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[Entry from Chambers’s Cyclopædia of English Literature, New Edition by David Patrick, LL.D, Vol. II; W. & R. Chambers, Limited; London and Edinburgh, 1902; p. 675-677.]

John Hookham Frere (1769-1846) was born in London of a good old East Anglian family, was the son of an accomplished antiquary, and was educated at Eton and Caius College, Cambridge. He next entered the Foreign Office, and from 1796 to 1802 was member for the Cornish pocket-borough of West Looe. Along with his old schoolfellow Canning, he gave steady support to Pitt’s government, and contributed to the Anti-Jacobon (1797-98), whose editor was Gifford, and many of whose best pieces were the conjoint work of Canning and Frere, sometimes also of Ellis. Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (1799), Frere was appointed envoy to Portugal (1800), and then twice Minister to Spain (1802-4; 1808-9), where he was much blamed for his conduct to Sir John Moore. He was recalled after the retreat to Corunna, and renounced public life, twice refusing the offer of a peerage. By his father’s death in 1807 he succeeded to the Roydon property near Diss; in 1816 he married the Dowager-Countess of Erroll; and in 1818, for her health’s sake, they settled at Malta. She died there in 1831 (ten months before Scott’s well-known meeting with Frere); and Frere himself fifteen years later. In 1817 Mr Murray published a small poetical volume under the eccentric title of 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. The world was surprised to find, under this odd disguise, a happy effort further to naturalise in English the gay ottava rima of Berni, Casti, and their imitators in Italian. The brothers Whistlecraft formed, it was quickly seen, but the mask of some scholarly wit belonging to the higher circles of society. To two cantos published in 1817 a third and fourth were added the following year. The description of Arthur and his knights at Carlisle shows the characteristic vein:

[Note -- SPOILERS-- for the full poem go HERE first!]

They looked a manly generous generation;
Beards, shoulders, eyebrows, broad, and square, and thick,
Their accents firm and loud in conversation,
Their eyes and gestures eager, sharp, and quick,
676 Shewed them prepared, on proper provocation,
To give the lie, pull noses, stab and kick;
And for that very reason, it is said,
They were so very courteous and well-bred.

In a wild valley near Carlisle, poetically described, lived a race of giants. The giants having attacked and carried off some ladies on their journey to court, the knights deem it their duty to set out in pursuit; and having overcome the oppressors, they relieve the captives from durance:

The ladies? — They were tolerably well,
At least as well as could have been expected:
Many details I must forbear to tell,
Their toilet had been very much neglected;
But by supreme good luck it so befell
That when the castle’s capture was effected,
When those vile cannibals were over-powered,
Only two fat duennas were devoured.

Near the valley of the giants was an abbey, containing fifty friars, ‘fat and good,’ long on good terms with their neighbours. The giants, naturally fond of music, would sometimes approach the sacred pile:

And oft that wild untutored race would draw,
Led by the solemn sound and sacred light
Beyond the bank, beneath a lonely shaw,
To listen all the livelong summer night,
Till deep, serene, and reverential awe
Environed them with silent calm delight,
Contemplating the minster’s midnight gleam,
Reflected from the clear and glassy stream;


But chiefly, when the shadowy moon had shed
O’er woods and waters her mysterious hue,
Their passive hearts and vacant fancies fed
With thoughts and aspirations strange and new,
Till their brute souls with inward working bred
Dark hints that in the depths of instinct grew
Subjective — not from Locke’s associations,
Nor David Hartley’s doctrine of vibrations.

Unhappily this happy state of things is broken up by the introduction of a ring of bells into the abbey, a kind of music to which the giants had an insurmountable aversion:

Meanwhile the solemn mountains that surrounded
The silent valley where the convent lay,
With tintinnabular uproar were astounded,
When the first peal burst forth at break of day:
Feeling their granite ears severely wounded,
They scarce knew what to think, or what to say;
And (though large mountains commonly conceal
Their sentiments, dissembling what they feel,


Yet) Cader-Gibbrish from his cloudy throne
To huge Loblommon gave an intimation
Of this strange rumour, with an awful tone,
Thund’ring his deep surprise and indignation;
The lesser hills, in language of their own,
Discussed the topic by reverberation;
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.

