which we shall mention only his version, (said to be with very important improvements,) of our Universal History, by Guthrie and Gray.

place, busy in his vocation; growing in in- Next, almost a cartload of Translations; of fluence, in extent of connection at home and, abroad; till Rhunken's prediction might almost be reckoned fulfilled to the letter; for Heyne in his own department was without any equal in Europe.

However, his history, from this point, even because it was so happy for himself, must lose most of its interest for the general reader. Heyne has now become a professor, and a regularly progressive man of learning; has fixed household, his rents and comings in; it is easy to fancy how that man might flourish in calm sunshine of prosperity, whom in adversity we saw growing in spite of every storm. Of his proceedings in Göttingen, his reform of the Royal Society of Sciences, his editing of the Gelehrte Anzeigen (Gazette of Learning,) his exposition of the classics from Virgil to Pindar, his remodelling of the library, his passive quarrels with Voss, his armed neutrality with Michaelis; of all this we must say little. The best fruit of his endeavours lies before the world, in a long series of works, which, among us, as well as elsewhere, are known and justly appreciated. On looking over them, the first thing that strikes us is astonishment at Heyne's diligence; which, considering the quantity and quality of his writings, might have appeared singular even in one who had been without other duties. Yet Heyne's office involved him in the most laborious researches: he wrote letters by the hundred to all parts of the world, and on all conceivable subjects; he had three classes to teach daily; he appointed professors, for his recommendation was all-powerful; superintended schools; for a long time the inspection of the Freytische was laid on him, and he had cooks' bills to settle, and hungry students to satisfy with his purveyance. Besides all which, he accomplished, in the way of publication, as follows:

In addition to his Tibullus and Epictetus, the first of which went through three, the second through two editions, each time with large extensions and improvements:

His Virgil, (P. VIRGILIUS MARO Varietate Lectionis et perpetuâ Annotatione illustratus,) in various forms, from 1767 to 1803; no fewer than six editions.

His Pliny, (Ex C. PLINII SECUNDI Historia Naturali excerpta, quas ad Artes spectant;) two editions, 1790, 1811.

His Apollodorus, (APOLLODORI Atheniensis Bibliothece Libri tres, &c.;) two editions, 1787, 1803.

His Pindar, (PINDARI Carmina, cum Lectionis Varietate, curavit Ch. G. H.) three editions, 1774, 1797, 1798, the last with the Scholia, the Fragments, a Translation, and Hermann's Enq. De Metris.

His Conon and Parthenius, (CoxONIS Narrationes et PARTHENII Narrationes amatoria,)

1798.

And lastly his Homer, (HOMERI ILIAS, cum brevi Annotatione ;) 8 volumes, 1802; and a second, contracted edition, in 2 volumes, 1804.

occasion, but the Georgia Augusta again prevailed. Some increase of salary usually follows such refusals: It did not n this instance.

Then some ten or twelve thick volumes of Prolusions, Eulogies, Essays; treating of all subjects, from the French Directoral to the Chest of Cyprolus. Of these, six volumes are known in a separate shape, under the title of Opuscula: and contain some of Heyne's most valuable writings.

And lastly, to crown the whole with one most surprising item, seven thousand five hundred (Heeren says from seven to eight thousand) Reviews of Books, in the Gottingen Gelehrte Anzeigen! Shame on us degenerate Editors! Here of itself was work for a lifetime!

To expect that elegance of composition should prevail in these multifarious performances were unreasonable enough. Heyne wrote very indifferent German; and his Latin, by much the more common vehicle in his learned works, flowed from him with a copiousness which could not be Ciceronian. At the same time these volumes are not the folios of a Montfaucon, not mere classical ore and slag, but regularly melted metal, for most part exhibiting the essence, and only the essence of very great research, and enlightened by a philosophy, which, if it does not always wisely order its results, has looked far and deeply in collecting them.

