409 



HERTZ, HENKIK. 



HERTZES, ALEXANDER. 



Master of the Mint waa converted from a ministerial into a permanent 

 one, it was conferred upon Sir John Herschel ; and this office was 

 retained by him till 1855, when he resigned it on account of ill health, 

 and Professor Graham, the eminent chemist, was appointed his suc- 

 cessor.* The interest which Sir John Herschel takes in the popular 

 diffusion of scientific knowledge, as well as in education in general, 

 has been exhibited not only in his popular treatises, but also in occa- 

 sional lectures and addresses to other audiences than those accustomed 

 to meet him as a colleague in learned societies. An address of this 

 kind, delivered to the subscribers to the Windsor and Eton Public 

 Library, was published in a periodical work (' The Printing-Machine ') 

 issued by Mr. Knight in 1331. 



* HERTZ, HENRIK, an eminent Danish dramatic poet, was born 

 at Copenhagen on the 25th of August 1793 of a respectable Jewish 

 family. In 1817 he entered the University of Copenhagen as a student 

 of law, and for the next seven years, at the end of which he took his 

 degrees with honour, his attention was divided between law, which 

 he detested, and poetry and Persian literature, to which his inclination 

 led him. In the year 1(130 appeared a poetical satire on the taste of 

 the age in Denmark, which produced a sensation akin to that excited 

 by the ' English Bards and Scotch Reviewers ' among ourselves. It 

 was entitled * Gjengangerbreve,' or ' Letters of a Ghost,' and was in 

 the form of poetical epistles from Paradise, in some passages of which 

 there was a skilful imitation of the style of Baggesen, then recently 

 deceased, who had been the great opponent of Oehlenschlager, the 

 head of the Danish Parnassus. The satire was however directed not 

 against Oehlenschlager himself, but against some of his servile 

 imitators, and Hans Christian Andersen. The book was strictly 

 anonymous : curiosity was on the alert to discover the author, who 

 was styled the ' Danish Great Unknown ; ' but the secret proved 

 impenetrable for two years, when the ' Letters ' were acknowledged 

 by Henrik Hertz. He confessed at the same time to the authorship 

 of several plays which had been acted with success since 1827, and his 

 connection with which had been so carefully concealed that he had 

 sent them to the management under three different signatures. One 

 of them, ' Amors Geniestreger ' (' Cupid's Master-Strokes '), was the 

 first Danish comedy in which the dialogue was versified as in the 

 French classical drama, and the novelty was completely successful. In 

 1832, the same year in which he made his name public, be left the 

 Jewish community, and became a Protestant. In the next year he was 

 admitted to the travelling pension, with which the Danish govern- 

 ment is in the habit of encouraging young men of letters, and took a 

 tour to Germany, Italy, and France. Since his return to Copenhagen 

 in 1834 he has been an active writer in more than one department, 

 and a collection of his dramatic works alone, ' Dramatiske Vicrker,' 

 which was commenced in 1855, has already extended to ten volumes. 

 They are of all kinds, from ' Svend Dyrings House,' a trageJy in four 

 act*, in which he has powerfully rendered the old northern spirit, to 

 ' Perspektivkassen ' ('The Penny Show'), an interlude in one act, in 

 which the English reader is entertained to find the exhibition, 

 described in humorous doggrel, of the English court, with its con- 

 spicuous characters, Queen Victoria and ' Lord ' Peel. Perhaps the 

 most successful of all is the charming little drama, ' Kong Renes 

 Datter,' or ' King Rene"s Daughter,' which has been rendered into 

 many languages, and among others into English by Theodore Martin. 

 It was acted with success at the Strand Theatre in 1850, anil is perhaps 

 the only Danish drama of which a direct translation has ever appeared 

 on the English stage. Hertz is also a lyric poet of high reputation, 

 but is considered to have failed as a novelist in a ' tendency-novel ' 

 which was directed against the Danish liberals. He ia an intimate 

 friend and literary ally of Heiberg. [HEIBEKO, J. L.] 



* HERTZEN, ALEXANDER, a remarkable and very able Russian 

 author, who has now been for some years resident in England. A 

 vivid light is thrown upon much of his career by his own Memoirs, 

 considerable portions of which have been published in this country. 

 He was born at Moscow in 1812, and his nurse used to relate to him 

 his adventures as an infant in arms when the French entered the city, 

 his father, a Russian officer of rank, having delayed to leave till he was 

 surprised by the appearance of the enemy. The family waa allowed 

 to depart after an interview of his father with Napoleon, who intrusted 

 him with a letter to the Emperor Alexander, which he promised to 

 deliver in person. This interview is described at length in Baron 

 Fain's Memoirs and the Russian history of the war, by Mikhailovsky 

 Danilevaky. Young Hertzen grew up at Moscow, almost without a 

 companion, surrounded by teachers and servants, his father having 

 grown misanthropic and caustic in a dull retirement in Russia, after 

 having spent much of bis life in foreign countries, and concluded his 

 career by inducing his wife, a German girl of seventeen, to elopu with 

 him in men's clothes from CasseL The solemn entry of the Emperor 

 Nicholas into Moscow before his coronation in 1826, was marked by an 

 imperial order, strange, indeed, on the eve of such a ceremony, for the 

 execution of five of the conspirators who in the preceding December 

 had endeavoured to subvert the existing government at St. Petersburg, 

 and a service of thanksgiving took place on the occasion. "A boy of 



* r rom >n accidental delay a notice of Professor Graham, which ought to 

 have appean d in alphabetical order In ' The English CyclujiicJia,' wan omitted. 

