1Hence Herbart gave the name Synechology to this branch of metaphysics, instead of the usual one, Cosmology.2Thus, taking the case above supposed, the share of the inhibendum falling to the smaller presentation b is the fourth term of the proportiona+b:a::b:ab/(a+b); and sob’s remainder isb−ab/(a+b) =b2/(a+b), which only = 0 when a = ∞.
1Hence Herbart gave the name Synechology to this branch of metaphysics, instead of the usual one, Cosmology.
2Thus, taking the case above supposed, the share of the inhibendum falling to the smaller presentation b is the fourth term of the proportiona+b:a::b:ab/(a+b); and sob’s remainder isb−ab/(a+b) =b2/(a+b), which only = 0 when a = ∞.
HERBELOT DE MOLAINVILLE, BARTHÉLEMY D’(1625-1695), French orientalist, was born on the 14th of December 1625 at Paris. He was educated at the university of Paris, and devoted himself to the study of oriental languages, going to Italy to perfect himself in them by converse with the orientals who frequented its sea-ports. There he also made the acquaintance of Holstenius, the Dutch humanist (1596-1661), and Leo Allatius, the Greek scholar (1586-1669). On his return to France after a year and a half, he was received into the house of Fouquet, superintendent of finance, who gave him a pension of 1500 livres. Losing this on the disgrace of Fouquet in 1661, he was appointed secretary and interpreter of Eastern languages to the king. A few years later he again visited Italy, when the grand-duke Ferdinand II. of Tuscany presented him with a large number of valuable Oriental MSS., and tried to attach him to his court. Herbelot, however, was recalled to France by Colbert, and received from the king a pension equal to the one he had lost. In 1692 he succeeded D’Auvergne in the chair of Syriac, in the Collège de France. He died in Paris on the 8th of December 1695. His great work is theBibliothèque orientale, ou dictionnaire universel contenant tout ce qui regarde la connaissance des peuples de l’Orient, which occupied him nearly all his life, and was completed in 1697 by A. Galland. It is based on the immense Arabic dictionary of Hadji Khalfa, of which indeed it is largely an abridged translation, but it also contains the substance of a vast number of other Arabic and Turkish compilations and manuscripts.
TheBibliothèquewas reprinted at Maestricht (fol. 1776), and at the Hague (4 vols. 4to, 1777-1799). The latter edition is enriched with the contributions of the Dutch orientalist Schultens, Johann Jakob Reiske (1716-1774), and by a supplement provided by Visdelow and Galland. Herbelot’s other works, none of which have been published, comprise anOriental Anthology, and anArabic, Persian, Turkish and Latin Dictionary.
TheBibliothèquewas reprinted at Maestricht (fol. 1776), and at the Hague (4 vols. 4to, 1777-1799). The latter edition is enriched with the contributions of the Dutch orientalist Schultens, Johann Jakob Reiske (1716-1774), and by a supplement provided by Visdelow and Galland. Herbelot’s other works, none of which have been published, comprise anOriental Anthology, and anArabic, Persian, Turkish and Latin Dictionary.
HERBERAY DES ESSARTS, NICOLAS DE(d. about 1557), French translator, was born in Picardy. He served in the artillery, and at the expressed desire of Francis I. he translated into French the first eight books ofAmadis de Gaul(1540-1548). The remaining books were translated by other authors. His other translations from the Spanish includeL’Amant maltraité de sa mye(1539);Le Premier Livre de la chronique de dom Florès de Grèce(1552); andL’Horloge des princes(1555) from Guevara. He also translated the works of Josephus (1557). He died about 1557. TheAmadis de Gaulwas translated into English by Anthony Munday in 1619.
HERBERT(Family). The sudden rising of this English family to great wealth and high place is the more remarkable in that its elevation belongs to the 15th century and not to that age of the Tudors when many new men made their way upwards into the ranks of the nobility. Earlier generations of a pedigree which carries the origin of the Herberts to Herbert the Chamberlain, a Domesday tenant, being disregarded, their patriarch may be taken to be one Jenkin ap Adam (temp. Edward III.), who had a small Monmouthshire estate at Llanvapley and the office of master sergeant of the lordship of Abergavenny, a place which gave him precedence after the steward of that lordship. Jenkin’s son, Gwilim ap Jenkin, who followed his father as master sergeant, is given six sons by the border genealogists, no less than six score pedigrees finding their origin in these six brothers. Their order is uncertain, although the Progers of Werndee, the last of whom sold his ancestral estate in 1780, are reckoned as the senior line of Gwilim’s descendants. But Thomas ap Gwilim Jenkin, called the fourth son, is ancestor of all those who bore the surname of Herbert.
Thomas’s fifth son, William or Gwilim ap Thomas, who died in 1446, was the first man of the family to make any figure in history. This Gwilim ap Thomas was steward of the lordships of Usk and Caerleon under Richard, duke of York. Legend makes him a knight on the field of Agincourt, but his knighthood belongs to the year 1426. He appears to have married twice, his first wife being Elizabeth Bluet of Raglan, widow of Sir James Berkeley, and his second a daughter of David Gam, a valiant Welsh squire slain at Agincourt. Royal favour enriched Sir William, and he was able to buy Raglan Castle from the Lord Berkeley, his first wife’s son, the deed, which remains among the Beaufort muniments, refuting the pedigree-maker’s statement that he inherited the castle as heir of his mother “Maude, daughter of Sir John Morley.†His sons William and Richard, both partisans of the White Rose, took the surname of Herbert in or before 1461. Playing a part in English affairs remote from the Welsh Marches, their lack of a surname may well have inconvenienced them, and their choice of the name Herbert can only be explained by the suggestion that their long pedigree from Herbert the Chamberlain, absurdly represented as a bastard son of Henry I., must already have been discovered for them. Copies exist of an alleged commission issued by Edward IV. to a committee of Welsh bards for the ascertaining of the true ancestry of William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, whom “the chiefest men of skill†in the province of South Wales declare to be the descendant of “Herbert, a noble lord, natural son to King Henry the first,†and it is recited that King Edward, after the creation of the earldom, commanded the earl and Sir Richard his brother to “take their surnames after their first progenitorHerbert fitz Roy and to forego the British order and manner.†But this commission, whose date anticipates by some years the true date of the creation of the earldom, is the work of one of the many genealogical forgers who flourished under the Tudors.
Sir William Herbert, called by the Welsh Gwilim Ddu or Black William, was a baron in 1461 and a Knight of the Garter in the following year. With many manors and castles on the Marches he had the castle, town and lordship of Pembroke, and after the attainder of Jasper Tudor in 1468 was created earl of Pembroke. When in July 1469 he was taken by Sir John Conyers and the northern Lancastrians on Hedgecote, he was beheaded with his brother Sir Richard Herbert of Coldbrook. The second earl while still a minor exchanged at the king’s desire in 1479 his earldom of Pembroke for that of Huntingdon. In 1484 this son of one whom Hall not unjustly describes as born “a mean gentleman†contracted to marry Katharine the daughter of King Richard III., but her death annulled the contract and the earl married Mary, daughter of the Earl Rivers, by whom he had a daughter Elizabeth, whose descendants, the Somersets, lived in the Herbert’s castle of Raglan until the cannon of the parliament broke it in ruins. With the second earl’s death in 1491 the first Herbert earldom became extinct. No claim being set up among the other descendants of the first earl, it may be taken that their lines were illegitimate. One of the chief difficulties which beset the genealogist of the Herberts lies in their Cambrian disregard of the marriage tie, bastards and legitimate issue growing up, it would seem, side by side in their patriarchal households. Thus the ancestor of the present earls of Pembroke and Carnarvon and of the Herbert who was created marquess of Powis was a natural son of the first earl, one Richard Herbert, whom the restored inscription on his tomb at Abergavenny incorrectly describes as a knight. He was constable and porter of Abergavenny Castle, and his son William, “a mad fighting fellow†in his youth, married a sister of Catherine Parr and thus in 1543 became nearly allied to the king, who made him one of the executors of his will. The earldom of Pembroke was revived for him in 1551. It is worthy of note that all traces of illegitimacy have long since been removed from the arms of the noble descendants of Richard Herbert.