To have performed so much evinces on the part of Heyne no little mastership in the great art of husbanding time. Heeren gives us sufficient details on this subject; explains Heyne's adjustment of his hours and various occupations; how he rose at five o'clock, and worked all the day, and all the year, with the regularity of a steeple-clock; nevertheless, how patiently he submitted to interruptions from strangers, or extraneous business; how, briefly, yet smoothly, he contrived to despatch such interruptions; how his letters were endorsed when they came to hand; and lay in a special drawer till they were answered: nay, we have a description of his whole "locality," his bureau and book-shelves and portfolios, his very bed and strong box are not forgotten. To the busy man, especially the busy man of letters, these details are far from uninteresting; if we judged by the result, many of Heyne's arrangements might seem worthy not of notice only, but of imitation.

His domestic circumstances continued on the whole highly favourable for such activity; though not now more than formerly were they exempted from the common lot; but still had several hard changes to encounter. In 1775, he lost his Theresa after long ill-health; an event which, stoic as he was, struck heavily and dolefully upon his heart. He forebore not to shed some natural tears, though from eyes little used to the melting mood. Nine days after her death, he thus writes to a friend with a solemn, mournful tenderness, which none of us will deny to be genuine :

"I have looked upon the grave that covers the remains of my Theresa: what a thousand

In addition to Heyne's claims as a scholar and teacher, Heeren would have us regard him as an unusually expert man of business and negotiator, for which line of life he himself seems indeed to have thought that his talent was more peculiarly fitted. In proof of this, we have long details of his procedure in manag

fold pang, beyond the pitcn of human feeling, | sidered in his private relations, such a man pierced through my soul! How did my limbs might well reckon himself fortunate. tremble as I approached this holy spot! Here, then, reposes what is left of the dearest that heaven gave me; among the dust of her four children she sleeps. A sacred horror covered the place. I should have sunk altogether in my sorrow, had it not been for my two daughters that were standing on the outside of the church-yard; I saw their faces over the wall,ing the Library, the Royal Society, the Univerdirected to me with anxious fear. This called sity generally, and his incessant, and often me to myself; I hastened in sadness from the rather complex correspondence with Münchspot where I could have continued for ever: hausen, Brandes, or other ministers, who prewhere it cheered me to think that one day I sided over this department. Without detractshould rest by her side; rest from all the ing from Heyne's skill in such matters, what carking care, from all the griefs which so often struck us more in this narrative of Heeren's have embittered to me the enjoyment of life. was the singular contrast which the "Georgia Alas! among these griefs must I reckon even Augusta," in its interior arrangement, as well her love, the strongest, truest, that ever inspired as in its external relations to the Government, the heart of woman, which may be the happiest exhibits with our own universities. The prime of mortals, and yet was a fountain to me of a minister of the country writes thrice weekly to thousand distresses, inquietudes, and cares. the director of an institution for learning! He To entire cheerfulness perhaps she never at-oversees all; knows the character, not only of tained; but for what unspeakable sweetness, every professor, but of every pupil that gives for what exalted, enrapturing joys is not Love any promise. He is continually purchasing indebted to Sorrow? Amidst gnawing anxie-books, drawings, models; treating for this or ties, with the torture of anguish in my heart, I the other help or advantage to the establishhave been made even by the love which caused ment. He has his eye over all Germany; and me this anguish, these anxieties, inexpressibly happy! When tears flowed over our cheeks, did not a nameless, seldom felt delight stream through my breast, oppressed equally by joy and by sorrow!"

