FRÉRON, ÉLIE 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 écrits modernes of the abbé 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 Fréron had begun his career as one of his admirers, his attitude towards Voltaire soon changed. Fréron 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 écrits 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 Année littéraire. His death at Paris on the 10th of March 1776 is said to have been hastened by the temporary suppression of this journal. Fréron 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’Écossaise, in which the journal of Fréron is designated L’Âne littéraire. A further attack on Fréron entitled Anecdotes sur Fréron ... (1760), published anonymously, is generally attributed to Voltaire.
Fréron 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 XVIIIe siècle; Barthélemy, Les confessions de Fréron: Ch. Monselet, Fréron, ou l’illustre critique (1864); Fréron, sa vie, souvenirs, &c. (1876).
FRÉRON, 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’Année littéraire, which was continued till 1790 and edited successively by the abbés G. M. Royou and J. L. Geoffroy. On the outbreak of the revolution Fréron, 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 Fréron became the leader of the jeunesse dorée and of the Thermidorian reaction. He brought about the accusation of Fouquier-Tinville, and of J. B. Carrier, the deportation of B. Barère, 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 Mémoire historique sur la réaction 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 für 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.