historical, and separating traditions with an historical element
from pure fables and legends. He rejected the extreme pretensions of the
chronology of Egypt and China, and at the same time controverted the
scheme of Sir Isaac Newton as too limited. He investigated the mythology
not only of the Greeks, but of the Celts, the Germans, the Chinese and
the Indians. He was a vigorous opponent of the theory that the stories
of mythology may be referred to historic originals. He also suggested
that Greek mythology owed much to the Phoenicians and Egyptians. He was
one of the first scholars of Europe to undertake the study of the
Chinese language; and in this he was engaged at the time of his
committal to the Bastille. He died in Paris on the 8th of March 1749.
Long after his death several works of an atheistic character were
falsely attributed to him, and were long believed to be his. The most
famous of these spurious works are the _Examen critique des
apologistes de la religion chretienne_ (1766), and the _Lettre de
Thrasybule a Leucippe_, printed in London about 1768. A very defective
and inaccurate edition of Freret's works was published in 1796-1799. A
new and complete edition was projected by Champollion-Figeac, but of
this only the first volume appeared (1825). It contains a life of
Freret. His manuscripts, after passing through many hands, were
deposited in the library of the Institute. The best account of his
works is "Examen critique des ouvrages composes par Freret" in C. A.
Walckenaer's _Recueil des notices_, &c. (1841-1850). See also
Querard's _France litteraire_.
FRERON, ELIE CATHERINE (1719-1776), French critic and controversialist,
was born at Quimper in 1719. He was educated by the Jesuits, and made
such rapid progress in his studies that before the age of twenty he was
appointed professor at the college of Louis-le-Grand. He became a
contributor to the _Observations sur les ecrits modernes_ of the abbe
Guyot Desfontaines. The very fact of his collaboration with
Desfontaines, one of Voltaire's bitterest enemies, was sufficient to
arouse the latter's hostility, and although Freron had begun his career
as one of his admirers, his attitude towards Voltaire soon changed.
Freron in 1746 founded a similar journal of his own, entitled _Lettres
de la Comtesse de_.... It was suppressed in 1749, but he immediately
replaced it by _Lettres sur quelques ecrits de ce temps_, which, with
the exception of a short suspension in 1752, on account of an attack on
the character of Voltaire, was continued till 1754, when it was
succeeded by the more ambitious _Annee litteraire_. His death at Paris
on the 10th of March 1776 is said to have been hastened by the temporary
suppression of this journal. Freron is now remembered solely for his
attacks on Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists, and by the retaliations
they provoked on the part of Voltaire, who, besides attacking him in
epigrams, and even incidentally in some of his tragedies, directed
against him a virulent satire, _Le Pauvre diable_, and made him the
principal personage in a comedy _L'Ecossaise_, in which the journal of
Freron is designated _L'Ane litteraire_. A further attack on Freron
entitled _Anecdotes sur Freron_ ... (1760), published anonymously, is
generally attributed to Voltaire.
Freron was the author of _Ode sur la bataille de Fontenoy_ (1745);
_Histoire de Marie Stuart_ (1742, 2 vols.); and _Histoire de l'empire
d'Allemagne_, (1771, 8 vols.). See Ch. Nisard, _Les Ennemis de
Voltaire_ (1853); Despois, _Journalistes et journaux du XVIII^e
siecle_; Barthelemy, _Les confessions de Freron_: Ch. Monselet,
_Freron, ou l'illustre critique_ (1864); _Freron, sa vie, souvenirs_,
&c. (1876).
