Freher, Marquard

, a German, was descended from a learned family, and born at Augsburg, July 26, 1565. He went into France very young, to study the civil law under Cujacius; yet paid so much attention to history and criticism, that he became eminent in both. When he was scarcely three and twenty, he was chosen among the counsellors of Casimir, prince of Palatine, and the year after made professor of law at Heidelberg, where he lived in friendship with Leunclavius, Sylburgius, Opsoprcus, the younger Douza, and other learned men of his time. Some little time after, he resigned his professor’s chair, and was taken into the most important employments by the elector Frederic IV. This prince made him vice-president of his court, and sent him in quality of ambassador to several places. In the midst of these occupations he never | intermitted his usual method of studying; and wrote a great many works upon criticism, law, and history, the history of his own country in particular. When we view the catalogue of them given by Melchior Adam, we are ready to imagine that he must have lived a very long life, and hardly have done any thing but write books; yet he died in his forty-ninth year, May 13, 1614. Oouza says that he seems to have been born for the advancement of polite literature: and Thuanus acknowledges that it would be difficult to find his equal in all Germany. Casaubon calls him a man of profound and universal knowledge; and Scioppius says that he joined great acuteness to an incredible depth of learning. Add to this, that he was perfectly skilled in coins, medals, statues, antiques of all sorts, and could paint very well. His moral qualities are described as not inferior to his intellectual; so that Melchior Adam seems justly to have lamented, that a man who deserved so much to be immortal, should have died so soon. His principal works are, 1. “Origines Palatinae,” fol. 2. “De Inquisitionis processu,” 1679, 4to. 3. “De re monetaria veterum Romanorum, &c.” Leyden, 1605, 4to, inserted by Graevius in vol. II. of his Roman Antiquities. 4. “Rerum Bohemicarum scriptores,” Hanau, 1602, fol. 5. “Rerum Germanic-arum scriptores,” fol. S vols. 1600 1611, reprinted in 1717. 6. “Corpus historia Francia,” fol. &c.¹