The honours and titles of this clan of marchmen make a long list. They include the marquessate of Powis, two earldoms with the title of Pembroke, two with that of Powis, and the earldoms of Huntingdon and Montgomery, Torrington and Carnarvon, the viscountcies of Montgomery and Ludlow, fourteen baronies and seven baronetcies. Seven Herberts have worn the Garter. The knights and rich squires of the stock can hardly be reckoned, more especially as they must be sought among Raglans, Morgans, Parrys, Vaughans, Progers, Hugheses, Thomases, Philips, Powels, Gwyns, Evanses and Joneses, as well as among those who have borne the surname of Herbert, a surname which in the 19th century was adopted by the Joneses of Llanarth and Clytha, although they claim no descent from those sons of Sir William ap Thomas for whom it was devised.
(O. Ba.)
HERBERT, GEORGE(1593-1633), English poet, was born at Montgomery Castle on the 3rd of April 1593. He was the fifth son of Sir Richard Herbert and a brother of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. His mother, Lady Magdalen Herbert, a woman of great good sense and sweetness of character, and a friend of John Donne, exercised great influence over her son. Educated privately until 1605, he was then sent to Westminster School, and in 1609 he became a scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was made B.A. in 1613, M.A. and major fellow of the college in 1616. In 1618 he became Reader in Rhetoric, and in 1619 orator for the university. In this capacity he was several times brought into contact with King James. From Cambridge he wrote some Latin satiric verses1in defence of the universities and the English Church against Andrew Melville, a Scottish Presbyterian minister. He numbered among his friends Dr Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Izaak Walton, Bishop Andrewes and Francis Bacon, who dedicated to him his translation of the Psalms. Walton tells us that “the love of a court conversation, mixed with a laudable ambition to be something more than he was, drew him often from Cambridge to attend the king wheresoever the court was,†and James I. gave him in 1623 the sinecure lay rectory of Whitford, Flintshire, worth £120 a year. The death of his patrons, the duke of Richmond and the marquess of Hamilton, and of King James put an end to his hopes of political preferment; moreover he probably distrusted the conduct of affairs under the new reign. Largely influenced by his mother, he decided to take holy orders, and in July 1626 he was appointed prebendary of Layton Ecclesia (Leighton Bromswold), Huntingdon. Here he was within two miles of Little Gidding, and came under the influence of Nicholas Ferrar. It was at Ferrar’s suggestion that he undertook to rebuild the church at Layton, an undertaking carried through by his own gifts and the generosity of his friends. There is little doubt that the close friendship with Ferrar had a large share in Herbert’s adoption of the religious life. In 1630 Charles I., at the instance of the earl of Pembroke, whose kinsman Herbert was, presented him to the living of Fugglestone with Bemerton, near Salisbury, and he was ordained priest in September. A year before, after three days’ acquaintance, he had married Jane Danvers, whose father had been set on the marriage for a long time. He had often spoken of his daughter Jane to Herbert, and “so much commended Mr Herbert to her, that Jane became so much a Platonic as to fall in love with Mr Herbert unseen.†The story of the poet’s life at Bemerton, as told by Walton, is one of the most exquisite pictures in literary biography. He devoted much time to explaining the meaning of the various parts of the Prayer-Book, and held services twice every day, at which many of the parishioners attended, and some “let their plough rest when Mr Herbert’s saints-bell rung to prayers, that they might also offer their devotions to God with him.†Next to Christianity itself he loved the English Church. He was passionately fond of music, and his own hymns were written to the accompaniment of his lute or viol. He usually walked twice a week to attend the cathedral at Salisbury, and before returning home, would “sing and play his part†at a meeting of music lovers. Walton illustrates Herbert’s kindness to the poor by many touching anecdotes, but he had not been three years in Bemerton when he succumbed to consumption. He was buried beneath the altar of his church on the 3rd of March 1633.
None of Herbert’s English poems was published during his lifetime. On his death-bed he gave to Nicholas Ferrar a manuscript with the titleThe Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations. This was published at Cambridge, apparently for private circulation, almost immediately after Herbert’s death, and a second imprint followed in the same year. On the title-page of both is the quotation “In his Temple doth every man speak of his honour.â€The Templeis a collection of religious poems connected by unity of sentiment and inspiration. Herbert tried to interpret his own devout meditations by applying images of all kinds to the ritual and beliefs of the Church. Nothing in his own church at Bemerton was too commonplace to serve as a starting-point for the epigrammatic expression of his piety. The church key reminds him that “it is my sin that locks his handes,†and the stones of the floor are patience and humility, while the cement that binds them together is love and charity. The chief faults of the book are obscurity, verbal conceits and a forced ingenuity which shows itself in grotesque puns, odd metres and occasional want of taste. But the quaint beauty of Herbert’s style and its musical quality giveThe Templea high place. “The Church Porch,†“The Agony,†“Sin,†“Sunday,†“Virtue,†“Man,†“The British Church,†“The Quip,†“The Collar,†“The Pulley,†“The Flower,†“Aaron†and “The Elixir†are among the best known of these poems. Herbert and Keble are the poets of Anglican theology. No book is fuller of devotion to the Church of England thanThe Temple, and no poems in our language exhibit more of the spirit of true Christianity. Every page is marked bytransparent sincerity, and reflects the beautiful character of “holy George Herbert.â€
Nicholas Ferrar’s translation (Oxford, 1638) of theHundred and Ten Considerations ...of Juan de Valdes contained a letter and notes by Herbert. In 1652 appearedHerbert’s Remains; or, Sundry Pieces of that Sweet Singer of the Temple, Mr George Herbert. This includedA Priest to the Temple; or, The Country Parson, his Character, and Rule of Holy Life, in prose;Jacula prudentum, a collection of proverbs with a separate title-page dated 1651, which had appeared in a shorter form asOutlandish Proverbsin 1640; and some miscellaneous matter. The completest edition of his works is that by Dr A. B. Grosart in 1874, this edition of the Poetical works being reproduced in the “Aldine edition†in 1876.The English Works of George Herbert ...(3 vols., 1905) were edited in much detail by G. H. Palmer. A contemporary account of Herbert’s life by Barnabas Oley was prefixed to theRemainsof 1652, but the classic authority is Izaak Walton’sLife of Mr George Herbert, published in 1670, with some letters from Herbert to his mother. See also A. G. Hyde,George Herbert and his Times(1907), and the “Oxford†edition of his poems by A. Waugh (1908).
Nicholas Ferrar’s translation (Oxford, 1638) of theHundred and Ten Considerations ...of Juan de Valdes contained a letter and notes by Herbert. In 1652 appearedHerbert’s Remains; or, Sundry Pieces of that Sweet Singer of the Temple, Mr George Herbert. This includedA Priest to the Temple; or, The Country Parson, his Character, and Rule of Holy Life, in prose;Jacula prudentum, a collection of proverbs with a separate title-page dated 1651, which had appeared in a shorter form asOutlandish Proverbsin 1640; and some miscellaneous matter. The completest edition of his works is that by Dr A. B. Grosart in 1874, this edition of the Poetical works being reproduced in the “Aldine edition†in 1876.The English Works of George Herbert ...(3 vols., 1905) were edited in much detail by G. H. Palmer. A contemporary account of Herbert’s life by Barnabas Oley was prefixed to theRemainsof 1652, but the classic authority is Izaak Walton’sLife of Mr George Herbert, published in 1670, with some letters from Herbert to his mother. See also A. G. Hyde,George Herbert and his Times(1907), and the “Oxford†edition of his poems by A. Waugh (1908).
1Printed in 1662 as an appendix to J. Vivian’sEcclesiastes Solomonis.
1Printed in 1662 as an appendix to J. Vivian’sEcclesiastes Solomonis.
HERBERT, HENRY WILLIAM[â€Frank Foresterâ€] (1807-1858), English novelist and writer on sport, son of the Hon. and Rev. William Herbert, dean of Manchester, a son of the first earl of Carnarvon, was born in London on the 3rd of April 1807. He was educated at Eton and at Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1830. Having become involved in debt, he emigrated to America, and from 1831 to 1839 was teacher of Greek in a private school in New York. In 1833 he started theAmerican Monthly Magazine, which he edited, in conjunction with A. D. Patterson, till 1835. In 1834 he published his first novel,The Brothers: a Tale of the Fronde, which was followed by a number of others which obtained a certain degree of popularity. He also wrote a series of historical studies, includingThe Cavaliers of England(1852),The Knights of England, France and Scotland(1852),The Chevaliers of France(1853), andThe Captains of the Old World(1851); but he is best known for his works on sport, published under the pseudonym of “Frank Forester.†These includeThe Field Sports of the United States and British Provinces(1849),Frank Forester and his Friends(1849),The Fish and Fishing of the United States(1850),The Young Sportsman’s Complete Manual(1852), andThe Horse and Horsemanship in the United States and British Provinces of North America(1858). He also translated many of the novels of Eugene Sue and Alexandre Dumas. Herbert was a man of varied accomplishments, but of somewhat dissipated habits. He died by his own hand in New York on the 17th of May 1858.
