736 



HOLBERG 



HOLDEN 



of Earl Spencer are regarded by Woltmann as the 

 only surviving authentic portraits of the king 

 from Holbein's hand among the many bearing his 

 name. His delicate and exquisite portrait of 

 Queen Jane Seymour is in the Belvedere, Vienna. 

 To the same period is referable the admirable half- 

 length of Sir Nicholas Carew, Master of the King's 

 Horse, at Dalkeith Palace, and the noble portrait 

 of Hubert Morett, the jeweller, formerly attributed 

 to Leonardo, in the Dresden Gallery. 



Holbein was repeatedly employed abroad on the 

 king's service. In 1538 he was despatched to the 

 court of the Netherlands to paint a likeness of 

 Christina of Denmark, who had been proposed as 

 a successor to Jane Seymour as queen to Henry 

 VIII. In a three-hours' sitting he executed a 

 sketch ' very perffight ; ' and from this he produced 

 the noble full-length in the possession of the Duke 

 of Norfolk. This work is one of the painter's 

 choicest masterpieces, most attractive in the 

 quietude of its execution and in its rendering of 

 feminine sweetness and innocence. In the same 

 year he appears to have been in Burgundy upon the 

 King's business ; and in July 1539 he was despatched 

 to the court of Cleves, where lie painted Anne of 

 Cleves ' expressed . her imaige verye lyvelye' in 

 a work now in the Louvre ; while about 1540 he 

 executed the striking portrait of the Duke of 

 Norfolk, uncle of Queen Catharine Howard, of 

 which the original is at Windsor, and an old 

 copy is preserved at Arundel Castle. The last 

 work upon which Holbein was engaged was the 

 picture of ' Henry VIII. granting a Charter to 

 the Masters of the Barber-Surgeons Company,' 

 still preserved in their guildhall. It was left 

 incomplete at the time of his death by the 



Elague, which, as the discovery of his will by Mr 

 lack in 1861 has proved, occurred in London 

 between 7th October and 29th November 1543, 

 eleven years earlier than was previously believed. 



Holbein is seen at his highest in his portraiture ; 

 and in this department his expressional power, his 

 veracity and dignity, and his noble technical 

 qualities of unerring draughtmanship, subtle and 

 perfect modelling, and richness and force of 

 colouring entitle him to rank with the greatest 

 masters. It is his power as a portraitist that gives 

 value and impressiveness to his religious subjects. 

 He has little of the imaginative force, the visionary 

 power, which stamps the works of an artist like 

 Diirer ; but his foot treads very firmly upon the 

 earth, and the faces and forms which he oestows 

 upon his sacred personages are full of homely truth, 

 and a simple, moving pathos. As an ornamentalist 

 he ranks as the equal of the greatest Italian 

 masters, his work of this class being distinguished 

 by easy seizure of form, great nobility of design, 

 and the most exuberant richness of fancy. 



Many works by Holbein were included in the 

 South Kensington Portrait Exhibition of 1866, 

 in the Royal Academy Old Masters' Exhibition 

 of 1880, and in the Tudor Exhibition of 1890; 

 nut in all of these exhibitions many portraits 

 were quite erroneously attributed to his brush. 



See Holbein und seine Zeit : des Kilnstlers Familie, 

 Leben, und Schaffen, by Alfred Woltmann (2d ed. Leip. 

 1874-76 ; English trans, of the first edition, by F. 

 E. Bunne"tt, Lond. 1872); and Some Account of the Life 

 and Works of Hans Holbein, by B,. N. Wornum ( Lond. 

 1SG7). 



Holberg, LUDWIG, BARON HOLBERG, the 

 creator of modern Danish literature, was born at 

 Bergen in Norway, 3d December 1684. He took 

 his degree at Copenhagen, and spent some fourteen 

 years partly as private tutor and partly in travel, 

 in the course of which he visited England (where 

 he studied two years at Oxford), France, Italy, and 

 Germany. In 1718 he was appointed professor of 



Metaphysics at Copenhagen, but in 1720 exchanged 

 that chair for the more lucrative one of Eloquence. 

