Account of the late eminent Philologist and Critic, Professor Heyne of Gottingen, from his Life published in German.

scholar and philologist, was born at Chemnitz, in September 1729. In his younger years he had to struggle against the pressure of extreme poverty. His parents, who subsisted by the linen manufacture, were exceedingly indigent, and according to his own emphatic account, "the first impressions on his mind were made by the tears of his mother, lamenting that she was not able to find bread for her children." He was, however, sent to a common school in his native place, where he shewed great aptitude for learning, and soon made so much progress, that in his tenth year he gave lessons in reading and writing to a female child of a neighbour, in order that he might obtain money to defray the expense of his own education. By the friendship of a clergyman, who had been one of his godfathers, he was enabled to enter himself

tice of professors Christ, Ernesti, and Winkler. On the recommendation of Ernesti, he obtained the situation of private tutor in the family of a French merchant, but only for a short period, and therefore he was obliged to support himself in the best manner he could by private teaching. Having made choice of the law for a profession, he endeavoured to become thoroughly acquainted with the Roman law, literature, and history. The knowledge acquired in this manner enabled him afterwards to give lectures to the students of jurisprudence on the Roman antiquities, which were received with great approbation. A Latin elegy which he wrote on the death of Lacoste, preacher of the French reformed congregation, attracted the notice of the Saxon minister, Count Bruhl, and procured him an invitation to Dresden, to which he repaired in

April 1752, elated with hope, and experienced a very favourable reception; but though the most flattering promises were made to him, they terminated in disappointment, and his situation would have been highly unpleasant, had he not obtained the place of tutor to a young gentleman, which enabled him to spend the winter in comfort, till 1753, when he was again thrown out of employment. About this time he seems to have been reduced to a state of the utmost distress. Such was his poverty, that he was obliged to sell his books to prevent himself from starving; and pea shells, which he collected and boiled, were on many occasions his only food. As he had no lodging, a young clergyman, named Sonntag, with whom he had formed an acquaintance, took pity on his condition, and gave him a share of his apartment, where he slept on the bare boards, with a few books to supply the place of a pillow. At length, after much solicitation, he was admitted as a copyist into the Bruhlian library, at a bare salary of a hundred dollars per annum. As this appointment was not sufficient to preserve him from want, necessity compelled him to become a writer. His first attempt was a translation of a French novel; and in the same year he gave a translation of "Chariton's History of Charea and Callirrhoe," a Greek romance brought to light a few years before by Dorville, and illustrated by a learned commentary. It deserves to be remarked, that it was here that he first manifested that taste for criticism by which he was afterwards so much distin

guished." In the false and corrupted passages, I have assumed," says the translator, "true critical freedom; and supplied, corrected, and amended, according to my own ideas. In doing this, I enjoyed the infinite pleasure, which a young critic feels when he thinks he is able to amend." These early productions appeared without his name. His next work was an edition of Tibullus. It was dedicated to Count Bruhl, and though it met with no particular notice, either from him or the German literati, it excited considerable attention in foreign countries, and served to make the name of the critic much better known. Having found in the electoral library a manuscript of Epietetus, which he collated, he was thence led to a more critical examination of the work of that philosopher, and soon found, particularly by studying the Commentary of Simplicius, that an extensive field was here open for the labours of the critic. His first edition of Epictetus, which appeared in 1756, afforded a decisive proof of his profound knowledge in the Greek, and induced him to make himself better acquainted with the principles of the Stoic philosophy. Though classical literature formed the principal object of his research, he had not devoted himself to that branch exclusively. In the Bruhlean library he found abundance of works on the English and French literature, and he read with great attention the classical productions of both these nations. About this time he became acquainted with the celebrated Winkelmann, who frequented the

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library, and who was then on the point of undertaking a tour to Italy. Heyne, however, notwithstanding all his exertions, continued to labour under the oppression of poverty, and his situation was rendered still worse by the incursion of the Prussians into Saxony. When the Prussian troops took possession of Dresden, Count Bruhl, who was the chief object of Frederick's resentment, was obliged to fly for shelter to Augustus King of Poland, upon which his palace was destroyed and his library dispersed. None suffered more on this occasion than those who were in the Count's service; and as they were deprived of their salaries, the source from which Heyne had hitherto derived a scanty maintenance was entirely dried up. He endeavoured, therefore, to relieve his wants by translating political pamphlets from the French, but the small pittance which this produced afforded very little relief. In the autumn of the year 1757 he was again reduced to a most forlorn condition, but was so fortunate as to obtain, through the means of Rabener, a place as tutor in a family, where he became acquainted with a lady named Theresa Weiss, whom he afterwards married. His pupil having gone to the university of Wittenberg, Heyne repaired thither himself in the month of January 1759, and resumed his academic studies, which he prosecuted with more advantage than before, applying chiefly to philosophy and the German history. In the year following, a residence at Wittenberg having become insecure, he retired to some distance in the

