337 



HEGESIAS. 



HEINE, HEINRICH. 



338 



which honour however Hegel still loved to claim with a satisfaction 

 mingled with regret. 



HEQE'SIAS ('tiyii<rlas), a Greek rhetorician and historian, was a 

 native of Magnesia, and lived ahout the time of the historian Timseus, 

 that is, about B.C. 250. Respecting his life no particulars are known, 

 but as an author he appears to have been of some importance in 

 antiquity, though more for his bad than for his good qualities. Strabo 

 (xiv. p. 648) calls him the founder of that florid and inflated style of 

 oratory which was afterwards designated by the name of the Asiatic ; 

 and this testimony is borne out by Cicero (' Brut.,' 83 ; ' Orat,' 67, 69) 

 and others. Hegesias himself pretended to imitate the Attic orators, 

 especially Lyaias. He seems to have been destitute of all the qualities 

 required of an orator, and to have taken a great delight in childish 

 conceits and a pretty way of expressing them. This we must conclude 

 both from the opinions of ancient critics as well as from the few speci- 

 mens of bia oratory which have come down to us, and are preserved 

 in Dionysius (' Do Compos. Verb.,' 4, 18) and Photius (' Biblioth. Cod.,' 

 250). As an historian he appears not to have been much better than 

 as an orator. The subject which he chose was the history of Alex- 

 ander the Great, but that he had no notion of the dignity of history 

 is evident from the specimens given by Dionysius, Photius, and Plutarch 

 (' Alex.,' 3) ; and A. Gellius (ix. 4) does not appear to be much mistaken 

 in classing him among those who, unconcerned about historical truth, 

 filled their books with marvellous occurrences and incredible stories. 

 (Compare Strabo, ix. p. 396 ; Longinus, ' De Sublim.,' 3 ; Theon, 

 ' Progymnasm.,* 2 ; St. Croix, ' Examen critique des Historieus d'Alex- 

 andre,' p. 47, ic.) 



From this Hegesiaa we must distinguish HEGESIAS ' the Cyrenaic 

 philosopher,' who lived somewhat earlier, in the reign of Ptolemieus 

 Philadelphus, and was a disciple of Paraebates. His doctrines how- 

 ever differed in several points from those of other Cyrenaics, and so 

 much so that his followers were regarded as a distinct school, and 

 are called as such Hegesiaci. In the main points they agreed with 

 Aristippus, the founder of the Cyrenaic school, who maintained that 

 pleasure was the great object of man's life ; but Hegesias and his school 

 went further; they denied that kindness, friendship, and benevolence 

 had any independent existence, but that they arise and disappear with 

 our feeling of the want of them. Happiness, they said, is a thing 

 impossible to attain, for our body is subject to many sufferings, and 

 the soul suffers with it Life and death are equally desirable ; nothing 

 is by nature either agreeable or disagreeable, but becomes so through 

 the circumstances in which a man lives. A wise person therefore 

 looks upon life with indifference, and regards nothing and nobody so 

 much as himself, reducing everything to his own convenience. This 

 miserable view of human life was somewhat softened down and 

 improved by Anniceria, the disciple of Hegesiaa. Hegeaias wrote a 

 work entitled '\foitafrrffay, in which he introduced a person resolved 

 to starve himself, and explaining to his friends why death was more 

 desirable than life. He seems to have taught philosophy at Alexandria, 

 but as in consequence of his doctrines many persons destroyed them- 

 selves, King Ptolemy Philadelphus is said to have forbidden him to 

 teach any more. (Diogenes Lacrt., ii. 86, 93-96 ; Cicero, ' TuscuL,' 

 L84.) 