nowhere does a man of any decided talent show himself, but he strains every nerve to acquire him. And seldom or ever can he succeed; for the Hanoverian assiduity seems nothing singular; every state in Germany has But Heyne was not a man to brood over its minister for education, as well as Hanover. past griefs, or linger long where nothing was They correspond, they inquire, they negotiate; to be done, but mourn. In a short time, ac- everywhere there seems a canvassing, less for cording to a good old plan of his, having places, than for the best men to fill them. reckoned up his grounds of sorrow, he fairly Heyne himself has his Seminarium, a private wrote down on paper, over against them, his class of the nine most distinguished students "grounds of consolation;" concluding with in the university; these he trains with all dilithese pious words, "So for all these sorrows gence, and is in due time most probably entoo, these trials, do I thank thee, my God! And abled, by his connections, to place in stations now, glorified friend, will I again turn me with fit for them. A hundred and thirty-five proundivided heart to my duty; thou thyself fessors are said to have been sent from this smilest approval on me!" Nay, it was not Seminarium during his presidency. These many months before a new marriage came on things we state without commentary: we bethe anvil, in which matter, truly, Heyne con-lieve that the experience of all English, and ducted himself with the most philosophic in- Scotch, and Irish university-men will, of itself, difference; leaving his friends, by whom the furnish one. The state of education in Gerproject had been started, to bring it to what many, and the structure of the establishments issue they pleased. It was a scheme concerted for conducting it, seems to us one of the most by Zimmerman, (the author of Solitude, a man promising inquiries that could at this moment little known to Heyne,) and one Reich, a Leip- be entered on. zig bookseller, who had met at the Prymont Baths. Brandes, the Hanoverian Minister, successor of Münchhausen in the management of the University concerns, was there also with a daughter; upon her, the projectors cast their eye. Heyne, being consulted, seems to have comported himself like clay in the hands of the potter; father and fair one, in like manner, were of a compliant humour, and thus was the business achieved; and on the 9th of April, 1777, Heyne could take home a bride, won with less difficulty than most men have in choosing a pair of boots. Nevertheless, she proved an excellent wife to him; kept his house in the cheerfullest order; managed her step-children, and her own, like a true mother; and loved, and faithfully assisted her husband in whatever he undertook. Con

But to return to Heyne: We have said, that in his private circumstances, he might reckon himself fortunate. His public relations, on a more splendid scale, continued, to the last, tc be of the same happy sort. By degrees, he had risen to be, both in name and office, the chief man of his establishment; his character stood high with the learned of all countries; and the best fruit of external reputation, increased respect in his own circle, was not denied to him. The burghers of Göttingen, so fond of their University, could not but be proud of Heyne; nay, as the time passed on, they found themselves laid under more than one specific obligation to him. He remodelled and reanimated their gymnasium (town-school), as he had before done that of Ilfeld; and what was still more important, in the rude times of

the French war, by his skilful application, he succeeded in procuring from Napoleon, not only a protection for the University, but immunity from hostile invasion for the whole district it stands in. Nay, so happily were matters managed, or so happily did they turn of their own accord, that Göttingen rather gained than suffered by the war: Under Jerome of Westphalia, not only were all benefices punctually paid, but improvements even were effected; among other things, a new and very handsome extension, which had long been desired, was built for the library, at the charge of Government. To all these claims for public regard, add Heyne's now venerable age, and we can fancy how, among his townsmen and fellow-collegians, he must have been cherished, nay, almost worshipped. Already had the magistracy, by a special act, freed him from all public assessments; but, in 1809, on his eightieth birth-day, came a still more emphatic testimony; for the Ritter Franz, and all the public boards, and the faculties, in corpore, came to him in procession with good wishes; and students reverenced him; and young ladies sent him garlands, stitched together by their own fair fingers; in short, Göttingen was a place of jubilee; and good old Heyne, who nowise affected, yet could not dislike these things, was among the happiest of men.

joked with the girl when she asked him how he had been over-night. She left him, to make ready his coffee, as was her wont; and returning with it in a short quarter of an hour, she found him sunk down before his washing-stand, close by his work-table. His hands were wet; at the moment when he had been washing them, had death taken him into his arms. One breath more, and he ceased to live: when the hastening doctor opened a vein, no blood would flow."

Heyne was interred with all public solemnities: and, in epicedial language, it may be said without much exaggeration, that his coun try mourned for him. At Chemnitz, his birthplace, there assembled, under constituted authority, a grand meeting of the magistrates, to celebrate his memory; the old school-album, in which the little ragged boy had inscribed his name, was produced; grandiloquent speeches were delivered; and "in the afternoon, many hundreds went to see the poor cottage," where his father had weaved, and he starved and learned. How generous!