FRERON, LOUIS MARIE STANISLAS (1754-1802), French revolutionist, son of
the preceding, was born at Paris on the 17th of August 1754. His name
was, on the death of his father, attached to _L'Annee litteraire_, which
was continued till 1790 and edited successively by the abbes G. M. Royou
and J. L. Geoffroy. On the outbreak of the revolution Freron, who was a
schoolfellow of Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins, established the
violent journal _L'Orateur du peuple_. Commissioned, along with Barras
in 1793, to establish the authority of the convention at Marseilles and
Toulon, he distinguished himself in the atrocity of his reprisals, but
both afterwards joined the Thermidoriens, and Freron became the leader
of the _jeunesse doree_ and of the Thermidorian reaction. He brought
about the accusation of Fouquier-Tinville, and of J. B. Carrier, the
deportation of B. Barere, and the arrest of the last _Montagnards_. He
made his paper the official journal of the reactionists, and being sent
by the Directory on a mission of peace to Marseilles he published in
1796 _Memoire historique sur la reaction royale et sur les malheurs du
midi_. He was elected to the council of the Five Hundred, but not
allowed to take his seat. Failing as suitor for the hand of Pauline
Bonaparte, one of Napoleon's sisters, he went in 1799 as commissioner to
Santo Domingo and died there in 1802. General V. M. Leclerc, who had
married Pauline Bonaparte, also received a command in Santo Domingo in
1801, and died in the same year as his former rival.
FRESCO (Ital. for _cool_, "fresh"), a term introduced into English, both
generally (as in such phrases as _al fresco_, "in the fresh air"), and
more especially as a technical term for a sort of mural painting on
plaster. In the latter sense the Italians distinguished painting _a
secco_ (when the plaster had been allowed to dry) from _a fresco_ (when
it was newly laid and still wet). The nature and history of
fresco-painting is dealt with in the article PAINTING.
FRESCOBALDI, GIROLAMO (1583-1644), Italian musical composer, was born in
1583 at Ferrara. Little is known of his life except that he studied
music under Alessandro Milleville, and owed his first reputation to his
beautiful voice. He was organist at St Peter's in Rome from 1608 to
1628. According to Baini no less than 30,000 people flocked to St
Peter's on his first appearance there. On the 20th of November 1628 he
went to live in Florence, becoming organist to the duke. From December
1633 to March 1643 he was again organist at St Peter's. But in the last
year of his life he was organist in the parish church of San Lorenzo in
Monte. He died on the 2nd of March 1644, being buried at Rome in the
Church of the Twelve Apostles. Frescobaldi also excelled as a teacher,
Frohberger being the most distinguished of his pupils. Frescobaldi's
compositions show the consummate art of the early Italian school, and
his works for the organ more especially are full of the finest devices
of fugal treatment. He also wrote numerous vocal compositions, such as
canzone, motets, hymns, &c., a collection of madrigals for five voices
(Antwerp, 1608) being among the earliest of his published works.
FRESENIUS, KARL REMIGIUS (1818-1897), German chemist, was born at
Frankfort-on-Main on the 28th of December 1818. After spending some time
in a pharmacy in his native town, he entered Bonn University in 1840,
and a year later migrated to Giessen, where he acted as assistant in
Liebig's laboratory, and in 1843 became assistant professor. In 1845 he
was appointed to the chair of chemistry, physics and technology at the
Wiesbaden Agricultural Institution, and three years later he became the
first director of the chemical laboratory which he induced the Nassau
government to establish at that place. Under his care this laboratory
continuously increased in size and popularity, a school of pharmacy
being added in 1862 (though given up in 1877) and an agricultural
research laboratory in 1868. Apart from his administrative duties
Fresenius occupied himself almost exclusively with analytical chemistry,
and the fullness and accuracy of his text-books on that subject (of
which that on qualitative analysis first appeared in 1841 and that on
quantitative in 1846) soon rendered them standard works. Many of his
original papers were published in the _Zeitschrift fur analytische
Chemie_, which he founded in 1862 and continued to edit till his death.
He died suddenly at Wiesbaden on the 11th of June 1897. In 1881 he
handed over the directorship of the agricultural research station to his
son, Remigius Heinrich Fresenius (b. 1847), who was trained under H.
Kolbe at Leipzig. Another son, Theodor Wilhelm Fresenius (b. 1856), was
educated at Strassburg and occupied various positions in the Wiesbaden
laboratory.
FRESHWATER, a watering place in the Isle of Wight, England, 12 m. W. by
S. of Newport by rail. Pop.(1901) 3306. It is a scattered township lying
on the peninsula west of the river Var, which forms the western
extremity of the island. The portion known as Freshwater Gate fronts the
English Channel from the strip of low-lying coast interposed between the
cliffs of the peninsula and those of the main part of the island. The
peninsula rises to 397 ft. in Headon Hill, and the cliffs are
magnificent. The western promontory is flanked on the north by the
picturesque Alum Bay, and the lofty detached rocks known as the Needles
lie off it. Farringford House in the parish was for some time the home
of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who is commemorated by a tablet in All Saints'
church and by a great cross on the high downs above the town. There are
golf links on the downs.