HERBERT, SIR THOMAS(1606-1682), English traveller and author, was born at York in 1606. Several of his ancestors were aldermen and merchants in that city—e.g.his grandfather and benefactor, Alderman Herbert (d. 1614)—and they traced a connexion with the earls of Pembroke. Thomas became a commoner of Jesus College, Oxford, in 1621, but afterwards removed to Cambridge, through the influence of his uncle Dr Ambrose Akroyd. In 1627 the earl of Pembroke procured his appointment in the suite of Sir Dodmore Cotton, then starting as ambassador for Persia with Sir Robert Shirley. Sailing in March they visited the Cape, Madagascar, Goa and Surat; landing at Gambrun (10th of January 1627-1628), they travelled inland to Ashraf and thence to Kazvin, where both Cotton and Shirley died, and whence Herbert made extensive travels in the PersianHinterland, visiting Kashan, Bagdad, &c. On his return voyage he touched at Ceylon, the Coromandel coast, Mauritius and St Helena. He reached England in 1629, travelled in Europe in 1630-1631, married in 1632 and retired from court in 1634 (his prospects perhaps blighted by Pembroke’s death in 1630); after this he resided on his Tintern estate and elsewhere till the Civil War, siding with the parliament till his appointment to attend on the king in 1646. Becoming a devoted royalist, he was rewarded with a baronetcy at the Restoration (1660). He resided mainly in York Street, Westminster, till the Great Plague (1666), when he retired to York, where he died (at Petergate House) on the 1st of March 1682.
Herbert’s chief work is theDescription of the Persian Monarchy now beinge: the Orientall Indyes, Iles and other parts of the Greater Asia and Africk(1634), reissued with additions, &c., in 1638 asSome Yeares Travels into Africa and Asia the Great(al.into divers parts of Asia and Afrique); a third edition followed in 1664, and a fourth in 1677. This is one of the best records of 17th-century travel. Among its illustrations are remarkable sketches of the dodo, cuneiform inscriptions and Persepolis. Herbert’sThrenodia Carolina; or, Memoirs of the two last years of the reign of that unparallell’d prince of ever blessed memory King Charles I., was in great part printed at the author’s request in Wood’sAthenae Oxonienses; in full by Dr C. Goodall in hisCollection of Tracts(1702, repr. G. & W. Nicol, 1813). Sir William Dugdale is understood to have received assistance from Herbert in theMonasticon Anglicanum, vol. iv.; see two of Herbert’s papers on St John’s, Beverley and Ripon collegiate church, now cathedral, in Drake’sEboracum(appendix). Cf. also Robert Davies’ account of Herbert inThe Yorkshire Archaeological and Topographical Journal, part iii., pp. 182-214 (1870), containing a facsimile of the inscription on Herbert’s tomb; Wood’sAthenae, iv. 15-41; andFasti, ii. 26, 131, 138, 143-144, 150.
Herbert’s chief work is theDescription of the Persian Monarchy now beinge: the Orientall Indyes, Iles and other parts of the Greater Asia and Africk(1634), reissued with additions, &c., in 1638 asSome Yeares Travels into Africa and Asia the Great(al.into divers parts of Asia and Afrique); a third edition followed in 1664, and a fourth in 1677. This is one of the best records of 17th-century travel. Among its illustrations are remarkable sketches of the dodo, cuneiform inscriptions and Persepolis. Herbert’sThrenodia Carolina; or, Memoirs of the two last years of the reign of that unparallell’d prince of ever blessed memory King Charles I., was in great part printed at the author’s request in Wood’sAthenae Oxonienses; in full by Dr C. Goodall in hisCollection of Tracts(1702, repr. G. & W. Nicol, 1813). Sir William Dugdale is understood to have received assistance from Herbert in theMonasticon Anglicanum, vol. iv.; see two of Herbert’s papers on St John’s, Beverley and Ripon collegiate church, now cathedral, in Drake’sEboracum(appendix). Cf. also Robert Davies’ account of Herbert inThe Yorkshire Archaeological and Topographical Journal, part iii., pp. 182-214 (1870), containing a facsimile of the inscription on Herbert’s tomb; Wood’sAthenae, iv. 15-41; andFasti, ii. 26, 131, 138, 143-144, 150.
HERBERT OF CHERBURY, EDWARD HERBERT,Baron(1583-1648), English soldier, diplomatist, historian and religious philosopher, eldest son of Richard Herbert of Montgomery Castle (a member of a collateral branch of the family of the earls of Pembroke) and of Magdalen, daughter of Sir Richard Newport, was born at Eyton-on-Severn near Wroxeter on the 3rd of March 1583. After careful private tuition he matriculated at University College, Oxford, as a gentleman commoner, in May 1596. On the 28th of February 1599 he married his cousin Mary, daughter and heiress of Sir William Herbert (d. 1593). He returned to Oxford with his wife and mother, continued his studies, and obtained proficiency in modern languages as well as in music, riding and fencing. On the accession of James I. he presented himself at court and was created a knight of the Bath on the 24th of July 1603. In 1608 he went to Paris, enjoying the friendship and hospitality of the old constable de Montmorency, and being entertained by Henry IV. On his return, as he says himself with naïve vanity, he was “in great esteem both in court and city, many of the greatest desiring my company.†In 1610 he served as a volunteer in the Low Countries under the prince of Orange, whose intimate friend he became, and distinguished himself at the capture of Juliers from the emperor. He offered to decide the war by engaging in single combat with a champion chosen from among the enemy, but his challenge was declined. During an interval in the fighting he paid a visit to Spinola, in the Spanish camp near Wezel, and afterwards to the elector palatine at Heidelberg, subsequently travelling in Italy. At the instance of the duke of Savoy he led an expedition of 4000 Huguenots from Languedoc into Piedmont to help the Savoyards against Spain, but after nearly losing his life in the journey to Lyons he was imprisoned on his arrival there, and the enterprise came to nothing. Thence he returned to the Netherlands and the prince of Orange, arriving in England in 1617. In 1619 he was made by Buckingham ambassador at Paris, but a quarrel with de Luynes and a challenge sent by him to the latter occasioned his recall in 1621. After the death of de Luynes Herbert resumed his post in February 1622. He was very popular at the French court and showed considerable diplomatic ability, his chief objects being to accomplish the union between Charles and Henrietta Maria and secure the assistance of Louis XIII. for the unfortunate elector palatine. This latter advantage he could not obtain, and he was dismissed in April 1624. He returned home greatly in debt and received little reward for his services beyond the Irish peerage of Castle island in 1624 and the English barony of Cherbury, or Chirbury, on the 7th of May 1629. In 1632 he was appointed a member of the council of war. He attended the king at York in 1639, and in May 1642 was imprisoned by the parliament for urging the addition of the words “without cause†to the resolution that the king violated his oath by making war on parliament. He determined after this to take no further part in the struggle, retired to Montgomery Castle, and declined the king’s summons. On the 5th of September 1644 he surrendered the castle to the parliamentary forces, returned to London, submitted, and was granted a pension of £20 a week. In 1647 he paid a visit to Gassendi at Paris, and died in London on the 20th of August, 1648, being buried in the church of St Giles’s in the Fields.
Lord Herbert left two sons, Richard (c.1600-1655), who succeeded him as 2nd Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and Edward, the title becoming extinct in the person of Henry Herbert, the 4th baron, grandson of the 1st Lord Herbert in 1691. In 1694, however, it was revived in favour of Henry Herbert (1654-1709), son of Sir Henry Herbert (1595-1673), brother of the 1st Lord Herbert of Cherbury. Sir Henry was master of the revels to Charles I. and Charles II., being busily employed in reading and licensing plays and in supervising all kinds of public entertainments. He died in April 1673; his son Henry died in January 1709, when the latter’s son Henry became 2nd Lord Herbert of Cherbury of the second creation. He died without issue in April 1738, and again the barony became extinct. In 1743 it was revived for Henry Arthur Herbert (c.1703-1772), who five years later was created earl of Powis. This nobleman was a great-grandson of the 2nd Lord Herbert of Cherbury of the first creation, and since his time the barony has been held by the earls of Powis.
