Manuscript copies of his works abound, and are to be found in almost every library which possesses a collection of ancient writings. The works themselves are very numerous and very diverse. The middle ages attributed to him sixty works, and the edition in Migne’sPatr. Lat.vols. clxxv.-clxxvii. (Paris, 1854) contains no fewer than forty-seven treatises, commentaries and collections of sermons. Of that number, however, B. Hauréau (Les Œuvres de Hugues de St Victor(1st ed., Paris, 1859; 2nd ed., Paris, 1886) contests the authenticity of several, which he ascribes with some show of probability to Hugh of Fouilloi, Robert Paululus or others. Among those works with which Hugh of St Victor may almost certainly be credited may be mentioned the celebratedDe sacramentis christianae fidei; theDidascalicon de studio legendi; the treatises on mysticism entitledSoliloquium de arrha animae,De contemplatione et ejus operibus,Aureum de meditando opusculum,De arca Noë morali,De arca Noë mystica,De vanitate mundi,De arrha animae,De amore sponsi ad sponsam, &c.; the introduction (Praenotatiunculae) to the study of the Scriptures; homilies on the book of Ecclesiastes; commentaries on other books of the Bible,e.g.the Pentateuch, Judges, Kings, Jeremiah, &c.See B. Hauréau,op. cit.andNotices et extraits des MSS. latins de la Bibliothèque Nationale, passim; De Wulf,Histoire de la philosophie médiévale(Louvain, 1900), pp. 220-221; article by H. Denifle inArchiv für Literatur und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters, iii. 634-640 (1887); A. Mignon,Les Origines de la scholastique et Hugues de St Victor(Paris, 1895); J. Kilgenstein,Die Gotteslehre des Hugo von St Victor(1898).
Manuscript copies of his works abound, and are to be found in almost every library which possesses a collection of ancient writings. The works themselves are very numerous and very diverse. The middle ages attributed to him sixty works, and the edition in Migne’sPatr. Lat.vols. clxxv.-clxxvii. (Paris, 1854) contains no fewer than forty-seven treatises, commentaries and collections of sermons. Of that number, however, B. Hauréau (Les Œuvres de Hugues de St Victor(1st ed., Paris, 1859; 2nd ed., Paris, 1886) contests the authenticity of several, which he ascribes with some show of probability to Hugh of Fouilloi, Robert Paululus or others. Among those works with which Hugh of St Victor may almost certainly be credited may be mentioned the celebratedDe sacramentis christianae fidei; theDidascalicon de studio legendi; the treatises on mysticism entitledSoliloquium de arrha animae,De contemplatione et ejus operibus,Aureum de meditando opusculum,De arca Noë morali,De arca Noë mystica,De vanitate mundi,De arrha animae,De amore sponsi ad sponsam, &c.; the introduction (Praenotatiunculae) to the study of the Scriptures; homilies on the book of Ecclesiastes; commentaries on other books of the Bible,e.g.the Pentateuch, Judges, Kings, Jeremiah, &c.
See B. Hauréau,op. cit.andNotices et extraits des MSS. latins de la Bibliothèque Nationale, passim; De Wulf,Histoire de la philosophie médiévale(Louvain, 1900), pp. 220-221; article by H. Denifle inArchiv für Literatur und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters, iii. 634-640 (1887); A. Mignon,Les Origines de la scholastique et Hugues de St Victor(Paris, 1895); J. Kilgenstein,Die Gotteslehre des Hugo von St Victor(1898).
(P. A.)
