years.

in public as professor extraordinary; and in 1604, at the* age of twenty-three, he obtained the ordinary professorship in the university, which office he filled during four He then took his degree of doctor, and went to the court of Philip Sigismund, duke of Brunswick Lunen-", burg, and bishop of Osnaburg, who had appointed him his principal physician. About 1622, Ernest, duke of Holstein and earl of Schawenburg, offered him the same office, with the addition of the chief medical professorship in the university which he had lately founded at Rintelor; but his patron would not permit him to accept it. This prince-bishop dying in 1623, his nephew, duke Frederic Ulric, gave Freitag the option of being his chief physician, or of resuming his professorship at Helmstadt. He continued at Osnaburg, where the new bishop retained him as his physician, and also appointed him one of his chamberlains. He also served his successor in the same capacity, but was dismissed in 1631, on account of his refusal to become a catholic. He found protection and patronage, however, under Ernest Cassinir, count of Nassau, and the counts of Bertheim, who procured for him the vacant professorship in the university of Groningen. He fulfilled this new appointment with great reputation, and continued to distinguish himself by the success of his practice till the decline of his life, which was accelerated by a complication of maladies. Dropsy, gout, gravel, and fever, terminated his life Feb. 8, 1641.

Freitag was a follower of the chemical sect, and also a partisan of the philosophy of the ancients, to which indeed he retained his attachment with so much bigotry, that no efforts of his friends could ever prevail upon him to change his opinion. He published several works. 1." Noctes Medicæ, sive de Abusu Medicinæ Tractatus," Francfort, 1616. 2. "Aurora Medicorum Galeno-chemicorum, seu de rectâ purgandi methodo è priscis sapientiæ decretis. postliminio in lucem redacta," ibid. 1630. 3. "Disputatio Medica de morbis substantiæ et cognatis quæstionibus, contra hujus temporis Novatores et Paradoxologos," Groningen, 1632. 4. "Disputatio Medica calidi innati essentiam juxta veteris Medicinæ & Philosophiæ decreta explicans, opposita Neotericorum et Novatorum Paradoxis," ibid. 1632. 5. "De Ossis natura et medicamentis opiatis Liber singularis, &c." Groningen, 1632. 6. "Disputatio Medico-philosophica de Formaruin origine," Groningen, 1663. 7. "Oratio panegyrica de persona et officio Phar

macopæi," &c. ibid. 1633. 8. "Detectio et solida Re futatio novæ Secta Sennerto-Paracelsica," Amsterdam, 1636.1

FREMINET (MARTIN), a celebrated French painter;. was born at Paris in 1567. When he was studying at Rome, the suffrages of that place were divided between Michael Angelo Caravaggio, and Joseph of Arpino, called Giuseppino; and he succeeded in imitating the excellencies of both. He was a great master of design, and of the sciences connected with his art, perspective and architec-. ture; but there is a boldness in his manner, approaching to hardness, which is not always approved. Henry IV. however, appointed him his chief painter, and Louis XIII. honoured him with the order of St. Michael. He painted the cieling in the chapel at Fontainbleau, and died at Paris, June 18, 1619.2

FREMONT. See PERROT.

FRENCH (JOHN), an English physician, the son of John French, of Broughton, near Banbury in Oxfordshire, was born there in 1616, and entered New-Inn-hall, Oxford, in 1633, when he took his degrees in arts. He afterwards. studied medicine, and acted as physician to the parliamentary army, by the patronage of the Fiennes, men of great influence at that time; he was also one of the two physicians to the whole army under general Fairfax. In 1648, when the earl of Pembroke visited the university of Oxford, he was created M. D. and was about the same time physician to the Savoy, and one of the college. He went abroad afterwards as physician to the English army at.. Bulloigne, and died there in Oct, or Nov. 1657. Besides translations of some medical works from Paracelsus and Glauber, he published "The Art of Distillation," Lond. 1651, 4to.; and "The Yorkshire Spaw, or a Treatise of Four famous medicinal wells: viz. the spaw, or vitrioline well; the stinking or sulphur well; the dropping or petrifying well; and St. Magnus-well, near Knaresborow in Yorkshire. Together with the causes, vertues, and use thereof," Lond. 1652 and 1654, 12mo, republished at Halifax, 1760, 12mo.3

FRENICLE DE BESSY (BERNARD), a celebrated French mathematician of the seventeenth century, was the contemporary and companion of Des Cartes, Fermat, and the

Rees's Cyclopædia.-Manget.-Haller Bibl. Med. Pract. ? Dict. Hist.-Pilkington.-D'Argenville, vol. IV. ? Am. Os. vol. II.-Gough's Topography.

ร

FRENICLE DE BESSY.