To estimate Heyne's intellectual character, to fix accurately his rank and merits as a critic and philologer, we cannot but consider as beyond our province, and at any rate superfluous here. By the general consent of the learned in all countries, he seems to be acknowledged as the first among recent scholars; his immense reading, his lynx-eyed skill in expo

In another respect, we must also reckon him fortunate; that he lived till he had completed all his undertakings; and then departed peace-sition and emendation are no longer here confully, and without sickness, from which, indeed, his whole life had been remarkably free. Three months before his death, in April, 1812, he saw the last volume of his works in print; and rejoiced, it is said, with an affecting thankfulness, that so much had been granted him. Length of life was not now to be hoped for; neither did Heyne look forward to the end with apprehension. His little German verses, and Latin translations, composed in sleepless nights, at this extreme period, are, to us, by far the most touching part of his poetry; so melancholy is the spirit of them, yet so mild; solemn, not without a shade of sadness, yet full of pious resignation. At length came the end; soft and gentle as his mother could have wished it for him. The 11th of July was a public day in the Royal Society; Heyne did his part in it; spoke at large, and with even more clearness and vivacity than usual.

"Next day," says Heeren," was Sunday: I saw him in the evening, for the last time. He was resting in his chair, exhausted by the fatigue of yesterday. On Monday morning, he once more entered his class room, and held his Seminarium. In the afternoon he prepared his letters, domestic as well, as foreign; among the latter, one on business; sealed them all but one, written in Latin, to Professor Thorlacius, in Copenhagen, which I found open, but finished, on his death. At supper, (none but his elder daughter was with him,) he talked cheerfully, and at his usual time retired to rest. In the night, the servant girl, that slept under his apartment, heard him walking up and down; a common practice with him when he could not sleep. However, he had again gone to bed. Soon after five, he arose, as usual; he

troverted; among ourselves his taste in these matters has been praised by Gibbon, and by Parr pronounced to be "exquisite." In his own country, Heyne is even regarded as the founder of a new epoch in classical study; as the first who with any decisiveness attempted to translate fairly beyond the letter of the classics; to read in the writings of the ancients, not the language alone, or even their detached opinions and records, but their spirit and character, their way of life and thought; how the world and nature painted themselves to the mind in those old ages; how, in one word, the Greeks and the Romans were men, even as we are. Such of our readers as have studied any one of Heyne's works, or even looked carefully into the Lectures of the Schlegels, the most ingenious and popular commentators of that school, will be at no loss to understand what

we mean.

By his inquiries into antiquity, especially by his laboured investigation of its politics and its mythology, Heyne is believed to have carried the torch of philosophy towards, if not into, the mysteries of old time. What Winkelmann, his great contemporary did, or began to do, for ancient plastic art, the other, with equal success, began for ancient literature.* A high

* It is a curious fact that these two men, so singularly correspondent in their early sufferings, subsequent disracter, were at one time, while both as yet were under tinction, line of study, and rugged enthusiasm of chathe horizon, brought into partial contact. "An acsays Heeren, "the young quaintance of another sort,' Heyne was to make in the Brühl Library; with a person whose importance he could not then anticipate. One frequent visitor of this establishment was a certain specially desirable for the librarians, such endless labour almost wholly unknown man, whose visits could not be did he cost them. He seemed insatiable in reading; and

perhaps, is not very singular among commentators.

