died at Paris in 1776. Fréron was nephew of Malherbe. He was educated at the jesuit college of Louis le Grand. At the age of twenty was offered a professorship there, but soon after left the order, and sought his fortune for a while as an abbé in Paris; but, despairing of getting a benefice, threw himself upon journalism for support. He also wrote poems, which had their hour of reputation. Fréron was the originator in 1754 of a journal called l'Année Littéraire, which continued to be published till 1790, and of which the complete series reaches to two hundred and ninety volumes. For the first twenty-two years of its existence Fréron kept up an unceasing war against Voltaire and the Encyclopædistes, and from one of Fréron's writings a passage is quoted describing Voltaire, in which the resemblance to Pope's character of Atticus (Addison) is too close to be accidental. Voltaire introduced Fréron in a comedy on the stage under the name of Fréton, or the Wasp. In the course of the squabble, Fréron's active enemies had interest enough with the government to get the publication of his journal suspended. It was his best or his sole means of support, and he died in poverty.—J. A., D.
FRÉRON, Louis-Stanislas, son of the preceding, was born at Paris in 1765, and died at St. Domingo in 1802. He was nephew to the Abbé Royou, godson of king Stanislas, and had for his patroness Adélaide, daughter of Louis XV. While still a mere youth, he gave his name to his father's Année Littéraire, which was then really conducted by Royou and Geoffroy. Fréron, who was a contemporary of the brothers Robespierre, and of Camille Desmoulins, at the college of Louis le Grand, and who inherited the waspish violent nature of his father, from the first eagerly sided with the revolutionary party. He was chosen a member of convention, voted for the death of the king, and soon covered himself with infamy, by his horribly brutal atrocities at Marseilles and Toulon. In his diabolical extravagance he would willingly have razed these two cities to their foundations, and some of his despatches from the former were actually dated "from the town without name." Fréron subsequently moderated his violence and attached himself to the party (afterwards styled Thermidorians) who put a period to the Reign of Terror, and made way for the rise of Napoleon. Detested in his native country, he procured an appointment as sub-prefect of St. Domingo, where he died.—R. M., A.
FRESCHI, Giovanni Domenico, a musician of the seventeenth century, was born at Vicenza. He is described as a monk, and seems to have resided for a considerable time at Venice. There he published in 1660 a mass for six voices with instruments; he printed another thirteen years later; and in 1677 he appeared as a dramatic composer, and produced twelve operas between this date and 1685. One of these works, "Berenice," is said to have been represented at Padua in 1680, with fabulous magnificence.—G. A. M.
FRESCOBALDI, Girolamo, a celebrated organist, born at Ferrara in 1587, and died about 1654. He was the pupil of Millevile; and after visiting the Low Countries, Milan, &c., settled at Rome, as the organist of St. Peter's, in 1614 or 1615. He is not less celebrated for his compositions for the organ, than for his great powers of execution on that instrument. Historians speak of his playing the organ at St. Peter's to a congregation of twenty thousand persons! He was the first of the Italians who composed for the organ in fugue; and in this species of composition, originally invented by the Germans, he was without a rival. He may be truly considered the father of that style of organ-playing called by the Italians toccatas, and by the English voluntaries. A list of his various publications for the organ, &c., may be seen in Fétis.—E. F. R.
* FRESENIUS, Karl Remigius, best known as the author of a treatise on chemical analysis, which has become deservedly popular. He was born December 28th, 1818, in Frankfort-on-the-Maine, and is at present professor in Wiesbaden. He has published numerous researches, mostly on analytical subjects. Of these we may single out his separation of arsenic from antimony, as being of special value in a toxicological point of view; also a mode of estimating the commercial values of potash, soda, acids, and peroxide of manganese—this latter production having been published conjointly with Will. He has likewise published a great number of analyses of the mineral waters at different Spas.—J. A. W.
FRESNE, Du Cange. See Ducange.