FRESNEL, AUGUSTIN JEAN (1788-1827), French physicist, the son of an
architect, was born at Broglie (Eure) on the 10th of May 1788. His early
progress in learning was slow, and when eight years old he was still
unable to read. At the age of thirteen he entered the Ecole Centrale in
Caen, and at sixteen and a half the Ecole Polytechnique, where he
acquitted himself with distinction. Thence he went to the Ecole des
Ponts et Chaussees. He served as an engineer successively in the
departments of Vendee, Drome and Ille-et-Villaine; but his espousal of
the cause of the Bourbons in 1814 occasioned, on Napoleon's reaccession
to power, the loss of his appointment. On the second restoration he
obtained a post as engineer in Paris, where much of his life from that
time was spent. His researches in optics, continued until his death,
appear to have been begun about the year 1814, when he prepared a paper
on the aberration of light, which, however, was not published. In 1818
he read a memoir on diffraction for which in the ensuing year he
received the prize of the Academie des Sciences at Paris. He was in 1823
unanimously elected a member of the academy, and in 1825 he became a
member of the Royal Society of London, which in 1827, at the time of his
last illness, awarded him the Rumford medal. In 1819 he was nominated a
commissioner of lighthouses, for which he was the first to construct
compound lenses as substitutes for mirrors. He died of consumption at
Ville-d'Avray, near Paris, on the 14th of July 1827.
The undulatory theory of light, first founded upon experimental
demonstration by Thomas Young, was extended to a large class of optical
phenomena, and permanently established by his brilliant discoveries and
mathematical deductions. By the use of two plane mirrors of metal,
forming with each other an angle of nearly 180 deg., he avoided the
diffraction caused in the experiment of F. M. Grimaldi (1618-1663) on
interference by the employment of apertures for the transmission of the
light, and was thus enabled in the most conclusive manner to account for
the phenomena of interference in accordance with the undulatory theory.
With D. F. J. Arago he studied the laws of the interference of polarized
rays. Circularly polarized light he obtained by means of a rhomb of
glass, known as "Fresnel's rhomb," having obtuse angles of 126 deg., and
acute angles of 54 deg. His labours in the cause of optical science
received during his lifetime only scant public recognition, and some of
his papers were not printed by the Academie des Sciences till many years
after his decease. But, as he wrote to Young in 1824, in him "that
sensibility, or that vanity, which people call love of glory" had been
blunted. "All the compliments," he says, "that I have received from
Arago, Laplace and Biot never gave me so much pleasure as the discovery
of a theoretic truth, or the confirmation of a calculation by
experiment."
See Duleau, "Notice sur Fresnel," _Revue ency._ t. xxxix.; Arago,
_OEuvres completes_, t. i.; and Dr G. Peacock, _Miscellaneous Works of
Thomas Young_, vol. i.
FRESNILLO, a town of the state of Zacatecas, Mexico, 37 m. N.W. of the
city of Zacatecas on a branch of the Santiago river. Pop. (1900) 6309.
It stands on a fertile plain between the Santa Cruz and Zacatecas
ranges, about 7700 ft. above sea-level, has a temperate climate, and is
surrounded by an agricultural district producing Indian corn and wheat.
It is a clean, well-built town, whose chief distinction is its school
of mines founded in 1853. Fresnillo has large amalgam works for the
reduction of silver ores. Its silver mines, located in the neighbouring
Proano hill, were discovered in 1569, and were for a time among the most
productive in Mexico. Since 1833, when their richest deposits were
reached, the output has greatly decreased. There is a station near on
the Mexican Central railway.