Lord Herbert’s cousin, Sir Edward Herbert (c.1591-1657), was a member of parliament under James I. and Charles I. Having become attorney-general he was instructed by Charles to take proceedings against some members of parliament who had been concerned in the passing of the Grand Remonstrance; the only result, however, was Herbert’s own impeachment by the House of Commons and his imprisonment. Later in life he was with the exiled royal family in Holland and in France, becoming lord keeper of the great seal to Charles II., an office which he had refused in 1645. He died in Paris in December 1657. One of Herbert’s son was Arthur Herbert, earl of Torrington, and another was Sir Edward Herbert (c.1648-1698), titular earl of Portland, who was made chief justice of the king’s bench in 1685 in succession to Lord Jeffreys. It was Sir Edward who declared for the royal prerogative in the case ofGoddenv.Hales, asserting that the kings of England, being sovereign princes, could dispense with particular laws in particular cases. After the escape of James II. to France this king made Herbert his lord chancellor and created him earl of Portland, although he was a Protestant and had exhibited a certain amount of independence during 1687.
The first Lord Herbert’s real claim to fame and remembrance is derived from his writings. Herbert’s first and most important work is theDe veritate prout distinguitur a revelatione, a verisimili, a possibili, et a falso(Paris, 1624; London, 1633; translated into French 1639, but never into English; a MS. in add. MSS. 7081. Another, Sloane MSS. 3957, has the author’s dedication to his brother George in his own hand, dated 1622). It combines a theory of knowledge with a partial psychology, a methodology for the investigation of truth, and a scheme of natural religion. The author’s method is prolix and often far from clear; the book is no compact system, but it contains the skeleton and much of the soul of a complete philosophy. Giving up all past theories as useless, Herbert professedly endeavours to constitute a new and true system. Truth, which he defines as a just conformation of the faculties with one another and with their objects, he distributed into four classes or stages: (1) truth in the thing or the truth of the object; (2) truth of the appearance; (3) truth of the apprehension (conceptus); (4) truth of the intellect. The faculties of the mind are as numerous as the differences of their objects, and are accordingly innumerable; but they may be arranged in four groups. The first and fundamental and most certain group is theNatural Instinct, to which belong theκοιναὶ ἔννοιαι, thenotitiae communes, which are innate, of divine origin and indisputable. The second group, the next in certainty, is thesensus internus(under which head Herbert discusses amongst others love, hate, fear, conscience with itscommunis notitia, and free will); the third is thesensus externus; and the fourth isdiscursus, reasoning, to which, as being the least certain, we have recourse when the other faculties fail. The ratiocinative faculties proceed by division and analysis, by questioning, and are slow and gradual in their movement; they take aid from the other faculties, those of theinstinctus naturalisbeing always the final test. Herbert’s categories or questions to be used in investigation are ten in number whether (a thing is), what, of what sort, how much, in what relation, how, when, where, whence, wherefore. No faculty, rightly used, can err “even in dreamsâ€; badly exercised, reasoning becomes the source of almost all our errors. The discussion of thenotitiae communesis the most characteristic part of the book. The exposition of them, though highly dogmatic, is at times strikingly Kantian in substance. “So far are these elements or sacred principles from being derived from experience or observation that without some of them, or at least some one of them, we can neither experience nor even observe.†Unless we felt driven by them to explore the nature of things, “it would never occur to us to distinguish one thing from another.†It cannot be said that Herbert proves the existence of the common notions; he does not deduce them or even give any list of them. But each faculty has its common notion; and they may be distinguished by six marks, theirpriority,independence,universality,certainty,necessity(for the well-being of man), andimmediacy. Law is based on certaincommon notions; so is religion. Though Herbert expressly defines the scope of his book as dealing with the intellect, not faith, it is the common notions of religion he has illustrated most fully; and it is plain that it is in this part of his system that he is chiefly interested. The common notions of religion are the famous five articles, which became the charter of the English deists (seeDeism). There is little polemic against the received form of Christianity, but Herbert’s attitude towards the Church’s doctrine is distinctly negative, and he denies revelation except to the individual soul. In theDe religione gentilium(completed 1645, published Amsterdam, 1663, translated into English by W. Lewis, London, 1705) he gives what may be called, in Hume’s words, “a natural history of religion.†By examining the heathen religions Herbert finds, to his great delight, the universality of his five great articles, and that these are clearly recognizable under their absurdities as they are under the rites, ceremonies and polytheism invented by sacerdotal superstition. The same vein is maintained in the tractsDe causis errorum, an unfinished work on logical fallacies,Religio laici, andAd sacerdotes de religione laici(1645). In theDe veritateHerbert produced the first purely metaphysical treatise written by an Englishman, and in theDe religione gentiliumone of the earliest studies extant in comparative theology; while both his metaphysical speculations and his religious views are throughout distinguished by the highest originality and provoked considerable controversy. His achievements in historical writing are vastly inferior, and vitiated by personal aims and his preoccupation to gain the royal favour. Herbert’s first historical work is theExpeditio Buckinghami ducis(published in a Latin translation in 1656 and in the original English by the earl of Powis for the Philobiblon Society in 1860), a defence of Buckingham’s conduct of the ill-fated expedition of 1627.The Life and Raigne of King Henry VIII.(1649) derives its chief value from its composition from original documents, but is ill-proportioned, and the author judges the character and statesmanship of Henry with too obvious a partiality.His poems, published in 1665 (reprinted and edited by J. Churton Collins in 1881), show him in general a faithful disciple of Donne, obscure and uncouth. His satires are miserable compositions, but a few of his lyrical verses show power of reflection and true inspiration, while his use of the metre afterwards employed by Tennyson in his “In Memoriam†is particularly happy and effective. His Latin poems are evidence of his scholarship. Three of these had appeared together with theDe causis errorumin 1645. To these works must be addedA Dialogue between a Tutor and a Pupil(1768; a treatise on education, MS. in the Bodleian Library); a treatise on the king’s supremacy in the Church (MS. in the Record Office and at Queen’s College, Oxford), and his well-known autobiography, first published by Horace Walpole in 1764, a naïve and amusing narrative, too much occupied, however, with his duels and amorous adventures, to the exclusion of more creditable incidents in his career, such as his contributions to philosophy and history, his intimacy with Donne, Ben Jonson, Selden and Carew, Casaubon, Gassendi and Grotius, or his embassy in France, in relation to which he only described the splendour of his retinue and his social triumphs.Bibliography.—The autobiography edited by Sidney Lee with correspondence from add. MSS. 7082 (1886); article in theDict. of Nat. Biog.by the same writer and the list of authorities there collated;Hist. MSS. Comm. Rep.x. app. iv., 378;Lord Herbert de Cherbury, by Charles de Rémusat (1874);Eduard, Lord Herbert von Cherbury, by C. Güttler (a criticism of his philosophy; 1897);Collections Historical and Archaeologicalrelating to Montgomeryshire, vols. vii., xi., xx.; R. Warner’sEpistolary Curiosities, i. ser.; Reid’s works, edited by Sir William Hamilton;National Review, xxxv. 661 (Leslie Stephen); Locke’sEssay on Human Understanding; Wood,Ath. Oxon.(Bliss), iii. 239;Gentleman’s Magazine(1816), i. 201 (print of remains of his birthplace);Lord Herbert’s Poems, ed. by J. Churton Collins (1881); Aubrey’sLives of Eminent Men; also works quoted underDeism.
