John Hookham Frere

John Hookham Frere 1769-1846, British writer and diplomat. He was a member of Parliament (1796-1802) and with his friend George Canning wrote effective parodies and satires for the political newspaper, the Anti-Jacobin. He was undersecretary of state (1799-1800) and minister to Lisbon (1800-1802) and Madrid (1802-4, 1808-9). Thereafter he devoted himself to writing, living most of the time in Malta. Frere's best work is in his metrical translations from Aristophanes ( The Acharnians, the Knights, and the Birds, 1840).

Frere, John Hookham (1769–1846), friend of Canning, an MP, and an official of the Foreign Office. While at Eton Frere wrote a translation of Brunanburh, and was one of the founders of the Microcosm periodical (1786–7). He contributed humorous verse to the Anti-Jacobin, including most of ‘The Loves of the Triangles’ (a parody of E. Darwin). He collaborated in Ellis's Specimens of the Early English Poets (1801), and in Southey's Chronicle of the Cid. He was one of the founders of the Quarterly Review in 1809, and an adviser to John Murray the publisher. He is chiefly remembered as the inspirer of the style, stanza, and idiom of Beppo and Don Juan, which Byron adapted from Frere's mock-epic on King Arthur (1817). Frere also published lively metrical versions of Aristophanes: Frogs (1839); Acharnians, Knights, and Birds in 1840; and Theognis Restitutus (1842).