HUGHES, DAVID EDWARD(1831-1900), Anglo-American electrician, was born on the 16th of May 1831 in London, but the earlier part of his life was spent in America, whither his parents emigrated when he was about seven years old. In 1850 he became professor of music at the college of Bardstown, Kentucky, and soon afterwards his attainments in physical science procured his appointment as teacher of natural philosophy at the same place. His professorial career, however, was brief, for in 1854 he removed to Louisville to supervise the manufacture of the type-printing telegraph instrument which he had been thinking out for some time, and which was destined to make both his name and his fortune. The patent for this machine was taken out in the United States in 1855, and its success was immediate. After seeing it well established on one side of the Atlantic, Hughes in 1857 brought it over to his native country, where, however, the telegraph companies did not receive it with any favour. Two or three years afterwards he introduced it to the notice of the French Government, who, after submitting it to severe tests, ultimately adopted it, and in the succeeding ten years it came into extensive use all over Europe, gaining for its inventor numerous honours and prizes. In the development of telephony also Hughes had an important share, and the telephone has attained its present perfection largely as a result of his investigations. The carbon transmitters which in various forms are in almost universal use are modifications of a simple device which he called a microphone, and which consists essentially of two pieces of carbon, in loose contact one with the other. The arrangement constitutes a variable electrical resistance of the most delicate character; if it is included in an electric circuit with a battery and subjected to the influence of sonorous vibrations, its resistance varies in such a way as to produce an undulatory current which affords an exact representation of the sound waves as to height, length and form. These results were published in 1878, but Hughes did much more work on the properties of such microphonic joints, of which he said nothing till many years afterwards. When towards the end of 1879 he found that they were also sensitive to “sudden electric impulses, whether given out to the atmosphere through the extra current from a coil or from a frictional machine,” he in fact discovered the phenomena on which depends the action of the so-called “coherers” used in wireless telegraphy. But he went further and practised wireless telegraphy himself, surmising, moreover, that the agency he was employing consisted of true electric waves. Setting some source of the “sudden electric impulses” referred to above into operation in his house, he walked along the street carrying a telephone in circuit with a small battery and one of these microphonic joints, and found that the sounds remained audible in the telephone until he had traversed a distance of 500 yards. This experiment he showed to several English men of science, among others to Sir G. G. Stokes, to whom he broached the theory that the results were due to electric waves. That physicist, however, was not disposed to accept this explanation, considering that a sufficient one could be found in well-known electromagnetic induction effects, and Hughes was so discouraged at that high authority taking this view of the matter that he resolved to publish no account of his inquiry until further experiments had enabled him to prove the correctness of his own theory. These experiments were still in progress when H. R. Hertz settled the question by his researches on electric waves in 1887-1889. Hughes, who is also known for his invention of the induction balance and for his contributions to the theory of magnetism, died in London on the 22nd of January 1900. As an investigator he was remarkable for the simplicity of the apparatus which served his purposes, domestic articles like jam-pots, pins, &c., forming a large part of the equipment of his laboratory. His manner of life, too, was simple and frugal in the extreme. He amassed a large fortune, which, with the exception of some bequests to the Royal Society, the Paris Academy of Sciences, the Institution of Electrical Engineers, and the Paris Société Internationale des Électriciens, for the establishment of scholarships and prizes in physical science, was left to four London hospitals, subject only to certain life annuities.
HUGHES, SIR EDWARD(c.1720-1794), British admiral, entered the Royal Navy in 1735, and four years later was present at Porto Bello. In 1740 he became lieutenant, and in that rank served in the Cartagena expedition of 1741, and at the indecisive battle of Toulon (1744). In H.M.S. “Warwick” he was present at the action with the “Glorioso,” but in default of proper support from the “Lark” (which was sailing in company with the “Warwick”), the combat ended with the enemy’s escape. The commander of the “Lark” was subsequently tried and condemned for his conduct, and Hughes received the vacant command. Captain Hughes was with Boscawen at Louisburg and with Saunders at Quebec. He was in continual employment during the peace, and as Commodore commanded in the East Indies from 1773 to 1777. It was not long before he returned to the East as a rear-admiral, with an overwhelming naval force. On his outward voyage he retook Goree from the French, and he was called upon to conduct only minor operations for the next two years, as the enemy could not muster any force fit to meet the powerful squadron Hughes had brought from the Channel. In 1782 he stormed Trincomalee a few days before the squadron of Suffren arrived in the neighbourhood. For the next year these Indian waters were the scene of one of the most famous of naval campaigns. Suffren (q.v.) was perhaps the ablest sea-commander that France ever produced, but his subordinates were factious and unskilful; Hughes on the other hand, whose ability was that born of long experience rather than genius, was well supported. No fewer than five fiercely contested general actions were fought by two fleets, neither of them gaining a decisive advantage. In the end Hughes held his ground. After the peace he returned to England, and, though further promotions came to him, he never again hoisted his flag. He had accumulated considerable wealth during his Indian service, which for the most part he spent in unostentatious charity. He died at his seat of Luxborough in Essex in 1794.