FRESNO, a city and the county-seat of Fresno county, California, U.S.A.,
situated in the San Joaquin valley (altitude about 300 ft.) near the
geographical centre of the state. Pop. (1880) 1112; (1890) 10,818;
(1900) 12,470, of whom 3299 were foreign-born and 1279 were Asiatics;
(1910 census) 24,892. The city is served by the Southern Pacific and the
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railways. The county is mainly a vast
expanse of naturally arid plains and mountains. The valley is the scene
of an extensive irrigation system, water being brought (first in
1872-1876) from King's river, 20 m. distant; in 1905 500 sq. m. were
irrigated. Fresno is in a rich farming country, producing grains and
fruit, and is the only place in America where Smyrna figs have been
grown with success; it is the centre of the finest raisin country of the
state, and has extensive vineyards and wine-making establishments. The
city's principal manufacture is preserved (dried) fruits, particularly
raisins; the value of the fruits thus preserved in 1905 was $6,942,440,
being 70.5% of the total value of the factory product in that year
($9,849,001). In 1900-1905 the factory product increased 257.9%, a ratio
of increase greater than that of any other city in the state. In the
mountains, lumbering and mining are important industries; lumber is
carried from Shaver in the mountains to Clovis on the plains by a
V-shaped flume 42 m. long, the waste water from which is ditched for
irrigation. The petroleum field of the county is one of the richest in
California. Fresno is the business and shipping centre of its county and
of the surrounding region. The county was organized in 1856. In 1872 the
railway went through, and Fresno was laid out and incorporated. It
became the county-seat in 1874 and was chartered as a city in 1885.
FRESNOY, CHARLES ALPHONSE DU (1611-1665), French painter and writer on
his art, was born in Paris, son of an apothecary. He was destined for
the medical profession, and well educated in Latin and Greek; but,
having a natural propensity for the fine arts, he would not apply to his
intended vocation, and was allowed to learn the rudiments of design
under Perrier and Vouet. At the age of twenty-one he went off to Rome,
with no resources; he drew ruins and architectural subjects. After two
years thus spent he re-encountered his old fellow-student Pierre
Mignard, and by his aid obtained some amelioration of his professional
prospects. He studied Raphael and the antique, went in 1633 to Venice,
and in 1656 returned to France. During two years he was now employed in
painting altar-pieces in the chateau of Raincy, landscapes, &c. His
death was caused by an attack of apoplexy followed by palsy; he expired
at Villiers le Bel, near Paris. He never married. His pictorial works
are few; they are correct in drawing, with something of the Caracci in
design, and of Titian in colouring, but wanting fire and expression, and
insufficient to keep his name in any eminent repute. He is remembered
now almost entirely as a writer rather than painter. His Latin poem, _De
arte graphica_, was written during his Italian sojourn, and embodied his
observations on the art of painting; it may be termed a critical
treatise on the practice of the art, with general advice to students.
The precepts are sound according to the standard of his time; the
poetical merits slender enough. The Latin style is formed chiefly on
Lucretius and Horace. This poem was first published by Mignard, and has
been translated into several languages. In 1684 it was turned into
French by Roger de Piles; Dryden translated the work into English prose;
and a rendering into verse by Mason followed, to which Sir Joshua
Reynolds added some annotations.
FRET. (1) (From O. Eng. _fretan_, a word common in various forms to
Teutonic languages; cf. Ger. _fressen_, to eat greedily), properly to
devour, hence to gnaw, so used of the slow corroding action of
chemicals, water, &c., and hence, figuratively, to chafe or irritate.
Possibly connected with this word, in sense of rubbing, is the use of
"fret" for a bar on the fingerboard of a banjo, guitar, or similar
musical instruments to mark the fingering. (2) (Of doubtful origin;
possibly from the O. Eng. _fraetive_, ornaments, but its use is
paralleled by the Fr. _frette_, trellis or lattice), network, a term
used in heraldry for an interlaced figure, but best known as applied to
the decoration used by the Greeks in their temples and vases: the Greek
fret consists of a series of narrow bands of different lengths, placed
at right angles to one another, and of great variety of design. It is an
ornament which owes its origin to woven fabrics, and is found on the
ceilings of the Egyptian tombs at Benihasan, Siout and elsewhere. In
Greek work it was painted on the abacus of the Doric capital and
probably on the architraves of their temples; when employed by the
Romans it was generally carved; the Propylaea of the temple at Damascus
and the temple at Atil being examples of the 2nd century. It was carved
in large dimensions on some of the Mexican temples, as for instance on
the palace at Mitla with other decorative bands, all of which would seem
to have been reproductions of woven patterns, and had therefore an
independent origin. It is found in China and Japan, and in the latter
country when painted on lacquer is employed as a fret-diaper, the bands
not being at right angles to one another but forming acute and obtuse
angles. In old English writers a wider signification was given to it, as
it was applied to raised patterns in plaster oh roofs or ceilings, which
were not confined to the geometrical fret but extended to the modelling
of flowers, leaves and fruit; in such cases the decoration was known as
fret-work. In France the fret is better known as the "meander."
