THE LIFE OF HEYNE.* [FOREIGN REVIEW, 1828.] In labours and merits of Heyne being better known, and more just y appreciated in England, than those of almost any other German, whether scholar, poet, or philosopher, we cannot bat lelieve that some notice of his life may be acceptable to most readers. Accordingly, we here mean to give a short abstract of this voJume, a miniature copy of the "biographical portrait," but must first say a few words on the portrait itself, and the limner by whom it has been drawn. Professor Heeren is a man of learning, and known far out of his own Hanoverian circle, indeed, more or less to all students of history, -by his researches on Ancient Commerce, a voluminous account of which from his hand enjoys considerable reputation. He is evidendly a man of sense and natural talent, as well as learning; and his gifts seem to lie round him in quiet arrangement, and very much at his own command. Nevertheless, we cannot admire him as a writer; we do not even reckon that such endowments as he has are adequately represented in his books. His style both of diction and thought is thin, cold, formal, without force or character, and painfolly reminds us of college lectures. He can work rapidly, but with no freedom, and, as it were, only in one attitude, and at one sort of labour. Not that we particularly blame Professor Heeren for this, but that we think he might have been something better: These fellows in buckram," very numerous in certain walks of literature, are an unfortunate, aber than a guilty class of men; they have fallen, perhaps unwillingly, into the plan of Titing by pattern, and can now do no other; for, in their minds, the beautiful comes at last to be simply synonymous with the neat. Every sentence bears a family-likeness to its precuror; most probably it has a set number of chanses; (three is a favourite number, as in Gibbon, for "the muses delight in odds;") has also a given rhythm, a known and foreseen runc, simple but limited enough, like that of 1-bred fingers drumming on a table. And then it is strange how soon the outward rhythm ernes the inward along with it; and the thought moves with the same stinted, hamstrang rub-a-dub as the words. In a state of perfection, this species of writing comes to resemble power-loom weaving: it is not the and that is at work, but some scholastic machinery which the mind has of old constructed, nd is from afar observing. Shot follows shot from the unwearied shuttle; and so the web is • Christian Gottlob Heyne, biographisch dargestellt von Arnold Hermann Ludrig Herren. (Christian Gottlob Tesne, mographically portrayed by Arnold Hermann Antwig Heeren.) Göttingen. woven, ultimately and properly, ind 1, by the wit of man, yet immediately, and in ie mean. while, by the mere aid of time and steam. But our Professor's mode of speculation is little less intensely academic than his mode of writing. We fear he is something of what the Germans call a Kleinstädter;-mentally as well as bodily, a "dweller in a little town." He speaks at great length, and with undue fondness, of the "Georgia Augusta," which, after all, is but the University of Göttingen, an earthly, and no celestial institution: it is nearly in vain that he tries to contemplate Heyne as a European personage, or even as a German one; beyond the precincts of the Georgia Augusta, his view seems to grow feeble and soon die away into vague inanity; so we have not Heyne, the man and scholar, but Heyne, the Göttingen Professor. But neither is this habit of mind any strange or crying sin, or at all peculiar to Göttingen; as, indeed, most parishes of Eng land can produce more than one example to show. And yet it is pitiful, when an establishment for universal science, which ought to be a watch-tower where a man might see all the kingdoms of the world, converts itself into a workshop, whence he sees nothing but his toolbox and bench, and the world, in broken glimpses, through one patched and highly discoloured pane! Sometimes, indeed, our worthy friend rises into a region of the moral sublime, in which it is difficult for a foreigner to follow him. Thus he says, on one occasion, speaking of Heyne: "Immortal are his merits in regard to the catalogues"-of the Göttingen library. And, to cite no other instance, except the last and best one, we are informed, that, when Heyne died, "the guardian angels of the Georgia Augusta waited in that higher world to meet him with blessings." By day and night! There is no such guardian angel, that we know of, for the University of Gottingen; neither does it need one, being a good solid seminary of itself, with handsome stipends from Government. We had imagined, too, that if anybody welcomed people into heaven, it would be St. Peter, or at least some angel of old standing, and not a mere mushroom, as this of Göttingen must be, created since the year 1739. But we are growing very ungrateful to the good Heeren, who meant no harm by these flourishes