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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