John Hookham Frere, the translator of Aristophanes, was born in London, 21st May 1769, and educated at Eton and Caius College, Cambridge. He entered the Foreign Office, in 1796 was returned for [West] Looe, supported Pitt’s government, and contributed to the Anti-Jacobin. His chief piece was “The Loves of the Triangles,” a parody on Darwin’s “Loves of the Plants,” but he had a share with his schoolfellow Canning in “The Needy Knife-grinder.” Under-secretary for Foreign Affairs (1799), he was appointed envoy to Lisbon (1800), and twice minister to Spain (1802 and 1808). Recalled after the retreat to Corunna, he retired in 1821 to Malta, where he devoted himself to Greek, Hebrew, and Maltese, and died 7th January 1846. Frere’s clever mock-heroic “Specimen of an Intended National Work by William and Robert Whistlecraft” (1817) suggested its ottava rima to Byron for his “Beppo;” but his fame rests on his admirable translations of the “Acharnians,” “Knights,” “Birds,” and “Frogs” of Aristophanes.

Personal

  Frere is a slovenly fellow. His remarks on Homer, in the “Classical Journal,” prove how fine a Greek scholar he is; his “Quarterly Reviews,” how well he writes; his “Rovers, or The Double Arrangement,” what humor he possesses; and the reputation he has left in Spain and Portugal, how much better he understood their literatures than they do themselves: while, at the same time, his books left in France, in Gallicia, at Lisbon, and two or three places in England; his manuscripts, neglected and lost to himself; his manners, lazy and careless; and his conversation, equally rich and negligent, show how little he cares about all that distinguishes him in the eyes of the world. He studies as a luxury, he writes as an amusement, and conversation is a kind of sensual enjoyment to him. If he had been born in Asia, he would have been the laziest man that ever lived.

  Those who knew him most intimately soon discovered that the largest tolerance and charity were not incompatible with a thorough contempt for all that was mean and base; among other marks of true nobility of character he possessed the royal art of never humiliating one in any way inferior to himself. Meaner natures near him, while they saw and felt his superiority, tasted the luxury of feeling their own aims elevated, and of discovering a higher standard than that by which they had been accustomed to regulate their own actions. It was this quality which secured for him at one and the same time the affection of the poorest and weakest, and the respect of the best and noblest who knew him well enough to judge of his true character.

  In conversation always animated and pleasant, he yet found his chief happiness in the quiet of old books and whimsical reveries, the “inertes horæ” of the poet. His strange absences of mind were the subject of some amusing anecdotes among the few with whom he continued in habits of intercourse. He knew and humorously vindicated his own indolence, in its contrast with the angry and agitated lives of many of his political friends.

  Never could one who contemplated a literary career have been better prepared for it than Frere. The cause of his limited reputation was that he cared nothing for popular applause. He saw no advantage in fighting his way into notoriety, and preferred the appreciation of a limited number of clever men to the noisy acclamations of the many. He did everything so easily that he had not the ordinary ambition which is obliged to toil laboriously to achieve its ends. By taste, culture, and position he entered the ranks of authorship; he was in no sense a rival of the professional author. Such ideas as he had were original in conception, and elegant and refined in execution; but he sometimes exercised his talents on small and inadequate subjects. If he had been thrown upon the world without a friend he would have become a great man. His audience may be small but it is a keenly appreciative one.

General

  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.

  Tickler. “Why, whom do you call a good versifier, then?” Odoherty. “We have not many of them. Frere and Coleridge are, I think, the most perfect, being at once more scientific in their ideas of the matter than any others now alive, and also more easy and delightful in their melody which they themselves produce.”

  I have only met, in my researches into these matters, with one poem, which, if it had been produced as ancient, could not have been detected on internal evidence. It is the War Song upon the Victory at Brunnanburgh, translated from the Anglo-Saxon into Anglo-Norman, by the Right Hon. John Hookham Frere. See Ellis’s “Specimens of English Poetry,” vol. i, p. 32. The accomplished editor tells us, that this very singular poem was intended as an imitation of the style and language of the fourteenth century, and was written during the controversy occasioned by the poems attributed to Rowley. Mr. Ellis adds—“The reader will probably hear with some surprise that this singular instance of critical ingenuity was the composition of an Eton schoolboy.”

  One of the most accomplished scholars England has produced, and one whom Sir James Mackintosh has pronounced to be the first of English translators.

  Mr. Frere’s best-known original production (besides his share in the poetry of the “Anti-Jacobin”) is a poem called “The Monks and the Giants,” in the Ottava Rima stanza, and, as Southey said of it, “being an adaptation of Pulci, Berni, and Ariosto in his sportive mood.” Frere’s stanzas contain several very poetical passages, and many of great humour. The characters also of several of the leading men of the time are sketched in it with great skill and poignancy. But it offers little to interest the general reader; and it never obtained extensive popularity. It is chiefly remembered as having furnished the hint and the metrical model, on which Byron avowedly framed his far-better-known “Beppo.” It was as a translator that Hookham Frere shone to most advantage…. Frere’s renderings of passages from the old Spanish epic, the “Chronicles of the Cid,” appear to me to be the best specimens of his skill as a translator, and especially of his marvellous ear for rhythm.

  The translation is far above my praise, but as a woman privileged to avow her want of learning, it may be permitted to express the gratitude which the whole sex owes to the late illustrious scholar, who has enabled us to penetrate to the heart of one of the scholar’s deepest mysteries; and to become acquainted with something more than the name of Aristophanes.