HUGHES, HUGH PRICE(1847-1902), British Nonconformist divine, was born at Carmarthen on the 8th of February 1847, the son of a surgeon. He began to preach when he was fourteen, and in 1865 entered Richmond College to study for the Wesleyan Methodist ministry under the Rev. Alfred Barrett, one of whose daughters he married in 1873. He graduated at London University in 1869, the last year of his residence. He established in 1887 the West London Mission, holding popular services on Sunday in St James’s Hall, Piccadilly, when he preached from time to time on the housing of the poor, sweating, gambling and other subjects of social interest. In connexion with this mission he founded a sisterhood to forward the social side of the work, which was presided over by Mrs Hughes. He had started in 1885 theMethodist Times, and rapidly made it a leading organ of Nonconformist opinion. He was a born fighter, and carried the fire and eloquence he showed on the platform and in the pulpit into journalism. He supported Mr W. T. Stead in 1885, as he had earlier supported Mrs Josephine Butler in a similar cause; he attacked the trade in alcohol; was an anti-vivisectionist; he advocated arbitration; and his vehement attacks on Sir Charles Dilke and Charles Stewart Parnell originated the phrase the “Nonconformist conscience.” He differed strongly, however, from a large section of Nonconformist opinion in his defence of the South African War. He was long regarded with some distrust by the more conservative section of his own church, but in 1898 he was made president of the Wesleyan Conference He raised large sums for church work, amounting it is said to over a quarter of a million of money. His energies were largely devoted to co-operation among the various Nonconformist bodies, and he was one of the founders and most energetic members of the National Council of the Evangelical Free Churches. He had long been in failing health when he died suddenly in London on the 17th of November 1902.
See hisLife(1904) by his daughter, Dorothea Price Hughes.
See hisLife(1904) by his daughter, Dorothea Price Hughes.
HUGHES, JOHN(1677-1720), English poet and miscellaneous writer, was born at Marlborough, Wiltshire, on the 29th of January 1677. His father was a clerk in a city office, and his grandfather was ejected from the living of Marlborough in 1662 for his Nonconformist opinions. Hughes was educated at a dissenting academy in London, where Isaac Watts was among his fellow scholars. He became a clerk in the Ordnance Office, and served on several commissions for the purchase of land for the royal dockyards. In 1717 Lord Chancellor Cowper made him secretary to the commissions of the peace in the court of chancery. He died on the night of the production of his most celebrated work,The Siege of Damascus, the 17th of February 1720.
His poems include occasional pieces in honour of William III., imitations of Horace, and a translation of the tenth book of thePharsaliaof Lucan. He was an amateur of the violin, and played in the concerts of Thomas Britton, the “musical small-coal man.” He wrote some of the libretti of the cantatas (2 vols., 1712) set to music by Dr John Christopher Pepusch. To these he prefixed an essay advocating the claims of English libretti, and insisting on the value of recitative. Others of his pieces were set to music by Ernest Galliard and by Händel. In the masque ofApollo and Daphne(1716) he was associated with Pepusch, and in his opera ofCalypso and Telemachus(1712) with John E. Galliard. He was a contributor to theTatler, theSpectatorand theGuardian, and he collaborated with Sir Richard Blackmore in a series of essays entitledThe Lay Monastery(1713-1714). He persuaded Joseph Addison to stage Cato. Addison had requested Hughes to write the last act, but eventually completed the play himself. He wrote a version of theLetters of Abelard and Heloise ...(1714) chiefly from the French translation printed at the Hague in 1693, which went through several editions, and is notable as the basis of Pope’s “Eloisa to Abelard” (1717). He also made translations from Molière, Fontenelle and the Abbé Vertot, and in 1715 editedThe Works of Edmund Spenser ...(another edition, 1750). His last work, the tragedy ofThe Siege of Damascus, is his best. It remained on the list of acting plays for a long time, and is to be found in various collected editions of British drama.