HKIBERO, PETER ANDREAS, a Danish dramatic and miscel- 

 laneous writer of considerable reputation, the husband of a lady whose 

 novels are of great excellence, and the father of a dramatic writer 

 [HEIBERO, Juii.ix Lcnwio] whose works have been more successful 

 than his own. Peter Andreas was born on the 16th of November 

 1758, at Vordingborg in Sioolland, and is thus by birth a Dane, though 

 he has often been taken for a Norwegian, owing to his having spent 

 much of his early life in Norway, and published in later life a political 

 work in French under the title of 'Lettres d'un Norvdgien de la vieille 

 roche.' He was established at Copenhagen as an official translator in 

 1788, and continued a resident at that city till 1799, when he was 

 banished from the Danish dominions by a judicial sentence for 

 seditious expressions contained in some of his poetical works. He 

 took up his residence in Paris, and there obtained employment in the 

 department of foreign affairs under Napoleon I. ; his knowledge of 

 northern languages and affairs rendering him a useful clerk to Talley- 

 rand, whom he frequently accompanied in his negotiations in Germany. 

 The fall of Napoleon led to the dismissal of Heiberg, but not to the 

 loss of a pension for his services to the French government, on which 

 he continued to subsist at Paris till his death in that city on the 30th 

 of April 1841. His wife, Thomasina Christina Buntsen, who remained 

 at Copenhagen on bis banishment, and contracted a fresh marriage, 

 died in or about 1856, and was the author of 'An Every-Day Story' 

 (' En Hverdags-Historie'), and of a series of anonymous novels which 

 followed it, which ran through numerous editions, and were collected 

 in several volumes under the title of 'Novels by tho Author of an 

 Every-Day Story.' They are considered by the Danes the most lively 

 and truthful delineations of Danish society ever written ; and it is 

 singular that up to the present moment, though many foreign works 

 of inferior merit have had great success in England, the works of this 

 ' Danish Miss Austen ' have not met with an English translator. The 

 dramatic works of Petal Andreas were collected and published by his 

 friend the critic Rahbek, in 4 vols. : ' Samlede Skuespil,' Copenhagen, 

 1806-19. The comedy of ' Heckingbom,' and the two operettas 

 ' The Voyager to China and ' The Solemn Entry,' are regarded as the 



Bioo. DIV. VOL. in. 



most successful. Heiberg's later works in the Danish language were 

 published in Norway, and two of them, ' Three Years in Bergen ' and 

 some reminiscences of his career in the French service,.are of an auto- 

 biographical character. He wrote in French, a ' Precis historique de 

 la monarchic Danoise,' and for several years accounts and criticisms on 

 the current Danish literature in the ' R<5vue Encyelope'dique.' At the 

 time of the union of Norway to Sweden, at the close of the war in 

 1814, a series of articles from his pen, remonstrating on the part taken 

 by England in the affair, appeared in English in the ' Globe ' London 

 newspaper. His ' Lettres d'un Norvegien ' (Paris, 1822), which have 

 been already mentioned, and a work in Danish against capital punish- 

 ment, are the most important of his remaining works, of which a 

 complete list will be found in Erslew's ' Forfalter-Lexikon.' 



* HEIBERG, JOHAN LUDWIG, a Danish metaphysician and 

 comic dramatist, was born at Copenhagen on the 14th of December 

 1791. At the age of eight years he lost tho care of his father 

 [HEIBERG, PETER ANDREAS], who was banished for sedition, and 

 emigrated to France. The next two years of the boy's life were 

 spent under the roof of his father's friend, the indefatigable Knud 

 Lyne Rahbek, whose house was at that time the usual place of assem- 

 blage for half the literary men of Copenhagen. From Rahbek's he 

 went to school, and at the age of thirteen took up his residence with 

 his mother, who, remaining in Denmark after tho banishment of her 

 husband, had married another banished man, the Swedish Count 

 Ehrensviird, one of the conspirators against Gustavus III., who 

 resided at Copenhagen under the name of Gyllenborg. The house of 

 Madame Gyllenborg was the favourite resort of Oehlenschliiger and 

 Oersted, and young Heiberg found himst'lf again surrounded with the 

 best literary society. In 1811 he produced his first drama, 'Tyge 

 Brahes Spaadom,' or ' Tycho Brahe's Prediction;' and in 1816 another, 

 'Julespbg och Nytaaraloier ' (' Christmas Fun and New Year's 

 Laughter'). He had taken a degree at the university iu 1809, and 

 in 1817 he wrote a characteristic dissertation for the attainment of the 

 doctorate in philosophy : ' De poeseos dramatics: genere Hispanico et 

 prajsertim de Petro Calderone de la Barca, principe draumticorum.' 