  There are few books of its size which contain as much genuine wit, humor, and fancy, or which display greater skill in the management of both light and serious verse, or indicate fuller resources of culture. It is a fresh and unique jeu d’esprit, which exhibits a quality of cleverness as rare as it is amusing. The form and method of the poem, the structure of its verse, its swift transitions from sprightly humor to serious description or reflection, its mingling of exaggeration with sober sense, its heroi-comic vein, are all derived from the famous Italian romantic poems, especially from the “Morgante Maggiore” of Pulci, and in a less degree from the “Animali Parlanti” of Casti. It has no moral object, and does not confine itself to a single continuous narrative, but is a simple work of amusement, free in its course, according to the whim and fancy of the writer. It is the overflow of an abundant and lively spirit, restrained only by the limits imposed by a fine sense of the proprieties of humor, and a thorough acquaintance with the rules of art. Its execution displays a command of style so complete in its way that it may be called perfect…. It is a misfortune for the lovers of good letters, that all of Mr. Frere’s books are so scarce as to be practically inaccessible. No better gift could be made to the best readers than a new edition of them, together with such unpublished works, even if only fragments, as he may have left to his literary executors. Mr. Frere’s name is not to be found in the Biographical Dictionaries. If literary genius gave title to a place in their voluminous and crowded columns, few names would stand before his.

  The vein of humour in Hookham Frere, like that of his and my friend William Rose, was strongly tinged with the style of the Italian romantic poetry of the fifteenth century, that of Ariosto, Boiardo, Casti, &c. His strange poem of “Whistle-craft,” coloured in this serio-comic fashion, put at defiance all common comprehension, and was indeed very little known or read. He counted upon the saying of Lord Shaftesbury, “that it is a dull sort of wit which amuses all alike,” and in this spirit rather enjoyed, I think, the failure of his poem. His translations from Simonides, almost in the boyhood of life, show how early his powers as a poet were evoked. But Frere’s chief revelry when I knew him was in Aristophanes; and his translations of that great comic writer, though fragmentary, mark the strong hold he had got of the spirit as well as text of his author.

  Whatever differences of opinion may exist as to the capacity of John Hookham Frere as a statesman or diplomatist, there can be no question as to the scholarship and literary calibre of the friend of Canning, the author of “Monks and Giants,” the translator par excellence of Aristophanes and Theognis…. His translations of Aristophanes stand alone above all other classical translations in the English language…. There may not be in his published works much evidence of the originality which goes to the making of a first-rate poet, though none will deny to him the gifts of a bright fancy, a correct ear, an abundant flow of lyric power. His classical predilections and the bent of his humour disposed him to content himself with the praise of complete mastery of Aristophanes, and successful efforts in the region of burlesque. Referable indeed to this taste and aim are almost all of his best and happiest literary efforts. The “Monks and Giants” would not entitle him to rank high among original poets, but as an outcome of the same vein of humour which we trace in the Anti-Jacobin and in the Aristophanic free translations, they claim a place of honour amid the writings of English humorists. This in fact was his métier.

  Frere’s versions of the Aristophanic Comedy have an established reputation for spirit of rendering and mastery of metre. His translations from the “Poema del Cid,” which were printed in Southey’s “Chronicle,” have also a fine balladic lilt; but their literal fidelity to the Spanish has been lately challenged. Of his original work, the best examples are to be found in the Anti-Jacobin and the Whistlecraft fragment. He had a hand in all the great successes of the former,—notably the immortal “Needy Knife-Grinder” and the excellent imitations of Darwin and Schiller in the “Loves of the Triangles” and “The Rovers.”… Notwithstanding the cleverness and versatility of “The Monks and the Giants,” its interest was too remote and its plan too uncertain to command any but an eclectic audience.

  If the poetry of wit and cleverness were equal to the poetry of inspiration, then the right Honourable John Hookham Frere would be one of the greatest of English poets. He is the author of a jeu d’esprit which undoubtedly suggested the idea of “Don Juan” to Lord Byron, and while “The Monks and the Giants” of Frere is equal to Byron’s satiric masterpiece in brilliancy, force, and versification, it is devoid of the objectionable elements which disfigure the latter. Nor is this the only claim that Frere has to remembrance. He is so saturated with the old Greek writers that we verily breathe the Attic air as we read his pages, while his appreciation and apprehension of the ancient Saxon are nobly manifest in his translation of the Saxon poem on the “Victory of Athelstan at Brunanburgh.” Coleridge described him as one able to convince Tieck that there was amongst us a man in whom taste at its maximum had vitalised itself into productive power.

  As a diplomatist Frere is now almost forgotten, and it is only by the few that he is remembered as a brilliant wit and a sparkling writer of humorous poetry. His translations of Aristophanes cannot fail to be the most lasting memorials of his genius, and the manner in which he has successfully caught the spirit of the original comedies places him in an almost unique place as a translator.

  It is, however, by his translation of “Aristophanes” that he will retain a place in literature. It is one of the very best translations in any language, and that it will ever be surpassed by another metrical version is improbable in the extreme. The changing, many-coloured style of the incomparable satirist—the wonderful interplaying of lyric fire with lyric laughter, of bird-like song with poignant wit and riotous buffoonery—can never be more than very imperfectly reproduced by even the most consummate master of English. Nevertheless, Frere’s version is infinitely delightful to read; it is scholarly, spirited, racy in diction and richly humorous—a frolic and sparkling “revel of rhymes.” A harder task was surely never attempted by a translator of Greek or Latin poetry, and no such translator has left a happier example of difficulties boldly encountered and dexterously overcome.

  Frere stands in far closer relation than Tennant to the Italian burlesque of Pulci. His work travesties an Arthurian legend, as the “Morgante” (1843) had done the legend of Roland, and is quite without the realism of detail…. Frere shows rather accomplishment of style than strength in narrative. Many single stanzas are on a level with all but the best in “Beppo,” but the poem as a whole is wanting in organic vis.