HisPoems on Several Occasions, with some Select Essays in Prose ...were edited with a memoir in 1735, by William Duncombe, who had married his sister Elizabeth. See alsoLetters by several eminent persons(2 vols., 1772) andThe Correspondence of John Hughes, Esq. ... and Several of his Friends ...(2 vols., 1773), with some additional poems. There is a long and eulogistic account of Hughes, with some letters, in theBiographia Britannica.
HisPoems on Several Occasions, with some Select Essays in Prose ...were edited with a memoir in 1735, by William Duncombe, who had married his sister Elizabeth. See alsoLetters by several eminent persons(2 vols., 1772) andThe Correspondence of John Hughes, Esq. ... and Several of his Friends ...(2 vols., 1773), with some additional poems. There is a long and eulogistic account of Hughes, with some letters, in theBiographia Britannica.
HUGHES, JOHN(1797-1864), American Roman Catholic divine, was born in Annaloghan, Co. Tyrone, Ireland, on the 24th of June 1797. In 1817 he followed his father to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. He was ordained deacon in 1825 and priest in 1826; and as vicar in St Augustine’s and other churches in Philadelphia he took a prominent part in the defence of ecclesiastical authority against the lay trustee system. In 1837 he was consecrated coadjutor to Bishop Dubois in New York. In the New York diocese, of which he was made administrator in 1839 and bishop in 1842, besides suppressing (1841) church control by lay trustees, he proved himself an active, almost pugnacious, leader. His unsuccessful attempt to build in Lafargeville, Jefferson county, a seminary of St Vincent de Paul, was followed by the transfer of the school to Fordham, where St John’s College (now Fordham University) was established (1841), largely out of funds collected by him in Europe in 1839-1840. His demand for state support for parochial schools was favoured by Governor Seward and was half victorious: it was in this controversy that he was first accused of forming a Catholic party in politics. John McCloskey was consecrated his coadjutor in 1844; in 1847 the diocese of New York was divided; and in 1850 Hughes was named the first archbishop of New York, with suffragan bishops of Boston, Hartford, Albany and Buffalo. In the meantime, during the “Native American” disturbances of 1844, he had been viciously attacked together with his Church; he kept his parishioners in check, but bade them protect their places of worship. His attitude was much the same at the time of the Anti-Popery outcry of the “Know-Nothings” in 1854. His early anti-slavery views had been made much less radical by his travels in the South and in the West Indies, but at the outbreak of the Civil War he was stronglypro-Union, and in 1861 he went to France to counteract the influence of the Slidell mission. He met with success not only in France, but at Rome and in Ireland, where, however, he made strong anti-English speeches. He died in New York City on the 3rd of January 1864. Hughes was a hard fighter and delighted in controversy. In 1826 he wroteAn Answer to Nine Objections Made by an Anonymous Writer Against the Catholic Religion; he was engaged in a bitter debate with Dr John Breckenridge (Presbyterian), partly in letters published in 1833 and partly in a public discussion in Philadelphia in 1835, on the subject of civil and religious liberty as affected by the Roman Catholic and the Presbyterian “religions”; in 1856, through his organ, theMetropolitan Record, he did his best to discredit any attempts by the Catholic press to forward either the movement to “Americanize” the Catholic Church or that to disseminate the principles of “Young Ireland.”
His works were edited by Laurence Kehoe (2 vols., New York, 1864-1865). See John R. G. Hassard,Life of the Most Rev. John Hughes(New York, 1866); and Henry A. Brann,John Hughes(New York, 1894), a briefer sketch, in “The Makers of America” series.
His works were edited by Laurence Kehoe (2 vols., New York, 1864-1865). See John R. G. Hassard,Life of the Most Rev. John Hughes(New York, 1866); and Henry A. Brann,John Hughes(New York, 1894), a briefer sketch, in “The Makers of America” series.