of rhetoric, and, indeed, does not often indulge in them. The grand questions with us here are, Did he know the truth in this matter? and was he disposed to tell it honestly! To both of which questions we can answer without reserve, that all appearances are in his favour. He was Heyne's pupil, colleague, son-in-law, and so knew him intimately for thirty years he has every feature also of a produced, and could find none to buy n just, quiet, truth-loving man; so that we see little reason to doubt the authenticity, the innocence, of any statement in his volume. What more have we to do with him then, but to take thankfully what he has been pleased and able to give us, and, with all despatch, communicate it to our readers. Heyne's Life is not without an intrinsic, as well as an external interest; for he had much to struggle with, and he struggled with it manfully; thus his history has a value independent of his fame. Some account of his early years we are happily enabled to give in his own words; we translate a considerable part of this passage, autobiography being a favourite sort of reading with us. He was born at Chemnitz, in Upper Saxony, in September, 1729; the eldest of a poor weaver's family, poor almost to the verge of destitution. 86 Sometimes a fresh attempt was made through me or my sister; I had to return to the pur chasers with the same piece of ware, to see whether we could not possibly get rid of it In that quarter there is a class of so-called merchants, who, however, are in fact nothing more than forestallers, that buy up the linen made by the poorer people at the lowest price, and endeavour to sell it in other dis tricts at the highest. Often have I seen one or other of these petty tyrants, with all the pride of a satrap, throw back the piece of goods offered him, or imperiously cut off some trifle from the price and wages required for it. Necessity constrained the poorer to sell the sweat of his brow at a groschen or two less, and again to make good the deficit by starving. It was the view of such things that awakened the first sparks of indignation in my young heart. The show of pomp and plenty among these purse-proud people, who fed themselves on the extorted crumbs of so many hundreds, far from dazzling me into respect or fear, filled me with rage against them. The first time I heard of tyrannicide at school, there rose vividly before me the project to become a Brutus on all those oppressors of the poor, who had so often cast my father and mother into straits: and here, for the first time, was an instance of a truth, which I have since had frequent occasion to observe, that if the un happy man armed with feeling of his wrongs, and a certain strength of soul, does not risk the utmost and become an open criminal, it is merely the beneficent result of those circum stances in which Providence has placed him, thereby fettering his activity, and guarding him from such destructive attempts. That the oppressing part of mankind should be se cured against the oppressed was, in the plan of inscrutable wisdom, a most important ele "My good father, George Heyne," says he, 'was a native of the principality of Glogau, in Silesia, from the little village of Gravenschutz. His youth had fallen in those times when the Evangelist party of that province were still exposed to the oppressions and persecutions of the Romish Church. His kindred, enjoying the blessing of contentment in an humble but independent station, felt, like others, the influence of this proselytizing bigotry, and lost their domestic peace by means of it. Some went over to the Romish faith. My father left his native village, and endeavoured, by the labour of his hands, to procure a livelihood in Saxony. 'What will it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul!' was the thought which the scenes of his youth had stamped the most deeply on his mind; but no lucky chance favoured his enterprises or endeavours to better his condition, ever so little. On the contrary, a series of perverse incidents kept him continually below the limits even of a moder-ment of the present system of things. ate sufficiency. His old age was thus left a "My good parents did what they could, and prey to poverty, and to her companions, timid- sent me to a child's school in the suburbs; 1 ity and depression of mind. Manufactures, at obtained the praise of learning very fast ard that time, were visibly declining in Saxony; being very fond of it. My schoolmaster had and the misery among the working classes, in two sons, lately returned from Leipzig, a cou districts concerned in the linen trade, was ple of depraved fellows, who took all pains unusually severe. Scarcely could the labour lead me astray; and, as I resisted, kept me of the hands suffice to support the labourer him- for a long time, by threats and mistreatment self, still less his family. The saddest aspect of all sorts, extremely miserable. So early s which the decay of civic