contribute to it, I shall never be induced to withdraw them. Your Excellency has been pleased to consider my family, and to relieve my mind from one of its most anxious cares. I shall thus continue with increased and more ardent zeal in the discharge of my duty. With joy I shall remain, to the end of my days, in the service of the best of kings; nothing shall make me waver in my faithful attachment; and to my last breath, the kindness and favor of your Excellency will be before my eyes." The minister's letter was dated November 16, 1770; and he died on the 26th of that month. Those who succeeded Munchhausen in the administration of the country, entered into his views with regard to Gottingen; and Heyne, therefore, continued in the same sphere, and retained the same estimation and authority. These relations were the more easily preserved, as there was an individual at Hanover, who formed a connecting link between the university and the government. This was Mr. George Braudes, one of the secretaries of the ministers, who had been much employed by Munchhausen towards the close of his life, and had, among other duties, also been entrusted with the details that relate to the university of Gottingen. As he was intimately acquainted with its concerns, and trained by Munchhausen himself, the new ministers, very justly, considered him as the fittest person, to whom they could confide the management of those affairs. He was, indeed, a man peculiarly qualified for that office. Endowed with exquisite talents for literature and the arts, he added to the knowledge which he had acquired an unbounded love for the sciences, and the most active zeal in promoting them. He was, besides, a man of business; so that, altogether, Gottingen could not be in better hands. He had discovered in Heyne a congenial mind with his own; and these two men, for a long succession of years, jointly and cheerfully labored for the welfare of the university.

It has been intimated before, that Heyne was appointed Secretary to the Royal Society of Sciences at Gottingen. From that moment, a new spirit seemed to pervade that body. The members became more diligent and active; and the business was conducted with a regularity and order, that gave the greatest satisfaction. Besides discharging the duties of Secretary, Heyne was no less zealous in doing justice to his situation as a member. He was one of the

most industrious contributors to the Transactions which the Society published, and his papers are more numerous than those of any of his contemporaries; and it is not only the number, by which they are to be estimated, but their intrinsic value. They are the result of deep and laborious research, and cannot be considered otherwise than as acquisitions to the store of human knowledge. The Transactions of the Gottingen Society are all written in Latin, and were first published under the title of Commentarii Soc. Gott. Only five volumes of them had appeared; for they were interrupted,

or stopped by a law-suit with the bookseller who published them. For 16 years not a single Volume had come out; and Heyne, in the year 1771, commenced a new series, under the appellation of Novi Commentarii. These were continued, without interruption, to the 8th Volume; then a new series was again begun, with the denomination of Commentationes Soc. Gott. of which 16 Volumes were completed. These were in the year 1808 succeeded by a fresh series, called Commentationes recentiores Soc. Gott. They are all in 4to. But to return to the order of our history.

In the year 1773, he published his first edition of Pindar. It was occasioned by the want of a sufficient number of copies of the existing editions, for the use of his lectures. But Heyne did a great deal more than reprint. He revised and ameliorated the text, which was in a very corrupt state, and contributed much to the elucidation of that difficult poet; but much more was accomplished by the second edition, of which we shall speak afterwards.

In 1774 another laborious charge was imposed upon him, which was the management of certain exhibitions, which are usual in the German universities, and consist in furnishing the poorer class of students with their dinners. These exhibitions are called, in German, free tables, or free messes (Freytische); and their number is very considerable at Gottingen (about 150), so as to cause much trouble to the person who has to superintend them. Several cooks, who are paid by the government, undertake to supply them; and every student sends for his mess to his chambers. The keeping and settling the accounts is a tedious business: Heyne did not decline it, disagreeable as it was, from his anxiety to see all the concerns of the university properly regulated. I mention this particular, merely to show the uncommon activity of that man, who shrunk from no labor, nor shunned any trouble, where he had the prospect of being useful to the public.

In 1775 a heavy affliction befel him, the death of Mrs. Heyne. She had been for some time out of health, and her death seems to have been accelerated by grief, arising from the loss of two childreu who fell victims to the small-pox. How deeply he felt that misfortune may be conceived by those, who knew the susceptibility of his heart, and his strong attachment to his beloved partner. There is among his papers a sketch left, descriptive of his sorrow, and of the efforts he had to make not to be overwhelmed by its pressure. He, however, with his manly and energetic soul made those efforts, in which he was supported by a sense of the various duties of his situation. His exertions met with their reward; and by a resolute application to business he restored his spirits to their proper tone, and recovered by degrees that tranquillity of mind, which, though strongly moved, was not unhinged by the tender and melancholy recollections of what he had lost. He was left with three children, the care of whom also roused him from dejection.

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In the year 1777 the new Alphabetical Catalogue of the library was begun. It was completed ten years after, namely, in the year 1787. Heyne's domestic situation, since he had become a widower, was by no means comfortable, as he had not leisure to pay his children that attention, which, as a good father, he could not but wish to see bestowed upon them. While he was looking for a person to whose care they might be entrusted, his friends prevailed on him to look for a new mother to them, in a second marriage. His choice fell upon Miss Brandes, second daughter of Mr. George Brandes, of Hanover, whom we have had occasion to mention in the foregoing pages. He was united to this lady, on the 9th of April 1777. He felt himself now reinstated in that domestic comfort, of which he had for some time been deprived. This left his mind at full liberty to attend with undisturbed vigor to the various duties which he had to discharge. If we admire this estimable character as a man of talent, and of uncommon learning, he is not less entitled to our regard as a man of business, and an active member of society. His industry and application, if they be equalled by others, are certainly not surpassed; he was, indeed, indefatigable. To those qualities were added order and method in the management of every concern committed to him, and such clearness of perception in placing things in the proper light, and seizing the right side at once, that whatever he did was done in the most correct, and at the same time the most expeditious manner.