HUGHES, THOMAS,English dramatist, a native of Cheshire, entered Queens’ College, Cambridge, in 1571. He graduated and became a fellow of his college in 1576, and was afterwards a member of Gray’s Inn. He wroteThe Misfortunes of ArthurUther Pendragon’s son reduced into tragical notes by Thomas Hughes, which was performed at Greenwich in the Queen’s presence on the 28th of February 1588. Nicholas Trotte provided the introduction, Francis Flower the choruses of Acts I. and II., William Fulbeck two speeches, while three other gentlemen of Gray’s Inn, one of whom was Francis Bacon, undertook the care of the dumb show. The argument of the play, based on a story of incest and crime, was borrowed, in accordance with Senecan tradition, from mythical history, and the treatment is in close accordance with the model. The ghost of Gorlois, who was slain by Uther Pendragon, opens the play with a speech that reproduces passages spoken by the ghost of Tantalus in theThyestes; the tragic events are announced by a messenger, and the chorus comments on the course of the action. Dr W. J. Cunliffe has proved that Hughes’s memory was saturated with Seneca, and that the play may be resolved into a patchwork of translations, with occasional original lines. Appendix II. to his exhaustive essayOn the Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy(1893) gives a long list of parallel passages.
The Misfortunes of Arthurwas reprinted in J. P. Collier’s supplement to Dodsley’sOld Plays; and by Harvey Carson Grumline (Berlin, 1900), who points out that Hughes’s source was Geoffrey of Monmouth’sHistoria Britonum, not theMorte D’Arthur.
The Misfortunes of Arthurwas reprinted in J. P. Collier’s supplement to Dodsley’sOld Plays; and by Harvey Carson Grumline (Berlin, 1900), who points out that Hughes’s source was Geoffrey of Monmouth’sHistoria Britonum, not theMorte D’Arthur.
HUGHES, THOMAS(1822-1896), English lawyer and author, second son of John Hughes of Donnington Priory, editor ofThe Boscobel Tracts(1830), was born at Uffington, Berks, on the 20th of October 1822. In February 1834 he went to Rugby School, to be under Dr Arnold, a contemporary of his father at Oriel. He rose steadily to the sixth form, where he came into contact with the headmaster whom he afterwards idealized; but he excelled rather in sports than in scholarship, and his school career culminated in a cricket match at Lord’s. In 1842 he proceeded to Oriel, Oxford, and graduated B.A. in 1845. He was called to the bar in 1848, became Q.C. in 1869, a bencher in 1870, and was appointed to a county court judgeship in the Chester district in July 1882. While at Lincoln’s Inn he came under the dominating influence of his life, that of Frederick Denison Maurice. In 1848 he joined the Christian Socialists, under Maurice’s banner, among his closest allies being Charles Kingsley. In January 1854 he was one of the original promoters of the Working Men’s College in Great Ormond Street, and whether he was speaking on sanitation, sparring or singing his favourite ditty of “Little Billee,” his work there continued one of his chief interests to the end of his life. After Maurice’s death he held the principalship of the college. HisManliness of Christ(1879) grew out of a Bible class which he held there. Hughes had been influenced mentally by Arnold, Carlyle, Thackeray, Lowell and Maurice, and had developed into a liberal churchman, extremely religious, with strong socialistic leanings; but the substratum was still and ever the manly country squire of old-fashioned, sport-loving England. In Parliament, where he sat for Lambeth (1865-1868), and for Frome (1868-1874), he reproduced some of the traits of Colonel Newcome. Hughes was an energetic supporter of the claims of the working classes, and introduced a trades union Bill which, however, only reached its second reading. Of Mr Gladstone’s home rule policy he was an uncompromising opponent. Thrice he visited America and received a warm welcome, less as a propagandist of social reform than as a friend of Lowell and of the North, and an author. In 1879, in a sanguine humour worthy of Mark Tapley, he planned a cooperative settlement, “Rugby,” in Tennessee, over which he lost money. In 1848 Hughes had married Frances, niece of Richard Ford, of SpanishHandbookfame. They settled in 1853 at Wimbledon, and there was written his famous story,Tom Brown’s School-Days, “by an Old Boy” (dedicated to Mrs Arnold of Fox Howe), which came out in April 1857. It is probably impossible to depict the schoolboy in his natural state and in a realistic manner; it is extremely difficult to portray him at all in such a way as to interest the adult. Yet this last has certainly been achieved twice in English literature—by Dickens inNicholas Nickleby, and by Hughes inTom Brown. In both cases interest is concentrated upon the master, in the first a demon, in the second a demigod.Tom Browndid a great deal to fix the English concept of what a public school should be. Hughes also wroteThe Scouring of the White Horse(1859),Tom Brown at Oxford(1861),Religio laici(1868),Life of Alfred the Great(1869) and theMemoir of a Brother. The brother was George Hughes, who was in the main the original “Tom Brown,” just as Dean Stanley was in the main the original of “Arthur.” Hughes died at Brighton, on 22nd March 1896. He was English of the English, a typical broad-churchman, full of “muscular Christianity,” straightforward and unsuspicious to a fault, yet attaching a somewhat exorbitant value to “earnestness”—a favourite expression of Doctor Arnold.