The first Lord Herbert’s real claim to fame and remembrance is derived from his writings. Herbert’s first and most important work is theDe veritate prout distinguitur a revelatione, a verisimili, a possibili, et a falso(Paris, 1624; London, 1633; translated into French 1639, but never into English; a MS. in add. MSS. 7081. Another, Sloane MSS. 3957, has the author’s dedication to his brother George in his own hand, dated 1622). It combines a theory of knowledge with a partial psychology, a methodology for the investigation of truth, and a scheme of natural religion. The author’s method is prolix and often far from clear; the book is no compact system, but it contains the skeleton and much of the soul of a complete philosophy. Giving up all past theories as useless, Herbert professedly endeavours to constitute a new and true system. Truth, which he defines as a just conformation of the faculties with one another and with their objects, he distributed into four classes or stages: (1) truth in the thing or the truth of the object; (2) truth of the appearance; (3) truth of the apprehension (conceptus); (4) truth of the intellect. The faculties of the mind are as numerous as the differences of their objects, and are accordingly innumerable; but they may be arranged in four groups. The first and fundamental and most certain group is theNatural Instinct, to which belong theκοιναὶ ἔννοιαι, thenotitiae communes, which are innate, of divine origin and indisputable. The second group, the next in certainty, is thesensus internus(under which head Herbert discusses amongst others love, hate, fear, conscience with itscommunis notitia, and free will); the third is thesensus externus; and the fourth isdiscursus, reasoning, to which, as being the least certain, we have recourse when the other faculties fail. The ratiocinative faculties proceed by division and analysis, by questioning, and are slow and gradual in their movement; they take aid from the other faculties, those of theinstinctus naturalisbeing always the final test. Herbert’s categories or questions to be used in investigation are ten in number whether (a thing is), what, of what sort, how much, in what relation, how, when, where, whence, wherefore. No faculty, rightly used, can err “even in dreamsâ€; badly exercised, reasoning becomes the source of almost all our errors. The discussion of thenotitiae communesis the most characteristic part of the book. The exposition of them, though highly dogmatic, is at times strikingly Kantian in substance. “So far are these elements or sacred principles from being derived from experience or observation that without some of them, or at least some one of them, we can neither experience nor even observe.†Unless we felt driven by them to explore the nature of things, “it would never occur to us to distinguish one thing from another.†It cannot be said that Herbert proves the existence of the common notions; he does not deduce them or even give any list of them. But each faculty has its common notion; and they may be distinguished by six marks, theirpriority,independence,universality,certainty,necessity(for the well-being of man), andimmediacy. Law is based on certaincommon notions; so is religion. Though Herbert expressly defines the scope of his book as dealing with the intellect, not faith, it is the common notions of religion he has illustrated most fully; and it is plain that it is in this part of his system that he is chiefly interested. The common notions of religion are the famous five articles, which became the charter of the English deists (seeDeism). There is little polemic against the received form of Christianity, but Herbert’s attitude towards the Church’s doctrine is distinctly negative, and he denies revelation except to the individual soul. In theDe religione gentilium(completed 1645, published Amsterdam, 1663, translated into English by W. Lewis, London, 1705) he gives what may be called, in Hume’s words, “a natural history of religion.†By examining the heathen religions Herbert finds, to his great delight, the universality of his five great articles, and that these are clearly recognizable under their absurdities as they are under the rites, ceremonies and polytheism invented by sacerdotal superstition. The same vein is maintained in the tractsDe causis errorum, an unfinished work on logical fallacies,Religio laici, andAd sacerdotes de religione laici(1645). In theDe veritateHerbert produced the first purely metaphysical treatise written by an Englishman, and in theDe religione gentiliumone of the earliest studies extant in comparative theology; while both his metaphysical speculations and his religious views are throughout distinguished by the highest originality and provoked considerable controversy. His achievements in historical writing are vastly inferior, and vitiated by personal aims and his preoccupation to gain the royal favour. Herbert’s first historical work is theExpeditio Buckinghami ducis(published in a Latin translation in 1656 and in the original English by the earl of Powis for the Philobiblon Society in 1860), a defence of Buckingham’s conduct of the ill-fated expedition of 1627.The Life and Raigne of King Henry VIII.(1649) derives its chief value from its composition from original documents, but is ill-proportioned, and the author judges the character and statesmanship of Henry with too obvious a partiality.
His poems, published in 1665 (reprinted and edited by J. Churton Collins in 1881), show him in general a faithful disciple of Donne, obscure and uncouth. His satires are miserable compositions, but a few of his lyrical verses show power of reflection and true inspiration, while his use of the metre afterwards employed by Tennyson in his “In Memoriam†is particularly happy and effective. His Latin poems are evidence of his scholarship. Three of these had appeared together with theDe causis errorumin 1645. To these works must be addedA Dialogue between a Tutor and a Pupil(1768; a treatise on education, MS. in the Bodleian Library); a treatise on the king’s supremacy in the Church (MS. in the Record Office and at Queen’s College, Oxford), and his well-known autobiography, first published by Horace Walpole in 1764, a naïve and amusing narrative, too much occupied, however, with his duels and amorous adventures, to the exclusion of more creditable incidents in his career, such as his contributions to philosophy and history, his intimacy with Donne, Ben Jonson, Selden and Carew, Casaubon, Gassendi and Grotius, or his embassy in France, in relation to which he only described the splendour of his retinue and his social triumphs.
Bibliography.—The autobiography edited by Sidney Lee with correspondence from add. MSS. 7082 (1886); article in theDict. of Nat. Biog.by the same writer and the list of authorities there collated;Hist. MSS. Comm. Rep.x. app. iv., 378;Lord Herbert de Cherbury, by Charles de Rémusat (1874);Eduard, Lord Herbert von Cherbury, by C. Güttler (a criticism of his philosophy; 1897);Collections Historical and Archaeologicalrelating to Montgomeryshire, vols. vii., xi., xx.; R. Warner’sEpistolary Curiosities, i. ser.; Reid’s works, edited by Sir William Hamilton;National Review, xxxv. 661 (Leslie Stephen); Locke’sEssay on Human Understanding; Wood,Ath. Oxon.(Bliss), iii. 239;Gentleman’s Magazine(1816), i. 201 (print of remains of his birthplace);Lord Herbert’s Poems, ed. by J. Churton Collins (1881); Aubrey’sLives of Eminent Men; also works quoted underDeism.
HERBERT OF LEA, SIDNEY HERBERT,1st Baron(1810-1861), English statesman, was the younger son of the 11th earl of Pembroke. Educated at Harrow and Oriel, Oxford, he made a reputation at the Oxford Union as a speaker, and entered the House of Commons as Conservative member for a division of Wiltshire in 1832. Under Peel he held minor offices, and in 1845 was included in the cabinet as secretary at war, and again held this office in 1852-1855, being responsible for the War Office during the Crimean difficulties, and in 1859. It was Sidney Herbert who sent Florence Nightingale out to the Crimea, and he led the movement for War Office reform after the war,the hard work entailed causing his breakdown in health, so that in July 1861, having been created a baron, he had to resign office, and died on the 2nd of August 1861. His statue was placed in front of the War Office in Pall Mall. He was succeeded in the title by his eldest son, who later became 13th earl of Pembroke, and the barony is now merged in that earldom; his second son became 14th earl. Another son, the Hon. Michael Herbert (1857-1904), was British Ambassador at Washington in succession to Lord Pauncefote.
A life of Lord Herbert by Lord Stanmore was published in 1906.
A life of Lord Herbert by Lord Stanmore was published in 1906.
HERBERTON,a mining town of Cardwell county, Queensland, Australia, 55 m. S.W. of Cairns. Pop. (1901) 2806. Tin was discovered in the locality in 1879, and to this mineral the town chiefly owes its prosperity, though copper, bismuth and some silver and gold are also found. Atherton, 12 m. from the town, is served by rail from Cairns, which is the port for the Herberton district.
HERCULANEUM,an ancient city of Italy, situated about two-thirds of a mile from the Portici station of the railway from Naples to Pompeii. The ruins are less frequently visited than those of Pompeii, not only because they are smaller in extent and of less obvious interest, but also because they are more difficult of access. The history of their discovery and exploration, and the artistic and literary relics which they have yielded, are worthy, however, of particular notice. The small part of the city, which was investigated at the spot calledGli scavi nuovi(the new excavations) was discovered in the 19th century. But the more important works were executed in the 18th century; and of the buildings then explored at a great depth, by means of tunnels, none is visible except the theatre, the orchestra of which lies 85 ft. below the surface.