praise, surely; yet, as we must think, one not unfounded, and which, indeed, in all parts of Europe, is becoming more and more confirmed. For the rest, Heeren assures us, that in prac. So much, in the province to which he de- tice Heyne was truly a good man; altogether voted his activity, is Heyne allowed to have just; diligent in his own honest business, and accomplished. Nevertheless, we must not as-ever ready to forward that of others; comsert that, in point of understanding and spi- passionate; though quick-tempered, placable; ritual endowment, he can be called a complete, friendly, and satisfied with simple pleasures. or even, in strict speech, a great man. Won- He delighted in roses, and always kept a bouderful perspicuity, unwearied diligence, are not quet of them in water on his desk. His house denied him; but to philosophic order, to clas- was embowered among roses; and in his old sical adjustment, clearness, polish, whether in days he used to wander through the bushes word or thought, he seldom attains; nay, many with a pair of scissors. Farther, says Heeren, times, it must be avowed, he involves himself in spite of his short sight, he was fond of the in tortures, long-winded verbosities, and stands fields and skies, and could lie for hours readbefore us little better than one of that old school ing on the grass. A kindly old man! With which his admirers boast that he displaced. strangers, hundreds of whom visited him, he He appears, we might almost say, as if he had was uniformly courteous; though latterly, bewings but could not well use them. Or, in- ing a little hard of hearing, less fit to converse. deed, it might be that, writing constantly in a In society he strove much to be polite; but dead language, he came to write heavily; work- had a habit (which ought to be general) of ing for ever on subjects where learned armor- yawning, when people spoke to him and said at-all-points cannot be dispensed with, he at nothing. last grew so habituated to his harness that he would not walk abroad without it; nay perhaps it had rusted together, and could not be unclasped! A sad fate for a thinker! Yet one which threatens many commentators, and over-ranked, for honesty of study and of life, with takes many.

As a man encrusted and encased, he exhibits himself, moreover, to a certain degree, in his moral character. Here too, as in his intellect, there is an awkwardness, a cumbrous inertness; nay, there is a show of dulness, of hardness, which nowise intrinsically belongs to him. He passed, we are told, for less religious, less affectionate, less enthusiastic than he was. His heart, one would think, had no free course, or had found itself a secret one; outwardly he stands before us, cold and still, a very wall of rock; yet within lay a well, from which, as we have witnessed, the stroke of some Moses'-wand (the death of a Theresa) Sild draw streams of pure feeling. Callous coman seems to us, he has a sense for all as a beauty; a merciful sympathy for his naturanen: his own early distresses never fellow-memory: for similar distresses his pity left his muere at all times in store. This form and help wr may also be the fruit partly of of characteents, partly of his sufferings, and, his employn

books, that his reception there grew called for so man st. It was Johann Winkelmann. Merather of the cooly for Italy, he was then laying in preditating his journaus did these two men become, if not paration for it. quainted; who at that time, both still confidential, yet overty, could little suppose, that in a in darkness and were to be the teachers of cultivated

few years, theyornaments of their nation."

Europe, and the

On the whole, the Germans have some reason to be proud of Heyne; who shall deny that they have here once more produced a scholar of the right old stock; a man to be

the Scaligers, the Bentleys, and old illustrious men, who, though covered with academic dust and harsh with polyglot vocables, were true men of endeavour, and fought like giants, with such weapons as they had, for the good cause? To ourselves, we confess, Heyne, highly interesting for what he did, is not less but more so for what he was. This is another of the proofs, which minds like his are from time to time sent hither to give, that the man is not the product of his circumstances, but that, in a far higher degree, the circumstances are the product of the man. While beneficed clerks and other sleek philosophers, reclining on their cushions of velvet, are demonstrating that to make a scholar and man of taste, there must be co-operation of the upper classes, society of gentlemen-commoners, and an income of four hundred a year;-arises the son of a Chemnitz weaver, and with the very wind of his stroke sweeps them from the scene. Let no man doubt the omnipotence of Nature, doubt the majesty of man's soul; let no lonely unfriended son of genius despair! Let him not despair; if he have the will, the right will, then the power also has not been denied him. It is but the artichoke that will not grow except in gardens; the acorn is cast carelessly abroad into the wilderness, yet it rises to be an oak; on the wild soil it nourishes itself, it defies the tempest, and lives for a thousand years.

GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS.*

[FOREIGN REVIEW, 1829.]