 It will be given at the close of the last volume, with some other additional 

 notion. 



iburteeu, and lost in the crowd," says Hertzen, " I was present at 

 that service, and there before the altar polluted by that sanguinary 

 prayer, I swore to avenge the executed dead. I devoted myself to the 

 struggle against that altar, against that throne, and against those 

 cannon. I have not obtained iny revenge : the guarJ, and the throne, 

 the altar and the cannon, are all remaining, but for thirty years I have 

 stood under that banner which I have not once abandoned." It must, 

 however, be observed, that in his Memoirs, in relating this portion of 

 bis life, he tells us at that period he supposed that the conspirators had 

 perished in an ineffectual struggle to defend the hereditary rights of 

 the Grand Duke Constantine to the throne [CONSTANTINE, PAVLOVIOH], 

 and that for some time after, Constantine was his favourite hero. On 

 becoming a student at the University of Moscow, his ideas grew more 

 enlarged, and of course more enlightened, but he was soon at discord 

 with those whom he calls iu contempt the liberals of 1825, of whom 

 Polevoy,the eminent Russian author, was one. " I told him one day," 

 he relates, " that he was just such a superannuated conservative as 

 those against whom he had been all his life contending. Polevoy was 

 deeply offended at my words, and shaking his head, said to me, ' The 

 time will come, when in return for a whole life of exertions and 

 labour some youngster will say to you with a smile of superiority, 

 Take yourself away, you are a superannuated man.' " The circum- 

 stance that drew upon Polevoy the reproach of obstinacy, was that he 

 did not embrace with Hertzen the ideas of St. Simouism, which was a t 

 that time the favourite doctrine of the ultra-liberal of the Moscow 

 students. Hertzen had loft the university with a high degree, when 

 in 1834 he was involved iu an affair which had serious consequences. 

 Several of the students were arrested for having sung at a merry 

 meeting a seditious and blasphemous song, and though he had not 

 been present, he was at the conclusion of a long investigation, during 

 which he suffered a severe imprisonment, condemned to one of the 

 lightest punishments, -that of being employed in the service of the 

 state under surveillance of the local officials. He was in pursuance of 

 this sentence sent to Viatka, where he remained till 1837, when the 

 Hereditary Grand Duke, now the Emperor Alexander the Second, 

 coming on a tour of inspection with Zhukovsky, the celebrated poet, 

 for bis companion, their attention was favourably attracted by the 

 talents and accomplishments of the banished man, and he was in con- 

 sequence permitted to remove nearer homo to Vladimir, where he 

 married a lady to whom he had been some time attached, and lived in 

 the enjoyment of great domestic happiness. 



He was afterwards summoned to some official duties in an office at 

 St. Petersburg, under Count Strogonov, but there he was soon told 

 that " his imperial majesty had become acquainted with his taking part 

 in the propagation of reports injurious to the government," and by 

 the favour of Count Strogonov, who resented the interference of the 

 police with a person under his authority, named a member of council 

 at Novgorod. " This was indeed ludicrous," he observes. " How many 

 secretaries and assessors, how many district and government officials 

 had sought and sued for, long, passionately and obstinately sought and 

 sued for, this very post ; what bribes had been given, what promises 

 obtained, and all of a sudden the minister, ostensibly carrying out the 

 imperial will, and at the same time giving a fillip to the secret police, 

 handed me this promotion, merely to gild a pill, threw this place, 

 the object of warm de.-ire.-f, at the feet of a man who only took 

 it with the fixed intention of casting it away at the first opportu- 

 nity." The death of his father in 1846 put Hertzen in possession of a 

 considerable property, but his first' application was to be allowed to 

 travel, and in 1847 he had the satisfaction of leaving the Russian 

 frontier behind him. He was in Italy, where he declares that he first 

 met persons who truly sympathised with his ideas, when the news of 

 the French Revolution of February 1843 reached him, and he has- 

 tened to Paris. Here he was in his element amidst the most vehement 

 of the Socialists, till the defeat of that party in June plunged him in 

 despair. He soon found it expedient to take refuge in Geneva, and 

 not long after in England, where he has remained ever since; though, 

 as might be expected from his principles as a Socialist Republican, 

 utterly averse to the manners of the country, and to most of its 

 institutions, except those which protect foreigners and guarantee to 

 them the exercise of privileges which they are denied elsewhere. His 

 chief business in England has been to establish a ' Russian Free Press,' 

 a printing-office in which those productions can see the light which 

 are strictly suppressed in the country that gave them birth. It is the 

 first, perhaps, that has ever existed for the language of a nation of 

 sixty millions which has become more interesting and important every 

 day of the last half-century. 



Hertzen tells us that the French legitimist, the Duke de Noailles, 

 whom he met on board of a steam-boat, told him, after a conversation 

 on politics, " You Russians are either thorough slaves of the Tsar, or 

 else excuse me the word you are anarchists." Thera is too much 

 foundation for the reproach on both points. 



The writings of Hertzon are, however, of considerable value even 

 to those who dissent entirely from his principles. The perusal of his 

 Memoirs is the best and shortest method of becoming acquainted with 

 the outer and inner life of modern Russia, which are sketched with 

 vigour and ability, and of course more unreservedly than in any pro- 

 ductions which have to pass the usual ordeal of the imperial censor- 

 ship. It in the fault of the subject that the delineations are apt to be 