The brief notices of the classical writers inform us that Herculaneum1was a small city of Campania between Neapolis and Pompeii, that it was situated between two streams at the foot of Vesuvius on a hill overlooking the sea, and that its harbour was at all seasons safe. With regard to its earlier history nothing is known. The account given by Dionysius repeats a tradition which was most natural for a city bearing the name of Hercules. Strabo follows up the topographical data with a few brief historical statements—Ὄσκοι εἶχον καὶ ταÏτην καὶ τὴν á¼Ï†ÎµÎ¾á¿†Ï‚ Πομπηίαν ... εἶτα Τυῤῥηνοὶ καὶ Πελασγοί, μετὰ ταῦτα Σαυνῖται. But leaving the questions suggested by these names (seeEtruria, &c.),2as well as those which relate to the origin of Pompeii (q.v.), it is sufficient here to say that the first historical record about Herculaneum has been handed down by Livy (viii. 25), where he relates how the city fell under the power of Rome during the Samnite wars. It remained faithful to Rome for a long time, but it joined the Italian allies in the Social War. Having submitted anew in June of the year 665 (88B.C.), it appears to have been less severely treated than Pompeii, and to have escaped the imposition of a colony of Sulla’s veterans, although Zumpt has suspected the contrary (Comm. epigr.i. 259). It afterwards became a municipium, and enjoyed great prosperity towards the close of the republic and in the earlier times of the empire, since many noble families of Rome selected this pleasant spot for the construction of splendid villas, one of which indeed belonged to the imperial house (Seneca,De ira, iii.), and another to the family of Calpurnius Piso. By means of the Via Campana it had easy communication north-westward with Neapolis, Puteoli and Capua, and thence by the Via Appia with Rome; and southwards with Pompeii and Nuceria, and thence with Lucania and the Bruttii. In the yearA.D.63 it suffered terribly from the earthquake which, according to Seneca, “Campaniam nunquam securam huius mali, indemnem tamen, et toties defunctam metu magna strage vastavit. Nam et Herculanensis oppidi pars ruit dubieque stant etiam quae relicta sunt†(Nat. quaest.vi. 1). Hardly had Herculaneum completed the restoration of some of its principal buildings (cf. Mommsen, I.N. n. 2384;Catalogo del Museo Nazionale di Napoli, n. 1151) when it fell beneath the great eruption of the year 79, described by Pliny the younger (Ep.vi. 16, 20), in which Pompeii also was destroyed, with other flourishing cities of Campania. According to the commonest account, on the 23rd of August of that year Pliny the elder, who had command of the Roman fleet at Misenum, set out to render assistance to a young lady of noble family named Rectina and others dwelling on that coast, but, as there was no escape by sea, the little harbour having been on a sudden filled up so as to be inaccessible, he was obliged to abandon to their fate those people of Herculaneum who had managed to flee from their houses, overwhelmed in a moment by the material poured forth by Vesuvius. But the text of Pliny the younger, where this account is given, has been subjected to various interpretations; and from the comparison of other classical testimonies and the study of the excavations it has been concluded that it is impossible to determine the date of the catastrophe, though there are satisfactory arguments to justify the statement that the event took place in the autumn. The opinion that immediately after the first outbreak of Vesuvius a torrent of lava was ejected over Herculaneum was refuted by the scholars of the 18th century, and their refutation is confirmed by Beulé (Le Drame du Vésuve, p. 240 seq.). And the last recensions of the passage quoted from Pliny, aided by an inscription,3prove that Rectina cannot have been the name of the harbour described by Beulé (ib.pp. 122, 247), but the name of a lady who had implored succour, the wife of Caesius Bassus, or rather Tascius (cf. Pliny, ed. Keil, Leipzig, 1870; Aulus Persius, ed. Jahn,Sat.vi.). The shore, moreover, according to the accurate studies of the engineer Michele Ruggiero, director of the excavations, was not altered by the causes adduced by Beulé (p. 125), but by a simpler event. “It is certain,†he says (Pompei e la regione sotterrata dal Vesuvio l’anno 79, Naples, 1879, p. 21 seq.), “that the districts between the south and west, and those between the south and east, were overwhelmed in two quite different ways. From Torre Annunziata (which is believed to be the site of the ancient Oplontii) to San Giovanni a Teduccio, for a distance of about 9 m., there flowed a muddy eruption which in Herculaneum and the neighbouring places, where it was most abundant, raised the level of the country more than 65 ft. The matter transported consisted of soil of various kinds—sand, ashes, fragments of lava, pozzolana and whitish pumice, enclosing grains of uncalcined lime, similar in every respect to those of Pompeii. In the part of Herculaneum already excavated the corridors in the upper portions of the theatre are compactly filled, up to the head of the arches, with pozzolana and pumice transformed into tufa (which proves that the formation of this stone may take place in a comparatively short time). Tufa is also found in the lowest part of the city towards the sea in front of the few houses that have been discovered; and in the very high banks that surround them, as also in the lowest part of the theatre, there are plainly to be seen earth, sand, ashes, fragmentsof lava and pumice, with little distinction of strata, almost always confused and mingled together, and varying from spot to spot in degree of compactness. It is clear that this immense congeries of earth and stones could not flow in a dry state over those 5 m. of country (in the beginning very steep, and at intervals almost level), where certainly it would have been arrested and all accumulated in a mound; but it must have been borne along by a great quantity of water, the effects of which may be distinctly recognized, not only in the filling and choking up even of the most narrow, intricate and remote parts of the buildings, but also in the formation of the tufa, in which water has so great a share; for it cannot be supposed that enough of it has filtered through so great a depth of earth. The torrent ran in a few hours to the sea, and formed that shallow or lagoon called by PlinySubitum Vadum, which prevented the ships approaching the shores.†Hence it is that, while many made their escape from Pompeii (which was overwhelmed by the fall of the small stones and afterwards by the rain of ashes), comparatively few can have managed to escape from Herculaneum, and these, according to the interpretation given to the inscription preserved in the National Museum (Mommsen,I.N.n. 2455), found shelter in the neighbouring city of Neapolis, where they inhabited a quarter called that of the buried city (Suetonius,Titus, 8;C.I.L.x. No. 1492, in Naples: “Regio primaria splendidissima Herculanensiumâ€). The name of Herculaneum, which for some time remained attached to the site of the disaster, is mentioned in the later itineraries; but in the course of the middle ages all recollection of it perished.
In 1719, while Prince Elbeuf of the house of Lorraine, in command of the armies of Charles VI., was seeking crushed marble to make plaster for his new villa near Portici, he learned from the peasants that there were in the vicinity some pits from which they not only quarried excellent marble, but had extracted many statues in the course of years (see Jorio,Notizia degli scavi d’ Ercolano, Naples, 1827). In 1738, while Colonel D. Rocco de Alcubierre was directing the works for the construction of the “Reali Delizie†at Portici, he received orders from Charles IV. (later, Charles III. of Spain) to begin excavations on the spot where it had been reported to the king that the Elbeuf statues had been found. At first it was believed that a temple was being explored, but afterwards the inscriptions proved that the building was a theatre. This discovery excited the greatest commotion among the scholars of all nations; and many of them hastened to Naples to see the marvellous statues of the Balbi and the paintings on the walls. But everything was kept private, as the government wished to reserve to itself the right of illustrating the monuments. First of all Monsignor Bayardi was brought from Rome and commissioned to write about the antiquities which were being collected in the museum at Portici under the care of Camillo Paderni, and when it was recognized that the prelate had not sufficient learning, and by the progress of the excavations other most abundant material was accumulated, about which at once scholars and courtiers were anxious to be informed, Bernardo Tanucci, having become secretary of state in 1755, founded the Accademia Ercolanese, which published the principal works on Herculaneum (Le Pitture ed i bronzi d’ Ercolano, 8 vols., 1757, 1792;Dissertations isagogicae ad Herculanensium voluminum explanationem pars prima, 1797). The criterion which guided the studies of the academicians was far from being worthy of unqualified praise, and consequently their work did not always meet the approval of the best scholars who had the opportunity of seeing the monuments. Among these was Winckelmann, who in his letters gave ample notices of the excavations and the antiquities which