 The works that laid the foundation of his fame 

 were satirical poems first and foremost the serio- 

 comic epic, written in iambics, of Peder Paars 

 (1719-20), in which he ridicules the pedantic 

 stiffness and stupidity of contemporary life and 

 thought, and after this Hans Mikkelsen's Jesting 

 Poems (1722) and Hans Mikkelsen's Metamorphoses 

 (1726). But in 1721 the first Danish theatre 

 was opened at Copenhagen, and Holberg tried his 

 hand at comedy-writing, with, as it turned out, 

 marvellous success. His excellent light comedies, 

 on account of their genuine wit, comic humour, 

 and skilful character-drawing, are counted by the 

 Danes amongst the best things in all their litera- 

 ture. They were published by their author in a 

 collected form in 1723-25, and again, with five 

 new plays added, in 1731-54. In 1730 Holberg 

 became professor of History, and five years later 

 rector or the university ; and in 1747 he was 

 ennobled. He died at Copenhagen on 28th January 

 1754. Perhaps the most noticeable feature in Hoi- 

 berg's character is the versatility of his genius. 

 After 1724 he again turned his pen to history, 

 and wrote, amongst other books, a History of 

 Denmark, a General Church History, a History of 

 the Jews, and Comparative Biographies of Great 

 Men and Women, all greatly esteemed, particularly 

 the first. Then in 1741 he produced another 

 classic of Danish literature, the satirico-humoristic 

 romance Niels Klim's Subterranean Journey ; and 

 lastly he wrote serious reflective works, Moral 

 Thoughts ( 1 744 ) and Epistles ( 1 748-54 ). His A uto- 

 biography ( 1 727-43 ) should also be mentioned. 

 Peder Paars, the Subterranean Journey, and the 

 Autobiography have been translated into English. 



The best critical edition of his Comedies is that pub- 

 lished by the Holberg Society in 8 vols. 1848-53 ( new ed. 

 1884). See the monographs by Rahbek (1815-17), Wer- 

 lauff (1838), Prutz (1857), and G. Brandes (Holberg und 

 seine Zeitgenosscn, Berlin, 1885). 



Holcroft, THOMAS, playwright and novelist, 

 was born in London, 10th December 1745 (o.s.). 

 His father, in whom fondness alternated with fury, 

 was by turns a shoemaker, horse-dealer, and 

 pedlar ; and he himself, after three years as a 

 Newmarket stable-boy, then eight as shoemaker, 

 schoolmaster, and servant-secretary to Granville 

 Sharpe, in 1770 turned strolling player. He never 

 was much of an actor, best in low comedy arid old 

 men's parts ; and, after settling in London (1777), 

 he gradually took to authorship. Alwyn, or the 

 Gentleman Comedian (1780), was the first of four 

 novels ; Duplicity ( 1781 ), of upwards of thirty plays. 

 Of the latter, The Follies of a Day ( 1784), adapted 

 from Beaumarchais' Manage de Figaro, brought 

 him more than 600 ; and The Road to Ruin ( 1792), 

 1300. Between these befell the great sorrow of 

 his life, the death of his eldest son, William 

 (1773-89), who having robbed his father of 40, 

 and been foiind by him on an American-bound 

 vessel, shot himself : for a twelvemonth the stern, 

 strong man hardly quitted the house. An ardent 

 if peaceable democrat, in 1794 he was tried for 

 high-treason with Hardy, Home Tooke, and nine 

 others. The proceedings fell through, but the 

 animosity of party spirit entailed a run of ill-luck 

 at the theatres, which, combined with unfortunate 

 speculations, led Holcroft to sell off his books and 

 effects (1799), and to retire for four years to 

 Hamburg and Paris. He died 23d March 1809. 

 See the interesting Memoirs, written by himself, 

 and continued by Hazlitt ( 1815) ; also Kegan Paul's 

 William Godwin ( 1876). 



Ilolden, SIR ISAAC, one of the inventors of 

 lucifer matches and of important modifications in 

 wool-carding machinery, was born 7th May 1807, as 



