Frere succeeded to Roydon Hall and the other family estates in the eastern counties. On 12 Sept. 1816 he married Elizabeth Jemima, dowager countess of Erroll, the widow of George, fourteenth earl of Erroll, and a daughter of Joseph Blake of Ardfry, county Galway. In 1818 his wife became ill. After trying many changes of climate for the benefit of her health they went to Malta, where they took up their permanent residence. Here he amused himself with literary work, translating Aristophanes and Theognis, and learning Hebrew and Maltese. In August 1827 Canning died. Talking over the loss of his friend to his niece two years afterwards, Frere said: ‘I think twenty years ago Canning's death would have caused mine; as it is, the time seems so short, I do not feel it as I otherwise should’ (Works, i. 209). His wife died in January 1831, and in November of that year Sir Walter Scott paid him a visit. Frere still continued to reside at Malta. He died at the Pietà Valetta on 7 Jan. 1846, in the seventy-seventh year of his age, and was buried beside his wife in the English burial-ground overlooking the Quarantine Harbour. A portrait of Frere by Hoppner was exhibited in the third Loan Collection of National Portraits in 1868 (Cat. No. 235). At Holland House, where he was a frequent visitor, there is a portrait of him by Arthur Shee, as well as a bust executed by Chantrey in 1817. 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. His metrical version of the ‘Ode on Æthelstan's Victory’ appeared in the second edition of Ellis's ‘Specimens of Early English Poets’ (1801, i. 32–4). It was written by Frere when at Eton, and is a remarkable example of the skilful adoption of the language and style of another period. Mackintosh, in his ‘History of England,’ says that it ‘is a double imitation, unmatched, perhaps, in literary history, in which the writer gave an earnest of that faculty of catching the peculiar genius and preserving the characteristic manner of his original which, though the specimens of it be too few, places him alone among English translators’ (i. 50). Scott, too, declares, in his ‘Essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad,’ that it was the only poem he had met with ‘which, if it had been produced as ancient, could not have been detected on internal evidence’ (Poetical Works, 1830, iii. 21). Three of Frere's translations from the ‘Poem of the Cid’ were printed as an appendix to Southey's ‘Chronicle of the Cid’ (1808, pp. 437–68). In 1819 Frere formed one of Byron's ‘cursed puritanical committee’ which decided against the publication of the first canto of ‘Don Juan.’ Though one of the original projectors of the ‘Quarterly Review,’ Frere's only contribution to it was an article on ‘Mitchell's Translations of Aristophanes,’ which appeared in the number for July 1820 (pp. 474–505). It is signed ‘W,’ for Whistlecraft, and is a very early instance of a reviewer signing his contribution. Indolent, and unambitious for literary fame, Frere cared only for the appreciation of cultivated judges. Several of his productions were privately printed, and have become exceedingly rare.
He was the author of the following works: 1. ‘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’ (cantos i. and ii.), London, 1817, 8vo; second edition, London, 1818, 8vo. This revival in English poetry of the octave stanza of Pulci, Berni, and Casti attracted great attention at the time. Byron, writing to Murray from Venice in October 1817, says: ‘Mr. Whistlecraft has no greater admirer than myself. I have written a story in eighty-nine stanzas in imitation of him, called “Beppo”’ (Moore, Life, 1847, p. 369). 2. Cantos iii. and iv. (of the same work), London, 1818, 8vo. The four cantos were also published together in 1818 under the title of ‘The Monks and the Giants Prospectus and Specimen,’ &c.; fourth edition, London, 1821, 12mo; another edition, Bath, 1842, 8vo. 3. ‘Fables for Five-Years-Old,’ Malta, 1830, 12mo. 4. ‘The Frogs,’ London, 1839. Frere says: ‘The greater part of this play [‘The Frogs’] had been printed upwards of twenty years ago, having been intended for private distribution; an intention to which the writer adheres, being unwilling to cancel what had been already printed and in part distributed.’ 5. ‘Aristophanes. A Metrical Version of the Acharnians, the Knights, and the Birds, in the last of which a vein of peculiar humour and character is for the first time detected and developed’ (anon.), London, 1840, 4to. These three plays, each of which are separately paged, were privately printed for Frere at the government press in Malta in 1839, and were afterwards published by Pickering in England in 1840 under the above title. Reprinted as No. 37 of Morley's ‘Universal Library,’ London, 1886, 8vo. In Coleridge's