he was able to visit on several occasions. Other notices were furnished by Gori,Symbolae litterariae Florentinae(1748, 1751), by Marcello Venuti,Descrizione delle prime scoperte d’ Ercolano(Rome, 1748), and Scipione Maffei,Tre lettere intorno alle scoperte d’ Ercolano(Verona, 1748). The excavations, which continued for more than forty years (1738-1780), were executed at first under the immediate direction of Alcubierre (1738-1741), and then with the assistance of the engineers Rorro and Bardet (1741-1745), Carl Weber (1750-1764), and Francesco La Vega. After the death of Alcubierre (1780) the last-named was appointed director-in-chief of the excavations; but from that time the investigations at Herculaneum were intermitted, and the researches at Pompeii were vigorously carried on. Resumed in 1827, the excavations at Herculaneum were shortly after suspended, nor were the new attempts made in 1866 with the money bestowed by King Victor Emmanuel attended with success, being impeded by the many dangers arising from the houses built overhead. The meagreness of the results obtained by the occasional works executed in the last century, and the fact that the investigators were unfortunate enough to strike upon places already explored, gave rise to the opinion that the whole area of the city had been crossed by tunnels in the time of Charles III. and in the beginning of the reign of Ferdinand IV. And although it is recognized that the works had not been prosecuted with the caution that they required, yet in view of the serious difficulties that would attend the collection of the little that had been left by the first excavators, every proposal for new investigations has been abandoned. But in a memoir which Professor Barnabei read in the Reale Accademia dei Lincei (Atti della R. Ac.series iii. vol. ii. p. 751) he undertook to prove that the researches made by the government in the 18th century did not cover any great area. The antiquities excavated at Herculaneum in that century (i.e.the 18th) form a collection of the highest scientific and artistic value. They come partly from the buildings of the ancient city (theatre, basilica, houses and forum), and partly from the private villa of a great Roman family (cf. Comparetti and de Petra,La Villa Ercolanese dei Pisoni, Turin, 1883). From the city come, among many other marble statues, the two equestrian statues of the Balbi (Museo Borbonico, vol. ii. pl. xxxviii.-xxxix.), and the great imperial and municipal bronze statues. Mural paintings of extraordinary beauty were also discovered here, such as those that represent Theseus after the slaughter of the Minotaur (Helbig,Wandgemälde, Leipzig, 1878, No. 1214), Chiron teaching Achilles the art of playing on the lyre (ibid.No. 1291), and Hercules finding Telephus who is being suckled by the hind (ibid.No. 1143).Notwithstanding subsequent discoveries of stupendous paintings in the gardens of the Villa Farnesina on the banks of the Tiber, the monochromes of Herculaneum remain among the finest specimens of the exquisite taste and consummate skill displayed by the ancient artists. Among the best preserved is Leto and Niobe, which has been the subject of so many studies and so many publications (ibid.No. 1706). There is also a considerable number of lapidary inscriptions edited in vol. ii. of the epigraphic collection of theCat. del Mus. Naz. di Napoli. The Villa Suburbana has given us a good number of marble busts, and the so-called statue of Aristides, but above all that splendid collection of bronze statues and busts mostly reproductions of famous Greek works now to be found in the Naples Museum. It is thence that we have obtained the reposing Hermes, the drunken Silenus, the sleeping Faunus, the dancing girls, the bust called Plato’s, that believed to be Seneca’s, the two quoit-throwers or discoboli, and so many masterpieces more, figured by the academicians in their volume on the bronzes. But a still further discovery made in the Villa Suburbana contributed to magnify the greatness of Herculaneum; within its walls was found the famous library, of which, counting both entire and fragmentary volumes, 1803 papyri are preserved. Among the nations which took the greatest interest in the discovery of the Herculaneum library, the most honourable rank belongs to England, which sent Hayter and other scholars to Naples to solicit the publication of the volumes. Of the 341 papyri which have been unrolled, 195 have been published (Herculanensium voluminum quae supersunt(Naples, 1793-1809);Collectio altera, 1862-1876). They contain works by Epicurus, Demetrius, Polystratus, Colotes, Chrysippus, Carniscus and Philodemus. The names of the authors are in themselves sufficient to show that the library belonged to a person whose principal study was the Epicurean philosophy. But of the great master of this school only a few works have been found. Of his treatiseΠεÏὶ φÏσεως, divided into 37 books, it is known that there were three copies in the library (Coll. alt.vi.). Professor Comparetti, studying the first fasciculus of volume xi. of the same new collection, recognized most important fragments of theEthicsof Epicurus, and these he published in 1879 in Nos. ix. and xi. of theRivista di filologia e d’ istruzione classica(Turin). Even the other authors above mentioned are but poorly represented, with the exception of Philodemus, of whom 26 different treatises have been recognized. But all these philosophic discussions, belonging for the most part to an author less than secondary among the Epicureans, fall short of the high expectations excited by the first discovery of the library. Among the many volumes unrolled only a few are of historical importance—that edited by Bücheler, which treats of the philosophers of the academy (Acad. phil. index Hercul., Greifswald, 1859), and that edited by Comparetti, which deals with the Stoics (“Papiro ercolanese inedito,†inRivista di fil. e d’ ist. class.anno iii. fasc. x.-xii.). To appreciate the value of the volumes unrolled but not yet published (for 146 vols. were only copied and not printed) the student must read Comparetti’s paper, “Relazione sui papiri ercolanesi.†Contributions of some value have been made to the study of Herculaneum fragments by Spengel (“Die hercul. Rollen,†inPhilologus, 1863, suppl. vol.), and Gomperz (Hercul. Studien, Leipzig, 1865-1866, cf.Zeitschr. f. österr. Gymn., 1867-1872). There are in the library some volumes written in Latin, which, according to Boot (Notice sur les manuscrits trouvés à Herculaneum, Amsterdam, 1845), were found tied up in a bundle apart. Of these we know 18, but they are all so damaged that hardly any of them can be deciphered. One with verses relating to the battle of Actium is believed to belong to a poem of Rabirius. The numerical preponderance of the works of Philodemus led some people to believe that this had been the library of that philosopher. Professor Comparetti has thrown out a conjecture (cf. Comparetti and de Petra,op. cit.) that the library was collected by Lucius Piso Caesoninus (seeRegione sotterrata dal Vesuvio, Naples, 1879, p. 159 sq.), but this conjecture has not found many supporters. Professor de Petra (in the same work) has also published the official notices upon the antiquities unearthed in the sumptuousvilla, giving the plan executed by Weber and recovered by chance by the director of excavations, Michele Ruggiero. This plan, which is here reproduced from de Petra4is the only satisfactory document for the topography of Herculaneum; for the plan of the theatre published in theBullettino archeologico italiano(Naples, 1861, i. 53, tab. iii.) was executed in 1747, when the excavations were not completed. And even for the history of the “finds†made in the Villa Suburbana the necessity for further studies makes itself felt, since there is a lack of agreement between the accounts given by Alcubierre and Weber and those communicated to thePhilosophical Transactions(London, vol. x.) by Camillo Paderni, conservator of the Portici Museum.Among the older works relating to Herculaneum, in addition to those already quoted, may be mentioned de Brosses,Lettre sur l’état actuel de la ville souterraine d’Héracléa(Paris, 1750); Seigneux de Correvon,Lettre sur la découverte de l’ancienne ville d’Herculane(Yverdon, 1770); David,Les Antiquités d’Herculaneum(Paris, 1780); D’ Ancora Gaetano,Prospetto storico-fisico degli scavi d’ Ercolano e di Pompei(Naples, 1803); Venuti,Prime Scoverte di Ercolano(Rome, 1748); and Romanelli,Viaggio ad Ercolano(Naples, 1811). A full list will be found in vol. i. ofMuseo Borbonico(Naples, 1824), pp. 1-11.The most important reference work is C. Waldstein and L. Shoobridge,Herculaneum, Past, Present and Future(London, 1908); it contains full references to the history and the explorations, and to the buildings and objects found (with illustrations). Miss E. R. Barker’sBuried Herculaneum(1908) is exceedingly useful.In 1904 Professor Waldstein expounded both in Europe and in America an international scheme for thorough investigation of the site. Negotiations of a highly complex character ensued with the Italian government, which ultimately in 1908 decided that the work should be undertaken by Italian scholars with Italian funds. The work was begun in the autumn of 1908, but financial difficulties with property owners in Resina immediately arose with the result that progress was practically stopped.
