29, 1784, and received his education at Eton
(1797-9) in the time of the French Revolution.
"The system was," he says,
"to drill into the heads of the boys strong aristocratic principles and
hatred of democracy and of the French in particular." The effect produced
on the youth was the reverse of that intended. From 1799 to 1822 he
belonged to the British army: here is an abstract of his services:
In 1799, Frye took a part in the British Expedition to Holland. In 1801 he
was in Egypt with Lord Abercrombie's army and received the medal for war
service. His career in India lasted six years and gave him occasion to
visit the three presidencies and Ceylon. In 1814 he returned on furlough to
Europe and was in Brussels during the Waterloo campaign. The subsequent
years - 1815 to 1819 - he employed visiting Western Europe, as appears from
his reminiscences. I have read letters of his which prove that he lived in
Paris from 1830 to 1832. Later, about 1848, he took an apartment in Saint
Germain, and died there in 1858.
Major Frye was a very distinguished linguist; besides knowing Greek and
Latin, he understood almost all European languages, and was capable of
writing correctly in French, Italian and German. The Misses G - - have
shown me a rare book published by him at Paris in 1844 under the following
title:
"Trois chants de l'Edda. Vaftrudnismal, Thrymsquidal, Skirnisfor, traduits
en vers francais, accompagnes de notes explicatives des mythes et
allegories, et suivis d'autres poemes par W.E. Frye, ancien major
d'infanterie au service d'Angleterre, membre de l'Academie des Arcadiens de
Rome. Se vend a Paris, pour l'auteur, chez Heideloff & Cie, Libraires, 18
Rue des Filles St. Thomas. 1844" (In 8vo, xii, 115 pp.)
At the end of that volume are translations by Major Frye of several
Northern poems - in German, Italian and English verse - from the Danish and
the Swedish; then come two sonnets in French verse, the one in honour of
Lafayette, the other about the Duke of Orleans, whose premature death he
compares with that of the Northern hero of the Edda, Balder. A part of
Frye's translation of the Edda, before appearing in book form, had been
published in _l'Echo de la Litterature et des Beaux Arts_, a periodical
edited by the Major's friend, M. de Belenet.
Frye loved poetry, though his ideas on the subject were rather those of the
eighteenth century than our own. It is interesting to find an English
officer reading Voltaire, Gessner, Ariosto, and quoting them from memory
(which explains that some of his quotations had to be corrected). The
sentimental vein of Rousseau's generation still flows and vibrates in him,
as when he says that he has never been able to read the letters of Wolmar
to St Preux in Rousseau's Nouvelle Heloise without shedding tears.
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