society can exhibit my tenth year, to raise the money for my school has always appeared to me to be this, when wages, I had given lessons to a neighbour's honourable, honour-loving, conscientious dili-child, a little girl, in reading and writing. As gence cannot, by the utmost efforts of toil, ob- the common school-course could take me sa tain the necessaries of life, or when the work-farther, the point now was to get a priva ing man cannot even find work; but must hour and proceed into Latin. But for that stand with folded arms, lamenting his forced purpose a guter groschen weekly was require. idleness, through which himself and his family are verging to starvation, or it may be, actually suffering the pains of hunger. this my parents had not to give. Many a day "It was in the extremest penury that I was born and brought up. The earliest companion of my childhood was Want; and my first impressions came from the tears of my mother, who had not bread for her children. there. Being questioned why I was cryin," How often have I seen her on Saturday-nights wringing her hands and weeping, when she had come back with what the hard toil, nay, often the sleepless nights, of her husband had tried to answer, but a whole stream of te broke loose, and scarcely could I make t cause of my sorrow intelligible. My magn mous godfather offered to pay the weesh prachen out of his own pocket; and only this | all this before I had read any authors, or could condition was imposed on me, that I should possibly possess any store of words. The come to him every Sunday, and repeat what man was withal passionate and rigorous; in part of the Gospel I had learned by heart. every point repulsive; with a moderate income This latter arrangement had one good effect he was accused of avarice; he had the stifffor me, it exercised my memory, and I ness and self-will of an old bachelor, and at learned to recite without bashfulness. the same time the vanity of aiming to be a good Latinist, and, what was more, a Latin verse-maker, and consequently a literary clergyman. These qualities of his all contributed to overload my youth, and nip away in the bud every enjoyment of its pleasures." *Drunk with joy, I started off with my loaf; ssing it up time after time into the air, and barefoot as I was, I capered aloft after it. But hereupon my loaf fell into a puddle. This Bertale again brought me a little to reason; my mother heartily rejoiced at the good news; m; father was less content. Thus passed a couple of years; and my schoolmaster intimated what I myself had long known, that I could now learn no more from him. "This then was the time when I must leave school, and betake me to the handicraft of my father. Were not the artisan under oppressions of so many kinds, robbed of the fruits of his hard toil, and of so many advantazes to which the useful citizen has a natural claim; I should still say,-Had I but continued in the station of my parents, what thousandfold vexations would at this hour have been wknown to me! My father could not but be anxious to have a grown-up son for an assist221 in his labour, and looked upon my repugBance to it with great dislike. I again longed to get into the grammar-school of the town; but for this all means were wanting. Where was a gulden of quarterly fees, where were books and a blue cloak to be come at; how wistially my look often hung on the walls of the school when I learned it! In this plain but somewhat leaden style does Heyne proceed, detailing the crosses and losses of his school-years. We cannot pretend that the narrative delights us much; nay, that it is not rather bald and barren for such a narrative: but its fidelity may be relied on; and it paints the clear, broad, strong, and somewhat heavy nature of the writer, perhaps better than description could do. It is curious, for instance, to see with how little of a purely humane interest he looks back to his childhood: how Heyne the man has almost grown into a sort of teaching-machine, and sees in Heyne the boy little else than the incipient Gerundgrinder, and tells us little else but how this wheel after the other was developed in him, and he came at last to grind in complete perfection. We could have wished to get some view into the interior of that poor Chemnitz hovel, with its unresting loom and cheerless hearth, its squalor and devotion, its affection and repining; and the fire of natural genius struggling into flame amid such incumbrances, in an atmosphere so damp and close! But of "A clergyman of the suburbs was my se- all this we catch few farther glimpses; and cond godfather; his name was Sebastian Sey- hear only of Fabricius and Owen and Pasor, del; my schoolmaster, who likewise belonged and school-examinations, and rectors that had this congregation, had told him of me; I been taught by Ernesti. Neither, in another was seat for, and after a short examination, he respect, not of omission but of commission, promised me that I