FRESNEL, Augustin Jean, a distinguished natural philosopher, the son of an architect, born at Broglie in Normandy, 10th May, 1788. In his early years it was with the greatest difficulty he could acquire the rudiments of education; but in 1799 he displayed an inquiring mind by making experiments for improving children's toys. In 1801 he was placed at the central school at Caen, where he made rapid progress. In November, 1804, he entered the polytechnic school. Here he studied diligently, and, by solving a difficult problem, soon attracted the attention of Legendre, the mathematical professor. On leaving this institution he was appointed engineer in the department of roads and bridges. It was not, however, until the 28th of December, 1814, that he began to study the branch of science, in which he afterwards so distinguished himself. On that day he wrote to a friend to ask his uncle what was meant by polarization of light. He obtained the information, and made great use of it; for in August, 1815, he appears to have been fully acquainted with the subject, as he then made his first experiments; and it is a remarkable circumstance that his first discovery was almost simultaneous with his first experiment. His studies, however, during this brief period must have been greatly impeded; as having espoused the Bourbon cause, he was during the Hundred Days an outcast without home, and under strict surveillance of the police. His discoveries succeeded each other with marvellous rapidity. In 1816 he reduced polarization of light to a few simple laws which he verified by experiments, and afterwards enunciated in a paper which he read in that year to the institute of France. In 1817 M. Becquay, director-general of roads and bridges, called attention to his excellent invention of lights for lighthouses; but Fresnel was forestalled by Brewster. Independently of each other, they simultaneously arrived at similar results, but Brewster was the first to announce his success. Fresnel gave a formula for the intensity of a polarized ray, when reflected from a surface under any angle of incidence in a plane inclined to the plane of primitive polarization; an account of this, together with the deviation which the plane of polarization undergoes in consequence of the reflection, is contained in two papers presented to the Academy of Sciences in 1817-18. He proposed to the same academy in 1819 a problem entitled "Mémoire sur la Diffraction de la Lumiére," for which he was awarded a prize; and in 1821 he furnished a paper in which he considered the properties of double refraction and polarization in biaxal crystals, and investigated what he termed "surface elasticity." In 1822 he became a member of the Société de Physique et d'Histoire Naturelle de Genève. The Academy of Sciences unanimously elected him one of its members in 1823. To the Bulletin de la Societé Philomatique he contributed in 1824 a valuable paper entitled "Considerations théoriques sur la Polarisation de la Lumiere." He made experiments for decomposing water with a magnet, but eventually abandoned the project. He directed his attention to the subject of rotatory polarization, and was the first to notice the change produced by heat on the tints of sulphate of lime. In 1825 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London, which in 1827 awarded him the Rumford medal in consideration of his discoveries in optics. He had long suffered from a pulmonary affection, of which he died, July 14, 1827, at Ville-d'Avray, near Paris. His brother, Leonor Fresnel, succeeded him as secretary to the commission for the lighthouses of France, which post he held at the time of his decease. His principal discoveries are fully described in the following works—Annales de Physique et de Chemie, 1815 and 1825; Bulletin de la Societié Philomatique, 1822-24; Les Memoires de l'Académie des Sciences.—W. A. B.
FRESNOY, Charles Alphonse du, a French painter, chiefly distinguished as the author of a Latin poem on the theory and practice of his art, was born at Paris in 1611. His father, an apothecary, gave him a good education, designing him for the medical profession, but college successes as a poet, and a love of painting, disgusted him with the study of physic, and in spite of the very strenuous opposition of his parents he became an artist. After studying under Perrier and Vouet he proceeded about 1634 to Rome, where, having been refused all aid by his father, he suffered very great privations until the arrival of his former fellow-student, the painter Mignard. It was in Rome that, while busy professionally, he commenced his poem, the "De Arte Graphicâ," which alone keeps him in remembrance. Returning to Paris in 1656 he completed this poem, for the composition of which he in some measure neglected the practice of his art. He died of paralysis in 1665. The "De Arte Graphicâ"