(T. Se.)
HUGLI,orHooghly, the most westerly and commercially the most important channel by which the Ganges enters the Bay of Bengal. It takes its distinctive name near the town of Santipur, about 120 m. from the sea. The stream now known as the Hugli represents three western deltaic distributaries of the Ganges—viz. (1) the Bhagirathi, (2) the Jalangi and (3) part of the Matabhanga. The Bhagirathi and Jalangi unite at Nadia, above the point of their junction with the lower waters of the Matabhanga, which has taken the name of the Churni before the point of junction and thrown out new distributaries of its own. These three western distributaries are known as the Nadia rivers, and are important, not only as great highways for internal traffic, but also as the headwaters of the Hugli. Like other deltaic distributaries, they are subject to sudden changes in their channels, and to constant silting up. The supervising and keeping open of the Nadia rivers, therefore, forms one of the great tasks of fluvial engineering in Bengal. Proceeding south from Santipur, with a twist to the east, the Hugli river divides Nadia from Hugli district, until it touches the district of the Twenty-Four Parganas. It then proceeds almost due south to Calcutta, next twists to the south-west and finally turns south, entering the Bay of Bengal in 21° 41′ N., 88° E.
In the 40 miles of its course above Calcutta, the channels of the Hugli are under no supervision, and the result is that they have silted up and shifted to such an extent as to be no longer navigable for sea-going ships. Yet it was upon this upper section that all the famous ports of Bengal lay in olden times. From Calcutta to the sea (about 80 m.) the river is a record of engineering improvement and success. A minute supervision, with steady dredging and constant readjustment of buoys, now renders it a safe waterway to Calcutta for ships of the largest tonnage. Much attention has also been paid to the port of Calcutta (q.v.).
The tide runs rapidly on the Hugli, and produces a remarkable example of the fluvial phenomenon known as a “bore.” This consists of the head-wave of the advancing tide, hemmed in where theestuary narrows suddenly into the river, and often exceeds 7 ft. in height. It is felt as high up as Calcutta, and frequently destroys small boats. The difference from the lowest point of low-water in the dry season to the highest point of high-water in the rains is reported to be 20 ft. 10 in. The greatest mean rise of tide, about 16 ft., takes place in March, April or May—with a declining range during the rainy season to a mean of 10 ft., and a minimum during freshets of 3 ft. 6 in.
The tide runs rapidly on the Hugli, and produces a remarkable example of the fluvial phenomenon known as a “bore.” This consists of the head-wave of the advancing tide, hemmed in where theestuary narrows suddenly into the river, and often exceeds 7 ft. in height. It is felt as high up as Calcutta, and frequently destroys small boats. The difference from the lowest point of low-water in the dry season to the highest point of high-water in the rains is reported to be 20 ft. 10 in. The greatest mean rise of tide, about 16 ft., takes place in March, April or May—with a declining range during the rainy season to a mean of 10 ft., and a minimum during freshets of 3 ft. 6 in.