FREUDENSTADT, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Wurttemberg, on the
right bank of the Murg, 40 m. S.W. from Stuttgart, on the railway to
Hochdorf. Pop. 7000. It has a Protestant and a Roman Catholic church,
some small manufactures of cloth, furniture, knives, nails and glass,
and is frequented as a climatic health resort. It was founded in 1599 by
Protestant refugees from Salzburg.
FREUND, WILHELM (1806-1894), German philologist and lexicographer, was
born at Kempen in the grand duchy of Posen on the 27th of January 1806.
He studied at Berlin, Breslau and Halle, and was for twenty years
chiefly engaged in private tuition. From 1855-1870 he was director of
the Jewish school at Gleiwitz in Silesia, and subsequently retired to
Breslau, where he died on the 4th of June 1894. Although chiefly known
for his philological labours, Freund took an important part in the
movement for the emancipation of his Prussian co-religionists, and the
_Judengesetz_ of 1847 was in great measure the result of his efforts.
The work by which he is best known is his _Worterbuch der lateinischen
Sprache_ (1834-1845), practically the basis of all Latin-English
dictionaries. His _Wie studiert man klassische Philologie?_ (6th ed.,
1903) and _Triennium philologicum_ (2nd ed., 1878-1885) are valuable
aids to the classical student.
FREWEN, ACCEPTED (1588-1664), archbishop of York, was born at Northiam,
in Sussex, and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, where in 1612 he
became a fellow. In 1617 and 1621 the college allowed him to act as
chaplain to Sir John Digby, ambassador in Spain. At Madrid he preached a
sermon which pleased Prince Charles, afterwards Charles I., and the
latter on his accession appointed Frewen one of his chaplains. In 1625
he became canon of Canterbury and vice-president of Magdalen College,
and in the following year he was elected president. He was
vice-chancellor of the university in 1628 and 1629, and again in 1638
and 1639. It was mainly by his instrumentality that the university plate
was sent to the king at York in 1642. Two years later he was consecrated
bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, and resigned his presidentship.
Parliament declared his estates forfeited for treason in 1652, and
Cromwell afterwards set a price on his head. The proclamations, however,
designated him Stephen Frewen, and he was consequently able to escape
into France. At the Restoration he reappeared in public, and in 1660 he
was consecrated archbishop of York. In 1661 he acted as chairman of the
Savoy conference.
FREY (Old Norse, Freyr) son of Njord, one of the chief deities in the
northern pantheon and the national god of the Swedes. He is the god of
fruitfulness, the giver of sunshine and rain, and thus the source of all
prosperity. (See TEUTONIC PEOPLES, _ad fin._)
FREYBURG [FREYBURG AN DER UNSTRUT], a town of Germany, in Prussian
Saxony, in an undulating vine-clad country on the Unstrut, 6 m. N. from
Naumberg-on-the-Saale, on the railway to Artern. Pop. 3200. It has a
parish church, a mixture of Gothic and Romanesque architecture, with a
handsome tower. It is, however, as being the "Mecca" of the German
gymnastic societies that Freyburg is best known. Here Friedrich Ludwig
Jahn (1778-1852), the father of German gymnastic exercises, lies buried.
Over his grave is built the Turnhalle, with a statue of the "master,"
while hard by it the Jahn Museum in Romanesque style, erected in 1903.