In the year 1782 he edited Apollodorus, which author he intended as a manual to a course of lectures on Mythology. It, however, becamethe vehicle, by means of the notes, of most valuable philological information. Mythology itself had much engaged Heyne's attention he saw in it not merely a heap of fables and idle tales, but perceived, that under this mass of incongruities the remains of the most ancient history of nations lay hidden. All he has written on these subjects, especially in the treatises in the Gottingen Transactions, is extremely interesting. Heyne's fame and celebrity in the learned world rose and increased every day. In the most distant comers of Europe, where learning and literature had any access, his name was known. Of this he received occasionally such proofs, as would have made a man of an inferior mind conceited and vain. But he bore his honors with such modesty and unassuming demeanour, that he seemed hardly to be conscious of them, though he was by no means insensible or callous to the good opinion which others had of him, nor ungrateful for their regard and favor. He often received visits from strangers, who merely came to do homage to his merits. Among them I may mention the celebrated Marquis Romana, who, when he was on his march to the north of Germany, with the Spanish troops under his command, had purposely come out of his way to see Heyne. He called upon him, attend

ed by his Aides-de-camp, and conversed with him for some time, telling him that he had all his editions excepting the last of Pindar, which he likewise wished to purchase, and desired to know where it was to be had. It was only on taking leave, that Heyne learnt that the distinguished and learned stranger was the Marquis Romana. He was on another occasion much gratified by the attention of two young Polish officers. The Polish guards in the service of Buonaparte were passing through the vicinity of Gottingen; and those two gentlemen had in the evening rode from their quarters, two or three miles distant, solely for the purpose of seeing Heyne, and thanking him for the instruction they had received from his writings. How much his works are valued in England is well known; and even in America some of them were printed while he was yet alive. His Tibullus and Virgil are the most finished of his publications: for he had the good fortune of being able, in the editions which followed the first, to correct and perfect what had remained inaccurate or deficient. This was the more easily done, as he was constantly attentive to every thing that related to the improvement of his publications, and in the habit of noting on the margin any alteration or addition that occurred to him as advisable. Much remained to be done after the first edition of Pindar; and that much was achieved by the second, will not be denied. It appeared in the year 1798 in three volumes, and five parts, after having been preceded in the year 1791 by a small volume, called Additamenta to the first edition.

His last great work was the edition of Homer, in which he was engaged from the year 1787 to 1802, for a space of 15 years. It is, of course, understood by the reader, that by this is meant the actual labor of preparing the edition, not the study of the poet, which had employed him during his whole life. Few men have bestowed more attention on the reading and consideration of the patriarch of poets, than Heyne: and few, it may be added, have comprehended him so well. He was among the first of the moderns who contemplated the Iliad and Odyssey in the light in which they should be viewed. He did not merely act the critic and philologist in perusing those sublime works; but he treated them with the feelings of a man of taste, and interpreted them with that spirit, in which they must be conceived to have been written. He was familiar and conversant with the times to which they belonged, and the age which they delineated, as far as deep erudition, and an intimate acquaintance with ancient lore, accompanied by extensive general knowledge, could enable any man to aspire to such a pri vilege. He always acknowledged the eminent merits of Robert Wood, who by his Essay on the original genius of Homer had, as he said, opened new lights to the reader of the poet. Any fair and unbiassed person, capable of judging of the subject, will, on examining the immense labors of Heyne in this edition, not withhold the

praise that is due to him, nor make the imperfections, which in an undertaking of such extent are inevitable, a plea for depriving him of his meed of approbation. I know from personal information, having partly been an eye-witness to the progress of the work, how vast and discouraging was the task that was to be performed, and how necessary it was even for a mind like Heyne's, to call forth all its energies, in order to complete it. He was wont to rouse his spirits by the exclamation of the poet himself: Δαιμόνι, οὗ σε ἔοικε, κακὸν ὡς, δειδίσσεσθαι. (ΙΙ. β. 190.)

How little is required to discover minute errors and oversights in a work like that edition of Homer, those will know best, who are least disposed to make an illiberal use of their sagacity in estimating the general merits, which belong to this great publication. It is only the narrow-minded retailer of words and syllables, who can scarcely look two lines before him, that will harp upon little flaws, and presume to judge of the whole edifice, from poring over a small crack, which his searching eyes may here and there have discovered in its walls. Some improvement might naturally have been expected from the hands of the author, had he lived to revise his work, in subsequent editions; and nothing would have prevented the edition of Homer from attaining the same perfection which that of Virgil successively had acquired: but such hopes could not be entertained, considering the advanced age of the editor. He was in his 73d year when Homer was published. It may be said, that even in Germany that admiration of this performance was not, at its appearance, manifested, which one might have thought the public would have been forward to pour out on the head of its great scholar: but whether it was, that the imagination of his contemporaries was wound up to too high a pitch, in what they expected from such a work of Heyne, or whether the influence of enemies and detractors had extensively operated, it is certain that the publication was not hailed in Germany with that fervor of enthusiasm, which had by many been anticipated. That there were persons actuated with a spirit of envy and hostility, and others who fancied they might make themselves great by detracting from those whom the world had recognised as great, is too obvious to be denied and the effusions of either were communicated by the press to the public. Among his adversaries was Wolfius, known as the editor of Homer, and other pieces of classical literature; a man certainly of learning and critical talent, but possessed of an adequate proportion of self-conceit. The manner in which he assailed Heyne, and his peculiar notions of the poems of Homer, might be made the subject of a distinct treatise, which, if leisure serves me, I may at some future time be myself tempted to offer to the public. In my opinion, Heyne would have done well upo n this occasion, as upon others, to encounter his enemies in fight;

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