121

other learned mathematicians of their time. He was admitted geometrician of the French academy in 1666; and died in 1675. He had many papers inserted in the ancient memoirs of the academy, of 1666, particularly in vol. V. of that collection, viz. 1. "A method of resolving problems by Exclusions." 2. "Treatise of right-angled Triangles in Numbers." 3. "Short tract on Combinations." 4. "Tables of Magic Squares." 5. "General method of making Tables of Magic Squares."-His brother NICOLAS FRENICLE, a poet of the seventeenth century, born 1600, at Paris, was counsellor to the court of the mint, and died dean of the same court, after the year 1661, leaving several children. Frenicle wrote many theatrical pieces; as "Palemon," a pastoral, 8vo; "Niobe," Svo; Niobe," Svo; "L'En-, tretien des Bergers," a pastoral, which is contained in "Les Illustres Bergers," 8vo. Also a poem, entitled, "Jesus crucifié;" a " Paraphrase on the Psalms," in verse, &c.1

FRERET (NICOLAS), an author of profound learning and considerable abilities, grossly misapplied, was born at Paris in 1688. He was bred nominally to the law, but his, inclinations and talents not being suited to that profession, he devoted himself, from an early period, to his favourite studies of chronology and history. At twenty-five he was admitted into the academy of inscriptions, where he produced at the same time "A Discourse on the Origin of, the French." This treatise, at once bold and learned, added to some indiscreet conversations, occasioned his being confined in the Bastille. In his confinement, he, could obtain no book but the dictionary of Bayle, which. he consequently read so earnestly as almost to learn it by heart. He imbibed, at the same time, the scepticism of Bayle, and even went beyond him in the grossness and. impudence of his infidel sentiments, as clearly appears by. some of his writings. These were, 1. "Letters of Thrasybulus to Leucippe," in which atheism is reduced to a system. 2. “Examination of the Apologists for Christianity," a posthumous work (not published till 1767), no less ob-. noxious than the other. Besides these, he was the author of, 3. Several very learned memoirs in the volumes of the academy, to which his name is prefixed; and a few light publications of no consequence. He died in 1749, in his

1 Moreri.-Dict. Hist,Hutton's Dictionary.

61st year.

His works were revived afterwards, and eagerly disseminated by Voltaire and his associates in their hostilities against religion and morals.'

FRERON (ELIE CATHERINE), a French journalist, generally known for having been the constant object of the satire of Voltaire, was born at Quimper, in 1719. His talents were considerable, and he cultivated them in the society of the Jesuits, under fathers Brumoy and Bougeant. In 1739, on some disgust, he quitted the Jesuits, and for a time assisted the abbé des Fontaines in his periodical publications. He then published several critical works on his own account, which were generally admired, but sometimes suppressed by authority. His "Letters on certain writings of the time" began to be published in 1749, and were extended, with some interruptions, to 13 volumes. In 1754 he began his "Année Littéraire," and published in that year 7 volumes of it; and afterwards 8 volumes every year as long as he lived, which was till 1776. In this work, Fréron, who was a zealous enemy of the modern philosophy, attacked Voltaire with spirit. He represented him as a skilful plagiary; as a poet, brilliant indeed, but inferior to Corneille, Racine, and Boileau; as an elegant, but inaccurate historian; and rather the tyrant than the king of literature. A great part of this Voltaire could bear with fortitude; but a very skilful and victorious attack upon a bad comedy, "La Femme qui a raison," drove him beyond all bounds of patience; and henceforward his pen was constantly in motion against Fréron, whose very name at any time would put him in a rage, nor was Fréron more a favourite with the encyclopedists, whose principles. he exposed.

Fréron, though very skilful in his criticisms, and of uncommon abilities (as Voltaire himself confessed before he was irreconcileably provoked) suffered by the perpetual hostilities of an antagonist so high in reputation. His "Année Littéraire," being constantly accused by Voltaire of partiality, began to be suspected, and.the sale in some measure decreased. In foreign countries his talents were not well understood. He is the hero of Voltaire's Dunciad, and nothing more is known about him. He was, in truth, a man of great natural genius and liveliness, with a correct taste, acute powers of discrimination, and a pe

1 Dict. Hist.

culiar talent of entertaining his reader, while he pointed out the faults of a work. He had an active zeal against false philosophy, innovation, and affectation, and was steadily attached to what he considered as sound principles. In private life he was easy and entertaining. Such were the real talents of this formidable journalist. It must be owned, also, that he had his partialities; that he was sometimes too precipitate in his judgments, and too severe in his censures. Too strong a resentment of injustice sometimes rendered him unjust. His language also was sometimes over-refined, though always perfectly pure. The academies of Angers, Montauban, Nancy, Marseilles, Caen, Arrai, and the Arcadi at Rome, were eager to have him enrolled among their members. He died in March 1776, at the age of fifty-seven.

Besides his periodical publications, Fréron left several works. 1. "Miscellanies," in 3 vols. comprising several poems, to which it has only been objected that they are rather over-polished. 2. "Les Vrais Plaisirs," or the loves' of Venus and Adonis ; elegantly translated from Marino. 3. Part of a translation of Lucretius. He also superintended and retouched Beaumelle's critical commentary on the Henriade, and assisted in several literary works. His son, STANISLAUS FRERON, was one of the most active accomplices in the atrocities which disgraced the French revolution, and appears to have had no higher ambition than to rival Marat and Robespierre in cruelty. He died at St. Domingo in 1802.1

FRESNAYE (JOHN VAUQUELIN DE LA), an early poet of France, father of the celebrated Iveteaux, and the first who wrote satires in French, and an Art of Poetry, was born of a noble family at Fresnaye, near Falaise, in 1534. He was bred a lawyer, and became the king's advocate for the bailliage of Caen, and afterwards lieutenantgeneral and president of that city, where he died at the age of seventy-two, in 1606. He wrote, 1. "Satires," which though esteemed less strong than those of Regnier, and less witty than those of Boileau, have truth and nature, and contain simple narratives, the style of which has something pleasing. 2. "The Art of Poetry." Copious specimens of this performance may be seen in the notes of St. Marc, on Boileau's Art of Poetry. It has consider

1 Dict. Hist.