Freyburg produces sparkling wine of good quality and has some other
small manufactures. On a hill commanding the town is the castle of
Neuenburg, built originally in 1062 by Louis the Leaper, count in
Thuringia, but in its present form mainly the work of the dukes of
Saxe-Weissenfels.
FREYCINET, CHARLES LOUIS DE SAULCES DE (1828- ), French statesman, was
born at Foix on the 14th of November 1828. He was educated at the Ecole
Polytechnique, and entered the government service as a mining engineer.
In 1858 he was appointed traffic manager to the Compagnie de chemins de
fer du Midi, a post in which he gave proof of his remarkable talent for
organization, and in 1862 returned to the engineering service (in which
he attained in 1886 the rank of inspector-general). He was sent on a
number of special scientific missions, among which may be mentioned one
to England, on which he wrote a notable _Memoire sur le travail des
femmes et des enfants dans les manufactures de l'Angleterre_ (1867). On
the establishment of the Third Republic in September 1870, he offered
his services to Gambetta, was appointed prefect of the department of
Tarn-et-Garronne, and in October became chief of the military cabinet.
It was mainly his powers of organization that enabled Gambetta to raise
army after army to oppose the invading Germans. He showed himself a
strategist of no mean order; but the policy of dictating operations to
the generals in the field was not attended with happy results. The
friction between him and General d'Aurelle de Paladines resulted in the
loss of the advantage temporarily gained at Orleans, and he was
responsible for the campaign in the east, which ended in the destruction
of Bourbaki's army. In 1871 he published a defence of his administration
under the title of _La Guerre en province pendant le siege de Paris._ He
entered the Senate in 1876 as a follower of Gambetta, and in December
1877 became minister of public works in the Dufaure cabinet. He carried
a great scheme for the gradual acquisition of the railways by the state
and the construction of new lines at a cost of three milliards, and for
the development of the canal system at a further cost of one milliard.
He retained his post in the ministry of Waddington, whom he succeeded in
December 1879 as president of the council and minister for foreign
affairs. He passed an amnesty for the Communists, but in attempting to
steer a middle course on the question of the religious associations,
lost the support of Gambetta, and resigned in September 1880. In January
1882 he again became president of the council and minister for foreign
affairs. His refusal to join England in the bombardment of Alexandria
was the death-knell of French influence in Egypt. He attempted to
compromise by occupying the Isthmus of Suez, but the vote of credit was
rejected in the Chamber by 417 votes to 75, and the ministry resigned.
He returned to office in April 1885 as foreign minister in the Brisson
cabinet, and retained that post when, in January 1886, he succeeded to
the premiership. He came into power with an ambitious programme of
internal reform; but except that he settled the question of the exiled
pretenders, his successes were won chiefly in the sphere of colonial
extension. In spite of his unrivalled skill as a parliamentary
tactician, he failed to keep his party together, and was defeated on 3rd
December 1886. In the following year, after two unsuccessful attempts
to construct new ministries he stood for the presidency of the
republic; but the radicals, to whom his opportunism was distasteful,
turned the scale against him by transferring the votes to M. Sadi
Carnot.
In April 1888 he became minister of war in the Floquet cabinet--the
first civilian since 1848 to hold that office. His services to France in
this capacity were the crowning achievement of his life, and he enjoyed
the conspicuous honour of holding his office without a break for five
years through as many successive administrations--those of Floquet and
Tirard, his own fourth ministry (March 1890-February 1892), and the
Loubet and Ribot ministries. To him were due the introduction of the
three-years' service and the establishment of a general staff, a supreme
council of war, and the army commands. His premiership was marked by
heated debates on the clerical question, and it was a hostile vote on
his Bill against the religious associations that caused the fall of his
cabinet. He failed to clear himself entirely of complicity in the Panama
scandals, and in January 1893 resigned the ministry of war. In November
1898 he once more became minister of war in the Dupuy cabinet, but
resigned office on 6th May 1899. He has published, besides the works
already mentioned, _Traite de mecanique rationnelle_ (1858); _De
l'analyse infinitesimale_ (1860, revised ed., 1881); _Des pentes
economiques en chemin de fer_ (1861); _Emploi des eaux d'egout en
agriculture_ (1869); _Principes de l'assainissement des villes and
Traite d'assainissement industriel_ (1870); _Essai sur la philosophie
des sciences_ (1896); _La Question d'Egypte_ (1905); besides some
remarkable "Pensees" contributed to the _Contemporain_ under the
pseudonym of "Alceste." In 1882 he was elected a member of the Academy
of Sciences, and in 1890 to the French Academy in succession to Emile
Augier.