 At the age of twenty-seven he was still without a profession, and 

 afterwards said that he did not know himself if he should become " a 

 poet or a critic, a physician or a naturalist, a diplomatist or a sur- 

 veyor." From this embarassment he was relieved by receiving from 

 government a travelling pension, which enabled him to pay a short 

 visit to London, and to stop three years at Paris, where ho lived, at 

 his father's, and saw much of the best Parisian society. At Paris he 

 earned part of his living as a professor of tho guitar ; and on his 

 return to Denmark iu 1822 he obtained the post of professor of the 

 Danish language at the University of Kiel, in Holstein. The dullness 

 of a residence in the provinces was insupportable to him, and he threw 

 up the situation after three years. In the meantime he had directed 

 his attention to metaphysics, and took a trip to Berlin to make lam- 

 self personally acquainted with Hegel and the Hegelian philosophy, 

 but was returning home unable to comprehend it when, according to 

 hU own account, the " central thought " of the whole .system flashed 

 on him all at once iu a moment at Hamburg. Another thought which 

 occurred to him about the same time was, to try to introduce on the 

 Danish stage an imitation of the French vaudevilles. The first drama 

 of the kind ' King Solomon and the Hatter,' produced in November 

 1825 had the most brilliant success, and was acted more than fifty 

 times. It was speedily followed by several others ' The Danes in 

 Paris,' ' No,' &c., and in 1828 by ' Elverhoi,' or ' The Fairies' Hillock,' 

 a play in five acts : the success of all of which was so decided that 

 in 1829 he received the appointment of Royal Dramatic Poet and 

 Translator, an important official post connected with tho theatre. 

 Two years after he married Johanne Louise Patges, a rising actress, 

 who is now, as Madame Hcibcrg, considered the principal omameut 

 of the Danish stage. In 1830 he was appointed teacher of logic-, 

 (esthetics, and Danish literature at the Military High-School. Since 

 that period Heiberg has produced several works of reputation in both 

 the drama and philosophy, and is still one of the leading personages 

 of Danish literature. In his 'Now Poems,' published in 1841, 'A 

 Soul after Death' was particularly noticed. His 'Outlines of the 

 Philosophy of Philosophy, or Speculative Logic,' were followed by a 

 periodical under the name of ' Perseus, or a Journal for Speculative 

 Ideas,' commenced in 1837, but which was not of long duration. A 

 periodical of a different kind, 'The Flying Post of Copenhagen, 1 

 which was edited in 1827 and 1828 and also at a later date by Heiberg, 

 was eminently popular. In it first appeared, anonymously, tho 

 'Every-Day Story,' which is considered one of the finest of Danish 

 novels, the authorship of which and of those which followed it by tho 

 same hand was often attributed to Heiberg himself till it was ascer- 

 tained that they were from the pen of his mother, Madame Gyllenborg. 

 The position of women in society has been one of the subjects that 

 have recently engaged his attention, and several pamphlets for and 

 against the doctrines which he advocates have testified to the interest 

 which his views awaken in the Danish public. A collection of hi.i 

 works up to that time was published more than ten years ago. 



HEINE, HEINRICH, was born on tho 1st of January 1800 at 

 Diisseldorf, in the Prussian Rhine-Province, of Jewish parents. His 

 father was a merchant. Ho was educated at the Lyceum at Diissel- 

 dorf, and as he was intended for the mercantile profession, he was 



z 