Meanwhile a monk, Brother John by name, who had opposed the introduction of the bells, has gone, in a fit of disgust with his brothers, to amuse himself with the rod at a neighbouring stream:

A mighty current, unconfined and free,
Ran wheeling round beneath the mountain’s shade,
Battering its wave-worn base; but you might see
On the near margin many a watery glade,
Becalmed beneath some little island’s lee
All tranquil, and transparent, close embayed;
Reflecting in the deep, serene and even,
Each flower and herb, and every cloud of heaven;


The painted kingfisher, the branch above her,
Stands in the steadfast mirror fixed and true;
Anon the fitful breezes brood and hover,
Fresh’ning the surface with a rougher hue;
Spreading, withdrawing, pausing, passing over,
Again returning to retire anew:
So rest and motion, in a narrow range,
Feasted the sight with joyous interchange.

Brother John becomes aware of the approach of the giants in time to run home and give the alarm; and after stout resistance by the monks, the giants at length withdraw from the scene of the action. It finally appears that the pagans have retired in order to make the attack upon the ladies which had formerly been described. The ottava rima had already been used by the Scottish poet Tennant in his Anster Fair; but it was Whistlecraft’s clever combination of absurdity and sense, burlesque and real poetry in the measure, that showed Byron what an admirable instrument it was. He wrote Beppo in imitation of Frere’s work, and imitated much more than the verse; and Don Juan was a still more masterly development of the same method and measure.

[For the full text of the wonderful mock epic of An Intended National Work, or Monks and Giants, on this site, go HERE. — Elf.Ed.]

His friends credit him with writing the greater part of The Loves of the Triangles in the Anti-Jacobin (see page 673), and with a share in The Knife-grinder as well as in The Rovers. His translation of The Battle of Brunanburh (1801) for Ellis’s Specimens was a foretaste of his wonderful skill in this way. But Frere’s most serious and permanent contribution to English literature was made in his masterly translations of the ‘Frogs,’ Acharnians,’ ‘Knights,’ and ‘Birds’ of Aristophanes, privately printed at Malta in 1839, but first made known through an article by Sir G. Cornewall Lewis in the Classical Musuem for 1847. It is universally admitted that these renderings — free versions rather than strict translations — are masterpieces of a difficult art, and in a specially difficult department — the transfusion into modern English verse, somewhat of the original type, of ancient Greek wit, humour, satire, racy 677 phraseology, ringing rhythms, and verbal felicities innumerable.

Scene from the ‘Acharnians.’

Enter a MEGARIAN with his little girls.

Megarian.  Ah, there’s the Athenian market! Heaven bless it,
I say; the welcomest sight to a Megarian.
I’ve look’d for it, and long’d for it, like a child
For its own mother. You, my daughters dear,
Disastrous offspring of a dismal sire,
List to my words; and let them sink impress’d
Upon your empty stomachs; now’s the time
That you must seek a livelihood for yourselves.
Therefore resolve at once, and answer me;
Will you be sold abroad, or starve at home?

Both.  Let us be sold, papa! — Let us be sold.

Meg.  I say so too; but who do ye think will purchase
Such useless mischievous commodities?
However, I have a notion of my own,
A true Megarian scheme; — I mean to sell ye
Disguised as pigs, with artificial pettitoes.
Here, take them, and put them on. Remember now,
Show yourselves off; do credit to your breeding,
Like decent pigs; or else, by Mercury,
If I’m obliged to take you back to Megara,
There you shall starve far worse than heretofore.
— This pair of masks, too — fasten ’em on your faces,
And crawl into the sack there on the ground.
Mind ye — Remember — you must squeak and whine,
And racket about like little roasting pigs.
— And I’ll call out for Dicæopolis!
Hoh Dicæopolis, Dicæopolis!
I say, would you please to buy some pigs of mine?

Dicæopolis.  Who ’s there? a Megarian?

Meg. [sneakingly].           Yes — we’re come to market.

Dic.  How goes it with you?

Meg.                                      We’re all like to starve.

Dic.  Well, liking is everything. If you have your liking,
That’s all in all: the likeness is a good one,
A pretty likeness! like to starve, you say.
But what else are you doing?