should go to the town- can this piece of writing altogether content hool; he himself would bear the charges. us. We must object a little to the spirit of it Who can express my happiness, as I then felt as too narrow, too intolerant. Sebastian Sey!! I was despatched to the first teacher, ex- del must have been a very meager man; but amined, and placed with approbation in the is it right, that Heyne, of all others, should cond class. Weakly from the first, pressed speak of him with asperity? Without ques down with sorrow and want, without any tion the unfortunate Seydel meant nobly, had cheerful enjoyment of childhood or youth, I not thrift stood in his way. Did he not pay was still of very small stature; my class-fel-down his gulden every quarter regularly, and La judged by externals, and had a very slight tion of me. Scarcely by various proofs figence, and by the praises I received, Could I get so far that they tolerated my being put beside them. And certainly my diligence was not a little ampered! Of his promise, the clergyman, deed, kept so much, that he paid my quarry fees, provided me with a coarse cloak, and gave me some useless volumes that were ing on his shelves; but to furnish me with choul-books he could not resolve. I thus found myself under the necessity of borrowor a class-fellow's books, and daily copying a part of them before the lesson. On the other and, the honest man would have some hand mself in my instruction, and gave me from fibe to time some hours in Latin. In his yorth be had learned to make Latin verses: arcely was Erasmus de Civilitate Morum got rat, when I too must take to verse-making; give the boy a blue cloak, though a coarse one? Nay, he bestowed old books on him, and instruction, according to his gift, in the mystery of verse-making. And was not all this something? And if thrift and charity had a continual battle to fight, was not this better than a flat surrender on the part of the latter? The other pastors of Chemnitz are all quietly forgotten: why should Sebastian be remembered to his disadvantage for being only a little better than they? Heyne continued to be much infested with tasks from Sebastian, and sorely held down by want, and discouragement of every sort. The school-course, moreover, he says, was bad, nothing but the old routine; vocables, trans lations, exercises; all without spirit or pur. pose. Nevertheless, he continued to make what we must call wonderful proficiency these branches; especially as he had still to write every task before he could learn it. Fo he prepared "Greek versions," he says; "also | Where could I learn good manners, elegance, Greek verses; and by and by could write a right way of thought where could I attain down in Greek prose, and at last, in Greek as any culture for heart and spirit. well as Latin verses, the discourses he heard in church!" Some ray of hope was beginning to spring up within his mind. A certain small degree of self-confidence had first been awakened in him, as he informs us, by a "pedantic adventure." "Upwards, however, I still strove. A feeling of honour, a wish for something better, an effort to work myself out of this abasement, in santly attended me; but without direction as it was, it led me rather to sullenness, misanthropy, and clownishness. "At length a place opened for me, where some training in these points lay within my reach. One of our senators took his mother. in-law home to live with him; she had still two children with her, a son and a daughter, both about my own age. For the son private les sons were wanted; and happily I was chosen for the purpose. "There chanced to be a school-examination held, at which the superintendent, as chief school-inspector, was present. This man, Dr. Theodor Krüger, a theologian of some learning for his time, all at once interrupted the rector, who was teaching ex cathedra, and put the question who among the scholars could tell him what might be made per anagramma from the word Austria. This whim had arisen from "As these private hours brought me in a gl the circumstance that the first Silesian war den monthly, I now began to defend myself & was just begun; and some such anagram, little against the grumbling of my parents reckoned very happy, had appeared in a news- Hitherto I had been in the habit of doing work paper. No one of us knew so much as occasionally, that I might not be told how I was what an anagram was; even the rector looked eating their bread for nothing; clothes, and oit quite perplexed. As none answered, the lat- for my lamp, I had earned by teaching in the ter began to give us a description of anagrams house; these things I could now relinquish: in general. I set myself to work, and sprang and thus my condition was in some degree im forth with my discovery, Vastari! This was proved. On the other hand, I had now oppor something different from the newspaper one: tunity of seeing persons of better education. I so much the greater was our