HUGLI,orHooghly, a town and district of British India, in the Burdwan division of Bengal, taking their name from the river Hugli. The town, situated on the right bank of the Hugli, 24 m. above Calcutta by rail, forms one municipality with Chinsura, the old Dutch settlement, lower down the river. Pop. (1901) 29,383. It contains the Hooghly College at Chinsura, a Mahommedan college, two high schools and a hospital with a Lady Dufferin branch for female patients. The principal building is a handsomeimambara, or mosque, constructed out of funds which had accumulated from an endowment originally left for the purpose by a wealthy Shia gentleman, Mahommed Mohsin. The town was founded by the Portuguese in 1537, on the decay of Satgaon, the royal port of Bengal. Upon establishing themselves, they built a fort at a place called Gholghat (close to the present jail), vestiges of which are still visible in the bed of the river. This fort gradually grew into the town and port of Hugli.
TheDistrictcomprises an area of 1191 sq. m. In 1901 the population was 1,049,282, showing an increase of 1% in the decade. It is flat, with a gradual ascent to the north and north-west. The scenery along the high-lying bank of the Hugli has a quiet beauty of its own, presenting the appearance of a connected series of orchards and gardens, interspersed with factories, villages and temples. The principal rivers, besides the Hugli, are the Damodar and the Rupnarayan. As in other deltaic districts, the highest land lies nearest the rivers, and the lowest levels are found midway between two streams. There are in consequence considerable marshes both between the Hugli and the Damodar and between the latter river and the Rupnarayan. The district is traversed by the main line of the East Indian railway, with a branch to the pilgrim resort of Tarakeswar, whence a steam tramway has been constructed for a further distance of 31 m. The Eden canal furnishes irrigation, and there are several embankments and drainage works. Silk and indigo are both decaying industries, but the manufacture of brass and bell-metal ware is actively carried on at several places. There are several jute mills, a large flour mill, bone-crushing mills and a brick and tile works.
From an historical point of view the district possesses as much interest as any in Bengal. In the early period of Mahommedan rule Satgaon was the seat of the governors of Lower Bengal and a mint town. It was also a place of great commercial importance. In consequence of the silting up of the Saraswati, the river on which Satgaon was situated, the town became inaccessible to large ships, and the Portuguese settled at Hugli. In 1632 the latter place, having been taken from the Portuguese by the Mahommedans, was made the royal port of Bengal; and all the public offices and records were withdrawn from Satgaon, which rapidly fell into decay. In 1640 the East India Company established a factory at Hugli, their first settlement in Lower Bengal. In 1685, a dispute having taken place between the English factors and the nawab, the town was bombarded and burned to the ground. This was not the first time that Hugli had been the scene of a struggle deciding the fate of a European power in India. In 1629, when held by the Portuguese, it was besieged for three months and a half by a large Mahommedan force sent by the emperor Shah Jahan. The place was carried by storm; more than 1000 Portuguese were killed, upwards of 4000 prisoners taken, and of 300 vessels only 3 escaped. But Hugli district possesses historical interest for other European nations besides England and Portugal. The Dutch established themselves at Chinsura in the 17th century, and held the place till 1825, when it was ceded to Great Britain in exchange for the island of Sumatra. The Danes settled at Serampur in 1616, where they remained till 1845, when all Danish possessions in India were transferred to the East India Company. Chandernagore became a French settlement in 1688. The English captured this town twice, but since 1816 it has remained in the possession of the French.
See D. G. Crawford,A Brief History of the Hooghly District(Calcutta, 1903).
See D. G. Crawford,A Brief History of the Hooghly District(Calcutta, 1903).
HUGO, GUSTAV VON(1764-1844), German jurist, was born at Lörrach in Baden, on the 23rd of November 1764. From the gymnasium at Carlsruhe he passed in 1782 to the university of Göttingen, where he studied law for three years. Having received the appointment of tutor to the prince of Anhalt-Dessau, he took his doctor’s degree at the university of Halle in 1788. Recalled in this year to Göttingen as extraordinary professor of law, he became ordinary professor in 1792. In the preface to hisBeiträge zur zivilistischen Bücherkenntnis der letzten vierzig Jahre(1828-1829) he gives a sketch of the condition of the civil law teaching at Göttingen at that time. The Roman Canon and German elements of the existing law were, without criticism or differentiation, welded into an ostensible whole for practical needs, with the result that it was difficult to say whether historical truth or practical ends were most prejudiced. One man handed on the inert mass to the next in the same condition as he had received it, new errors crept in, and even the best of teachers could not escape from the false method which had become traditional. These were the evils which Hugo set himself to combat, and he became the founder of that historical school of jurisprudence which was continued and further developed by Savigny. Hismagna operaare theLehrbuch eines zivilistischen Kursus(7 vols., 1792-1821), in which his method is thoroughly worked out, and theZivilistisches Magazin(6 vols., 1790-1837). He died at Göttingen on the 15th of September 1844.