In 1719, while Prince Elbeuf of the house of Lorraine, in command of the armies of Charles VI., was seeking crushed marble to make plaster for his new villa near Portici, he learned from the peasants that there were in the vicinity some pits from which they not only quarried excellent marble, but had extracted many statues in the course of years (see Jorio,Notizia degli scavi d’ Ercolano, Naples, 1827). In 1738, while Colonel D. Rocco de Alcubierre was directing the works for the construction of the “Reali Delizie†at Portici, he received orders from Charles IV. (later, Charles III. of Spain) to begin excavations on the spot where it had been reported to the king that the Elbeuf statues had been found. At first it was believed that a temple was being explored, but afterwards the inscriptions proved that the building was a theatre. This discovery excited the greatest commotion among the scholars of all nations; and many of them hastened to Naples to see the marvellous statues of the Balbi and the paintings on the walls. But everything was kept private, as the government wished to reserve to itself the right of illustrating the monuments. First of all Monsignor Bayardi was brought from Rome and commissioned to write about the antiquities which were being collected in the museum at Portici under the care of Camillo Paderni, and when it was recognized that the prelate had not sufficient learning, and by the progress of the excavations other most abundant material was accumulated, about which at once scholars and courtiers were anxious to be informed, Bernardo Tanucci, having become secretary of state in 1755, founded the Accademia Ercolanese, which published the principal works on Herculaneum (Le Pitture ed i bronzi d’ Ercolano, 8 vols., 1757, 1792;Dissertations isagogicae ad Herculanensium voluminum explanationem pars prima, 1797). The criterion which guided the studies of the academicians was far from being worthy of unqualified praise, and consequently their work did not always meet the approval of the best scholars who had the opportunity of seeing the monuments. Among these was Winckelmann, who in his letters gave ample notices of the excavations and the antiquities which he was able to visit on several occasions. Other notices were furnished by Gori,Symbolae litterariae Florentinae(1748, 1751), by Marcello Venuti,Descrizione delle prime scoperte d’ Ercolano(Rome, 1748), and Scipione Maffei,Tre lettere intorno alle scoperte d’ Ercolano(Verona, 1748). The excavations, which continued for more than forty years (1738-1780), were executed at first under the immediate direction of Alcubierre (1738-1741), and then with the assistance of the engineers Rorro and Bardet (1741-1745), Carl Weber (1750-1764), and Francesco La Vega. After the death of Alcubierre (1780) the last-named was appointed director-in-chief of the excavations; but from that time the investigations at Herculaneum were intermitted, and the researches at Pompeii were vigorously carried on. Resumed in 1827, the excavations at Herculaneum were shortly after suspended, nor were the new attempts made in 1866 with the money bestowed by King Victor Emmanuel attended with success, being impeded by the many dangers arising from the houses built overhead. The meagreness of the results obtained by the occasional works executed in the last century, and the fact that the investigators were unfortunate enough to strike upon places already explored, gave rise to the opinion that the whole area of the city had been crossed by tunnels in the time of Charles III. and in the beginning of the reign of Ferdinand IV. And although it is recognized that the works had not been prosecuted with the caution that they required, yet in view of the serious difficulties that would attend the collection of the little that had been left by the first excavators, every proposal for new investigations has been abandoned. But in a memoir which Professor Barnabei read in the Reale Accademia dei Lincei (Atti della R. Ac.series iii. vol. ii. p. 751) he undertook to prove that the researches made by the government in the 18th century did not cover any great area. The antiquities excavated at Herculaneum in that century (i.e.the 18th) form a collection of the highest scientific and artistic value. They come partly from the buildings of the ancient city (theatre, basilica, houses and forum), and partly from the private villa of a great Roman family (cf. Comparetti and de Petra,La Villa Ercolanese dei Pisoni, Turin, 1883). From the city come, among many other marble statues, the two equestrian statues of the Balbi (Museo Borbonico, vol. ii. pl. xxxviii.-xxxix.), and the great imperial and municipal bronze statues. Mural paintings of extraordinary beauty were also discovered here, such as those that represent Theseus after the slaughter of the Minotaur (Helbig,Wandgemälde, Leipzig, 1878, No. 1214), Chiron teaching Achilles the art of playing on the lyre (ibid.No. 1291), and Hercules finding Telephus who is being suckled by the hind (ibid.No. 1143).
Notwithstanding subsequent discoveries of stupendous paintings in the gardens of the Villa Farnesina on the banks of the Tiber, the monochromes of Herculaneum remain among the finest specimens of the exquisite taste and consummate skill displayed by the ancient artists. Among the best preserved is Leto and Niobe, which has been the subject of so many studies and so many publications (ibid.No. 1706). There is also a considerable number of lapidary inscriptions edited in vol. ii. of the epigraphic collection of theCat. del Mus. Naz. di Napoli. The Villa Suburbana has given us a good number of marble busts, and the so-called statue of Aristides, but above all that splendid collection of bronze statues and busts mostly reproductions of famous Greek works now to be found in the Naples Museum. It is thence that we have obtained the reposing Hermes, the drunken Silenus, the sleeping Faunus, the dancing girls, the bust called Plato’s, that believed to be Seneca’s, the two quoit-throwers or discoboli, and so many masterpieces more, figured by the academicians in their volume on the bronzes. But a still further discovery made in the Villa Suburbana contributed to magnify the greatness of Herculaneum; within its walls was found the famous library, of which, counting both entire and fragmentary volumes, 1803 papyri are preserved. Among the nations which took the greatest interest in the discovery of the Herculaneum library, the most honourable rank belongs to England, which sent Hayter and other scholars to Naples to solicit the publication of the volumes. Of the 341 papyri which have been unrolled, 195 have been published (Herculanensium voluminum quae supersunt(Naples, 1793-1809);Collectio altera, 1862-1876). They contain works by Epicurus, Demetrius, Polystratus, Colotes, Chrysippus, Carniscus and Philodemus. The names of the authors are in themselves sufficient to show that the library belonged to a person whose principal study was the Epicurean philosophy. But of the great master of this school only a few works have been found. Of his treatiseΠεÏὶ φÏσεως, divided into 37 books, it is known that there were three copies in the library (Coll. alt.vi.). Professor Comparetti, studying the first fasciculus of volume xi. of the same new collection, recognized most important fragments of theEthicsof Epicurus, and these he published in 1879 in Nos. ix. and xi. of theRivista di filologia e d’ istruzione classica(Turin). Even the other authors above mentioned are but poorly represented, with the exception of Philodemus, of whom 26 different treatises have been recognized. But all these philosophic discussions, belonging for the most part to an author less than secondary among the Epicureans, fall short of the high expectations excited by the first discovery of the library. Among the many volumes unrolled only a few are of historical importance—that edited by Bücheler, which treats of the philosophers of the academy (Acad. phil. index Hercul., Greifswald, 1859), and that edited by Comparetti, which deals with the Stoics (“Papiro ercolanese inedito,†inRivista di fil. e d’ ist. class.anno iii. fasc. x.-xii.). To appreciate the value of the volumes unrolled but not yet published (for 146 vols. were only copied and not printed) the student must read Comparetti’s paper, “Relazione sui papiri ercolanesi.†Contributions of some value have been made to the study of Herculaneum fragments by Spengel (“Die hercul. Rollen,†inPhilologus, 1863, suppl. vol.), and Gomperz (Hercul. Studien, Leipzig, 1865-1866, cf.Zeitschr. f. österr. Gymn., 1867-1872). There are in the library some volumes written in Latin, which, according to Boot (Notice sur les manuscrits trouvés à Herculaneum, Amsterdam, 1845), were found tied up in a bundle apart. Of these we know 18, but they are all so damaged that hardly any of them can be deciphered. One with verses relating to the battle of Actium is believed to belong to a poem of Rabirius. The numerical preponderance of the works of Philodemus led some people to believe that this had been the library of that philosopher. Professor Comparetti has thrown out a conjecture (cf. Comparetti and de Petra,op. cit.) that the library was collected by Lucius Piso Caesoninus (seeRegione sotterrata dal Vesuvio, Naples, 1879, p. 159 sq.), but this conjecture has not found many supporters. Professor de Petra (in the same work) has also published the official notices upon the antiquities unearthed in the sumptuousvilla, giving the plan executed by Weber and recovered by chance by the director of excavations, Michele Ruggiero. This plan, which is here reproduced from de Petra4is the only satisfactory document for the topography of Herculaneum; for the plan of the theatre published in theBullettino archeologico italiano(Naples, 1861, i. 53, tab. iii.) was executed in 1747, when the excavations were not completed. And even for the history of the “finds†made in the Villa Suburbana the necessity for further studies makes itself felt, since there is a lack of agreement between the accounts given by Alcubierre and Weber and those communicated to thePhilosophical Transactions(London, vol. x.) by Camillo Paderni, conservator of the Portici Museum.
Among the older works relating to Herculaneum, in addition to those already quoted, may be mentioned de Brosses,Lettre sur l’état actuel de la ville souterraine d’Héracléa(Paris, 1750); Seigneux de Correvon,Lettre sur la découverte de l’ancienne ville d’Herculane(Yverdon, 1770); David,Les Antiquités d’Herculaneum(Paris, 1780); D’ Ancora Gaetano,Prospetto storico-fisico degli scavi d’ Ercolano e di Pompei(Naples, 1803); Venuti,Prime Scoverte di Ercolano(Rome, 1748); and Romanelli,Viaggio ad Ercolano(Naples, 1811). A full list will be found in vol. i. ofMuseo Borbonico(Naples, 1824), pp. 1-11.
The most important reference work is C. Waldstein and L. Shoobridge,Herculaneum, Past, Present and Future(London, 1908); it contains full references to the history and the explorations, and to the buildings and objects found (with illustrations). Miss E. R. Barker’sBuried Herculaneum(1908) is exceedingly useful.
In 1904 Professor Waldstein expounded both in Europe and in America an international scheme for thorough investigation of the site. Negotiations of a highly complex character ensued with the Italian government, which ultimately in 1908 decided that the work should be undertaken by Italian scholars with Italian funds. The work was begun in the autumn of 1908, but financial difficulties with property owners in Resina immediately arose with the result that progress was practically stopped.