superintendent's gained the goodwill of the family; so that be admiration, and the more as the successful as-sides the lesson-hours I generally lived there pirant was a little boy, on the lowest bench of the secunda. He growled out his applause to me, but at the same time set the whole school about my ears, as he stoutly upbraided them with being beaten by an infimus. Such society afforded me some culture, et tended my conceptions and opinions, and ala polished a little the rudeness of my exterior. In this senatorial house he must have been somewhat more at ease; for he now very pri "Enough! this pedantic adventure gave the vately fell in love with his pupil's sister, and first impulse to the development of my powers. made and burnt many Greek and Latin verses I began to take some credit to myself, and in in her praise; and had sweet dreams of some spite of all the oppression and contempt in time rising "so high as to be worthy of her. which I languished, to resolve on struggling Even as matters stood, he acquired her friend forward. This first struggle was in truth in-ship and that of her mother. But the grand con effectual enough; was soon regarded as a piece of pride and conceitedness; it brought on me a thousand humiliations and disquietudes; at times it might degenerate on my part into defiance. Nevertheless, it kept me at the stretch of my diligence, ill-guided as it was, and withdrew me from the company of my class-fellows, among whom, as among children of low birth and bad nurture could not fail to be the case, the utmost coarseness and boorishness of every sort prevailed. The plan of these schools does not include any general inspection, but limits itself to mere intellectual instruction. "Yet on all bands." continues he, "I found myself too sadly hampered. The perverse way in which the old parson treated me: at home the discontent and grudging of my parents, especially of my father, who could not get on with his work, and still thought, that had I kept by his way of life, he might now have had some help; the pressure of want, the feeling of being behind every other; all this would allow no cheerful thought, no sentiment of worth, to spring up within me. A timorous, bashful, awkward carriage shut me out still further from all exterior attractions. cern for the present was how to get to college at Leipzig. Old Sebastian had promised to stand good on this occasion; and unquestionably would have done so with the greatest pleasure, had it cost him nothing; but he promised ad promised, without doing aught; above a'l without putting his hand in his pocket; and elsewhere there was no hope or resource. At length, wearied perhaps with the boy's impor tunity, he determined to bestir himself; and directed his assistant, who was just making a journey to Leipzig, to show Heyne the road the two arrived in perfect safety: Heyne st longing after cash, for of his own he had on's two gulden, about five shillings; but the assist ant left him in a lodging house, and west ha way, saying he had no farther orders! The miseries of a poor scholar's life were now to be Heyne's portion in full measure. lis clothed, totally destitute of books, with f shillings in his purse, he found himself. down in the Leipzig university, to stude all, learning. Despondency at first overmastered the poor boy's heart, and he sunk into sica*; ness, from which indeed he recovered; only, as he says, "to fall into conditions of log where he became the prey of desperatio How he contrived to exist, much more to supe A yet Saxony was against Austria, not, as in the is scarcely apparent from this narrative. Te nd. allied with her. unhappy old Sebastian did at length send h. me pittance, and at rare intervals repeated | little employment as a private teacher. This the dole; yet ever with his own peculiar grace; might be more useful than his advice to ininot till after unspeakable solicitations; in tate Scaliger, and read the ancients so as to quantities that were consumed by inextinguish- begin with the most ancient, and proceed regu able debt, and coupled with sour admonitions; larly to the latest. Small service it can do a bednay, on one occasion addressed externally, "A rid man to convince him that waltzing is prefera Mr. Heyne, ETUDIANT NEGLIGEANT." For half ble to quadrilles! "Crist's Lectures," says he, a year he would leave him without all help; then "were a tissue of endless digressions, which, promise to come, and see what he was doing: however, now and then contained excellent recome accordingly, and return without leaving marks." him a penny; neither could the destitute youth ever obtain any public furtherance; no freytisch (free-table) or stipendium was to be procured. Many times he had no regular meal; "often Lot three-halfpence for a loaf at mid-day." He longed to be dead, for his spirit was often sunk in the gloom of darkness. "One good heart alone," says he, "I found, and that in the servast girl of the house where