country, but soon after returned to Dresden, where he witnessed the horrors of the bombardment in the month of July, during which he was exposed to the most imminent danger. In the year following, Heyne married the object of his affections, and in 1763 he was invited to Gottingen to the vacant professorship of John Matthias Gesner. He entered on his new office with an inaugural discourse," De veris bonarum artium literarumque incrementis ex libertate publica;" which was followed by a classical dissertation, on announcing the anniversary of the university, and the festival on account of peace, "De genio sæculi Ptolemæorum." Before the end of the year he read his first paper as a member of the Society of the Sciences, entitled Temporum mythicorum memoria a corruptelis nonnullis vindicata." His first academic lectures were on Horace, the Georgics of Virgil, and some parts of the tragic writers. In 1766 he explained the Iliad, and afterwards the Greek antiquities and archæology. Heyne's new situation, as it afforded him considerable leisure, enabled him to resume his labours as a writer, which domestic circumstances, during the first years of his residence at Gottingen, rendered more necessary; and he published a translation of the first seven parts of Guthrie's and Gray's History of the World, but with such additions and improvements, that it might be called an original work. After this employment, he returned to the Latian Muses, and in 1767 published the first part of his Virgil, which was followed by the other parts,

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at short intervals, till the year 1775. In 1763, he had been appointed first librarian to the university, and in 1770 he obtained the title of aulic counsellor, and was made secretary to the Royal Society of Sciences, and editor of the Literary Gazette. As secretary to the Royal Society he was of great service, and gave to that institution a life and activity to which it had been before a stranger. The meetings had been held in a very irregular manner; and as none of the papers read before it had been printed for sixteen years, Heyne, in 1771, had the satisfaction of publishing the first volume of the "Commentarii Novi," which was dedicated to the King. He also laboured on his Pindar, the first edition of which made its appearance in 1773. In 1775 his domestic happiness was interrupted by the death of his wife; but two years after, he repaired his loss by marrying Georgiana Brandes, daughter of George Frederick Brandes, aulic counsellor. Among his labours at this time must be mentioned A Catalogue of the Library, on a very extensive and improved plan, which he began in 1777, and completed in 1787; a most useful but laborious work, which he extended to about one hundred and fifty volumes in folio. 1782, he published his "Apollodorus," and in 1798 gave a new edition of his "Pindar," in five volumes. His most important work, however, and that on which he devoted the greater part of his life, was the edition of his Homer, which he began in 1787, and which he had in some measure been induced to undertake by pe

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rusing Wood's Essay on the Writings and Genius of that Poet. During fifteen years he is said to have devoted two hours daily to this great work, the appearance of which he delayed so long, that he might procure every possible assistance from men of letters, among whom were Beck of Leipsic, and Jacobs of Gotha, whose service he acknowledges in the preface, which made its first appearance in 1802. In 1778 be gave a second edition of his Virgil, in two different forms, one of which was ornamented with a great many vignettes. This edition had been carefully revised and considerably improved, no only by the author himself, but by the assistance of literary friends, among whom were Van Santen in Holland, and Jacob Bryant in England. In the autumn of this year he made a tour to Swisserland, in company with his friend Dr. Girtanner, in the course of which he took an opportunity of paying visits to Schweighauser, Oberlin, and Brunk. At Zurich he formed an acquaintance also with Hottinger and Lavater. Soon after his return, he was offered the place of chief librarian at Dresden, and was invited to Copenhagen to be professor, with a salary of three thousand dollars and other advantages, but both these he declined. During the short peace of Amiens in 1809, Heyne exerted himself to renew that literary connection which had been almost destroyed by the political storms of the time. As secretary to the Royal Society of Gottingen, he endeavoured to revive the correspondence of that learned body with the French National

National Institute. Several of the French literati were admitted members of the Society, and the intercourse was rendered more active by his own correspondence. In the same year he was himself nominated one of the foreign associates of the Institute, in addition to the numerous honours of the same kind which had been conferred on him before. In the year 1803 he employed, and with complete success, the influence he had acquired as a man of letters, to preserve the university from experiencing any of those miseries which are the usual consequence of war; and on that occasion he received a very flattering letter from Berthier, then minister at war, containing an assurance that the French army would grant special protection to that establishment. In 1806, when in the seventy-seventh year of his age, he undertook a tour to Armstadt, to see one of his daughters who had been married a short time before; but after this period his infirmities increased so much, that he could not endure violent motion, and in 1809 he resigned his office as professor of eloquence. In 1810 he was made a Knight of the Westphalian Order of the Crown, and died in the month of July 1812. After completing his Homer, he engaged in no work of any magnitude. He had once entertained an idea of writing a history of the university of Gottingen, which was so dear to him; but a few lines of it only were committed to paper. He, how ever, laboured with more diligence for the Gottingen Society, and in particular the Literary Gazette. The numerous articles which he furnished to that work VOL. LVII.

afford an evident proof that his faculties were still sound and vigorous. To Heyne nothing was so valuable as time. He rose at five o'clock in the morning, even in the latter years of life; in his youth much earlier. The whole day was filled with writing, lecturings, and other literary occudomestic and social enjoyments; pations, not, however, excluding for he was by no means of a recluse or solitary disposition. Notwithstanding his great talents, and the celebrity he had acquired, he was not vain or conceited. He, however, set a proper value ter pleased to be esteemed as a upon praise; but was much betman than as a scholar. By his first wife he had one son and two daughters, one of whom married George Forster, son of the celebrated Dr. John Reinhold Forster, and on his death became the wife of Mr. Huber. The fruits of his second marriage were two was a member of the Royal Society sons and four daughters. Heyne of London, and also of most of the learned societies in Europe.