FREYCINET, LOUIS CLAUDE DESAULSES DE (1779-1842), French navigator, was
born at Montelimart, Drome, on the 7th of August 1779. In 1793 he
entered the French navy. After taking part in several engagements
against the British, he joined in 1800, along with his brother Louis
Henri Freycinet (1777-1840), who afterwards rose to the rank of admiral,
the expedition sent out under Captain Baudin in the "Naturaliste" and
"Geographe" to explore the south and south-west coasts of Australia.
Much of the ground already gone over by Flinders was revisited, and new
names imposed by this expedition, which claimed credit for discoveries
really made by the English navigator. An inlet on the coast of West
Australia, in 26 deg. S., is called Freycinet Estuary; and a cape near
the extreme south-west of the same coast also bears the explorer's name.
In 1805 he returned to Paris, and was entrusted by the government with
the work of preparing the maps and plans of the expedition; he also
completed the narrative, and the whole work appeared under the title of
_Voyage de decouvertes aux terres australes_ (Paris, 1807-1816). In 1817
he commanded the "Uranie," in which Arago and others went to Rio de
Janeiro, to take a series of pendulum measurements. This was only part
of a larger scheme for obtaining observations, not only in geography and
ethnology, but in astronomy, terrestrial magnetism, and meteorology, and
for the collection of specimens in natural history. On this expedition
the hydrographic operations were conducted by Louis Isidore Duperry
(1786-1865) who in 1822 was appointed to the command of the "Coquille,"
and during the next three years carried out scientific explorations in
the southern Pacific and along the coast of South America. For three
years Freycinet cruised about, visiting Australia, the Marianne,
Sandwich, and other Pacific islands, South America, and other places,
and, notwithstanding the loss of the "Uranie" on the Falkland Islands
during the return voyage, returned to France with fine collections in
all departments of natural history, and with voluminous notes and
drawings which form an important contribution to a knowledge of the
countries visited. The results of this voyage were published under
Freycinet's supervision, with the title of _Voyage autour du monde sur
les corvettes "l'Uranie" et "la Physicienne"_ in 1824-1844, in 13 quarto
volumes and 4 folio volumes of fine plates and maps. Freycinet was
admitted into the Academy of Sciences in 1825, and was one of the
founders of the Paris Geographical Society. He died at Freycinet, Drome,
on the 18th of August 1842.
FREYIA, the sister of Frey, and the most prominent goddess in Northern
mythology. Her character seems in general to have resembled that of her
brother. (See TEUTONIC PEOPLES, _ad fin._)
FREYTAG, GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH (1788-1861), German philologist, was
born at Luneburg on the 19th of September 1788. After attending school
he entered the university of Gottingen as a student of philology and
theology; here from 1811 to 1813 he acted as a theological tutor, but in
the latter year accepted an appointment as sub-librarian at Konigsberg.
In 1815 he became a chaplain in the Prussian army, and in that capacity
visited Paris. On the proclamation of peace he resigned his chaplaincy,
and returned to his researches in Arabic, Persian and Turkish, studying
at Paris under De Sacy. In 1819 he was appointed to the professorship of
oriental languages in the new university of Bonn, and this post he
continued to hold until his death on the 16th of November 1861.
Besides a compendium of Hebrew grammar (_Kurzgefasste Grammatik der
hebraischen Sprache_, 1835), and a treatise on Arabic versification
(_Darstellung der arabischen Verskunst_, 1830), he edited two volumes
of Arabic songs (_Hamasae carmina_, 1828-1852) and three of Arabic
proverbs (_Arabum proverbia_, 1838-1843). But his principal work was
the laborious and praiseworthy _Lexicon Arabico-latinum_ (Halle,
1830-1837), an abridgment of which was published in 1837.
