JOHN HOOKHAM, an accomplished man of letters, and for some years English ambassador in Spain, was author of a light, satirical, and witty poem, the precursor and prototype of Byron's Beppo and Don Juan. This work, published in 1817, bore the clumsy and unpromising title of "Prospectus and Specimen of an Intended National Work," by William and Robert Whistlecraft, &c. The adventures of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table were the nominal subject of the poem, but its style, formed on that of the Italian poets Pulci and Casti, was its chief attraction. The success of Whistlecraft led to another work in the same vein, The Monks and the Giants. In his early days Mr Frere joined his Eton associate Mr Canning in writing for the Anti-Jacobin journals. For many years before his death he resided at Malta, in the enjoyment of a handsome diplomatic pension of £1,500 per annum. He died of apoplexy at Malta, January 7, 1846, aged seventy-seven.

FRESCOBALDI, GIROLAMO, a celebrated Italian organist and musical composer, was a native of Ferrara. The date of his birth is not known. At the age of twenty-three he became organist of St Peter's at Rome. He is regarded as the father of that style now universally employed in all compositions for the organ. Talking of his first work, the Ricercari e Canzoni Francesse fatte sopra diversi obbligati in Partitura, Dr Burney remarks that it "contains the first compositions we have seen printed in score, and with bars. They are likewise the first regular fugues that we have found upon one subject, or of two subjects carried on at the same time, from the beginning of a movement to the end." Frescobaldi was alive in 1641, but it is not known in what year he died.