I lodged. She laid cut money for my most pressing necessities, and risked almost all she had, seeing me in such frightful want. Could I but find thee in the world even now, thou good pious soul, that I might repay ther what thou then didst for me!" Heyne declares it to be still a mystery to him how he stood all this. "What carried me forward," continues he, "was not ambition; my youthful dream of one day taking a place, or aiming to take one, among the learned. It is true, the bitter feeling of debasement, of deficiency in education and external polish; the consciousness of awkwardness in social life, incessantly accompanied me. But my chief strength lay in a certain defiance of fate. This gave me courage not to yield; everywhere to try to the uttermost whether I was doomed without remedy never to rise from this degradation." But Heyne's best teacher was himself. No pressure of distresses, no want of books, advisers, or encouragement, not hunger itself could abate his resolute perseverance. What books he could come at he borrowed; and such was his excess of zeal in reading, that for a whole half year he allowed himself only two nights' sleep in the week, till at last a fever obliged him to be more moderate. His dili gence was undirected, or ill-directed, but it never rested, never paused, and must at length prevail. Fortune had cast him into a cavern, and he was groping darkly round; but the prisoner was a giant, and would at length burst forth as a giant into the light of day. Heyne, without any clear aim, almost without any hope had set his heart on attaining knowledge; a force, as of instinct, drove him on, and no promise and no threat could turn him back. It was at the very depth of his destitution, when he had not "three groschen for a loaf to dine on," that he refused a tutorship, with handsome enough appointments, but which was to have removed him from the University. Crist had sent for him one Sunday, and made him the pro posal: "There arose a violent struggle within me," says he, "which drove me to and fro for several days; to this hour it is incomprehensible to me where I found resolution to determine on renouncing the offer, and pursuing my object in Leipzig." A man with a half volition goes backwards and forwards, and makes no way on the smoothest road; a man with a whole volition advances on the roughest, and will reach his purpose if there be a Of order in his studies there could be little expectation. He did not even know what profession he was aiming after; old Sebastian was for theology; and Heyne, though himself averse to it, affected, and only affected to compy; besides he had no money to pay class fees: It was only to open lectures, or at most to ill-little wisdom in it. guarded class-rooms that he could gain admis- With his first two years' residence in Leipsion. Of this ill-guarded sort was Winkler's; into which poor Heyne insinuated himself to hear philosophy. Alas! the first problem of all philosophy, the keeping of soul and body gether, was wellnigh too hard for him. Winker's students were of a riotous description, accustomed, among other improprieties, to scharscraping with the feet. One day they chose to receive Heyne in this fashion; and he could not venture back. "Nevertheless," adds he, simply enough, "the beadle came to me sometime afterwards, demanding the fee: I had my own shifts to take before I could raise it." zig, Heyne's personal narrative terminates; not because the nodus of the history had been solved then, and his perplexities cleared up, but simply because he had not found time to relate further. A long series of straitened hopeless days were yet appointed him. By Ernes ti's or Crist's recommendation, he occasionally got employment in giving private lessons; at one time, he worked as secretary and classical hodman to " Cruscius, the philosopher," who felt a little rusted in his Greek and Latin: everywhere he found the scantiest accommodation, and, shifting from side to side in dreary Ernesti was the only teacher from whom vicissitudes of want, had to spin out an exist he derived any benefit: the man, indeed, whose ence, warmed by no ray of comfort, except the induence seems to have shaped the whole sub-fire that burnt or smouldered unquenchably sequent course of his studies. By dint of exCessive endeavours he gained admittance to Ernesti's lectures; and here first learned, Bays Heeren, "what interpretation of the classics meant." One Crist also, a strange, fanastic Sir Plume of a Professor, who built much un taste, elegance of manners, and the like, aok some notice of him, and procured him a within his own bosom. However, he had now chosen a profession, that of law, at which, as at many other branches of learning, he was labouring with his old diligence. Of prefer ment in this province there was, for the pre sent, little or no hope; but this was no new thing with Heyne. By degrees, too, his fine talents and endeavours, and his perverse situa |