FREYTAG, GUSTAV (1816-1895), German novelist, was born at Kreuzburg, in
Silesia, on the 13th of July 1816. After attending the gymnasium at Ols,
he studied philology at the universities of Breslau and Berlin, and in
1838 took the degree with a remarkable dissertation, _De initiis poeseos
scenicae apud Germanos_. In 1839 he settled at Breslau, as
_Privatdocent_ in German language and literature, but devoted his
principal attention to writing for the stage, and achieved considerable
success with the comedy _Die Brautfahrt, oder Kunz von der Rosen_
(1844). This was followed by a volume of unimportant poems, _In Breslau_
(1845) and the dramas _Die Valentine_ (1846) and _Graf Waldemar_ (1847).
He at last attained a prominent position by his comedy, _Die
Journalisten_ (1853), one of the best German comedies of the 19th
century. In 1847 he migrated to Berlin, and in the following year took
over, in conjunction with Julian Schmidt, the editorship of _Die
Grenzboten_, a weekly journal which, founded in 1841, now became the
leading organ of German and Austrian liberalism. Freytag helped to
conduct it until 1861, and again from 1867 till 1870, when for a short
time he edited a new periodical, _Im neuen Reich_. His literary fame was
made universal by the publication in 1855 of his novel, _Soll und
Haben_, which was translated into almost all the languages of Europe. It
was certainly the best German novel of its day, impressive by its sturdy
but unexaggerated realism, and in many parts highly humorous. Its main
purpose is the recommendation of the German middle class as the soundest
element in the nation, but it also has a more directly patriotic
intention in the contrast which it draws between the homely virtues of
the Teuton and the shiftlessness of the Pole and the rapacity of the
Jew. As a Silesian, Freytag had no great love for his Slavonic
neighbours, and being a native of a province which owed everything to
Prussia, he was naturally an earnest champion of Prussian hegemony over
Germany. His powerful advocacy of this idea in his _Grenzboten_ gained
him the friendship of the duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, whose neighbour he
had become, on acquiring the estate of Siebleben near Gotha. At the
duke's request Freytag was attached to the staff of the crown prince of
Prussia in the campaign of 1870, and was present at the battles of Worth
and Sedan. Before this he had published another novel, _Die verlorene
Handschrift_ (1864), in which he endeavoured to do for German university
life what in _Soll und Haben_ he had done for commercial life. The hero
is a young German professor, who is so wrapt up in his search for a
manuscript by Tacitus that he is oblivious to an impending tragedy in
his domestic life. The book was, however, less successful than its
predecessor. Between 1859 and 1867 Freytag published in five volumes
_Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit_, a most valuable work on
popular lines, illustrating the history and manners of Germany. In 1872
he began a work with a similar patriotic purpose, _Die Ahnen_, a series
of historical romances in which he unfolds the history of a German
family from the earliest times to the middle of the 19th century. The
series comprises the following novels, none of which, however, reaches
the level of Freytag's earlier books. (1) _Ingo und Ingraban_ (1872),
(2) _Das Nest der Zaunkonige_ (1874), (3) _Die Bruder vom deutschen
Hause_ (1875), (4) _Marcus Konig_ (1876), (5) _Die Geschwister_ (1878),
and (6) in conclusion, _Aus einer kleinen Stadt_ (1880). Among Freytag's
other works may be noticed _Die Technik des Dramas_ (1863); an excellent
biography of the Baden statesman _Karl Mathy_ (1869); an autobiography
(_Erinnerungen aus meinen Leben_, 1887); his _Gesammelte Aufsatze_,
chiefly reprinted from the _Grenzboten_ (1888); _Der Kronprinz und die
deutsche Kaiserkrone_; _Erinnerungsblatter_ (1889). He died at Wiesbaden
on the 30th of April 1895.
Freytag's _Gesammelte Werke_ were published in 22 vols. at Leipzig
(1886-1888); his _Vermischte Aufsatze_ have been edited by E. Elster,
2 vols. (Leipzig, 1901-1903). On Freytag's life see, besides his
autobiography mentioned above, the lives by C. Alberti (Leipzig, 1890)
and F. Seiler (Leipzig, 1898).