Meg.                                     What we’re doing?
I left our governing people all contriving
To ruin us utterly without loss of time.

Dic.  It’s the only way: it will keep you out of mischief,
Meddling and getting into scrapes.

Meg.                                                  Ay, yes.

Dic.  Well, what’s your other news? How’s corn?
What price?

Meg.  Corn? it’s above all price; we worship it.

Dic.  But salt? You’ve salt, I reckon —

Meg.                                            Salt? how should we?
Have you not seized the salt pans?

Dic.                              No! nor garlic?
Have ye not garlic?

Meg.                What do ye talk of garlic?
As if you had not wasted and destroyed it,
And grubb’d the very roots out of the ground.

Dic.  Well, what have you got then? Tell us! Can’t
       ye!

Meg.  [in the tone of a sturdy resolute lie].              Pigs! —
Pigs truly — pigs forsooth, for sacrifice.

Dic.  That’s well, let’s look at ’em.

Meg.                                        Ay, they’re handsome ones;
You may feel how heavy they are, if ye hold ’em up.

Dic.  Hey day! What’s this? What’s here?

Meg.                                                          A pig to be sure.

Dic.  Do ye say so? Where does it come from?

Meg.                                            Come? from Megara.
What, an’t it a pig?

Dic.                       No, truly, it does not seem so.

Meg.  Did you ever hear the like? Such an unaccountable
Suspicious fellow! it is not a pig, he says!
But I’ll be judged; I’ll bet ye a bushel of salt,
It’s what we call a natural proper pig.

Dic.  Perhaps it may, but it’s a human pig.

Meg.  Human! I’m human; and they’re mine, that’s all.
Whose should they be, do ye think? so far they’re human.
But come, will you hear ’em squeak?

Dic.                                                          Ay, yes, by Jove,
With all my heart.

Meg.                              Come now, pig! now ’s the time:
Remember what I told ye — squeak directly!
Squeak, can’t ye? Curse ye, what’s the matter with ye?
I’ll carry you back to Megara if you don’t.

Daugher.  Wee wée.

Meg.                 Do you hear the pig?

Dic.                                                  The pig, do ye call it?
It will be a different creature before long.

Meg.  It will take after the mother, like enough.

Dic.  Ay, but this pig won’t do for sacrifice.

Meg.  Why not? why won’t it do for sacrifice?

Dic.  Imperfect! there ’s no tail!

Meg.                      Poh, never mind;
It will have a tail in time, like all the rest.
But feel this other, just the fellow to it;
With a little further keeping, it would serve
For a pretty dainty sacrifice to Venus.

Dic.  You warrant ’em weaned? they’ll feed without
the mother?

Meg.  Without the mother or the father either.

Dic.  But what do they like to eat?

Meg.                                                  Just what ye give ’em;
You may ask ’em if you will.

Dic.                          Pig, pig!

1 Daughter.                                                  Wee wée.

Dic.  Pig, are you fond of peas?

1 Daughter.                                            Wee wée wée wée.

Dic.  Are you fond of figs?

1 Daughter.                              Wee wée wée wée wee wée.

Dic.  You little one, are you fond of figs?

2 Daughter.                                                                Wee wée.

Dic.  What a squeak was there! they’re ravenous for the figs;
Go somebody, fetch out a parcel of figs
For the little pigs! Heh, what, they’ll eat, I warrant.
Lawk there, look at ’em racketing and bustling!
How they do munch and crunch! in the name of heaven,
Why, sure they can’t have eaten ’em already!

Meg.  [Sneakingly].  Not all, there’s this one here, I
       took myself.

Dic.  Well, faith, they’re clever comical animals.
What shall I give you for ’em? What do ye ask?

Meg.  I must have a gross of onions for this here;
And the other you may take for a peck of salt.

Dic.  I’ll keep ’em; wait a moment.              [Exit

Meg.                              Heaven be praised!
O blessed Mercury, if I could but manage
To make such another bargain for my wife,
I’d do it to-morrow, or my mother either.

The Works of Frere in Verse and Prose were published, with a Memoir by his nephew, Sir Bartle Frere, in 1871.

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