For an account of his life see Eyssenhardt,Zur Erinnerung an Gustav Hugo(Berlin, 1845).
For an account of his life see Eyssenhardt,Zur Erinnerung an Gustav Hugo(Berlin, 1845).
HUGO, VICTOR MARIE(1802-1885), French poet, dramatist and romance-writer, youngest son of General J. L. S. Hugo (1773-1828), a distinguished soldier in Napoleon’s service, was born at Besançon on the 26th of February 1802. The all but still-born child was only kept alive and reared by the indefatigable devotion of his mother Sophie Trébuchet (d. 1821), a royalist of La Vendée. Educated first in Spain and afterwards in France, the boy whose infancy had followed the fortunes of the imperial camp grew up a royalist and a Catholic. His first work in poetry and in fiction was devoted to the passionate proclamation of his faith in these principles.
The precocious eloquence and ardour of these early works made him famous before his time. The odes which he published at the age of twenty, admirable for their spontaneous fervour and fluency, might have been merely the work of a marvellous boy; the ballads which followed them two years later revealed him as a great poet, a natural master of lyric and creative song. In 1823, at the age of twenty-one, he married his cousin Adèle Foucher (d. 1868). In the same year his first romance,Han d’Islande, was given to the press; his second,Bug-Jargal, appeared three years later. In 1827 he published the great dramatic poem ofCromwell, a masterpiece at all points except that of fitness for the modern stage. Two years afterwards he publishedLes Orientales, a volume of poems so various in style, so noble in spirit, so perfect in workmanship, in music and in form, that they might alone suffice for the foundation of an immortal fame. In the course of nine years, from 1831 to 1840, he publishedLes Feuilles d’automne,Les Chants du crépuscule,Les Voix intérieuresandLes Rayons et les ombres.
That their author was one of the greatest elegiac and lyric poets ever born into the world, any one of these volumes would amply suffice to prove. That he was the greatest tragic and dramatic poet born since the age of Shakespeare, the appearance ofHernaniin 1830 made evident for ever to all but the meanest and most perverse of dunces and malignants. The earlier and even greater tragedy ofMarion de Lorme(1828) had been proscribed on the ground that it was impossible for royalty to tolerate the appearance of a play in which a king was represented as the puppet of a minister. In all the noble and glorious life of the greatest poet of his time there is nothing on recordmore chivalrous and characteristic than the fact that Victor Hugo refused to allow the play which had been prohibited by the government of Charles X. to be instantly produced under the government of his supersessor.Le Roi s’amuse(1832), the next play which Hugo gave to the stage, was prohibited by order of Louis Philippe after a tumultuous first night—to reappear fifty years later on the very same day of the same month, under the eyes of its author, with atoning acclamation from a wider audience than the first. Terror and pity had never found on the stage word or expression which so exactly realized the ideal aim of tragic poetry among the countrymen of Aeschylus and Sophocles since the time or since the passing of Shakespeare, of Marlowe and of Webster. The tragedy ofLucrèce Borgia, coequal in beauty and power with its three precursors, followed next year in the humbler garb of prose; but the prose of Victor Hugo stands higher on the record of poetry than the verse of any lesser dramatist or poet.Marie Tudor(1833), his next play, was hardly more daring in its Shakespearean defiance of historic fact, and hardly more triumphant in its Shakespearean loyalty to the everlasting truth of human character and passion.Angelo, Tyran de Padoue(1835), the last of the tragic triad to which their creator denied the transfiguration of tragic verse, is inferior to neither in power of imagination and of style, in skill of invention and construction, and in mastery over all natural and noble sources of pity and of terror.La Esmeralda, the libretto of an opera founded on his great tragic romance ofNotre-Dame de Paris, is a miracle of lyric melody and of skilful adaptation.Ruy Blas(1838) was written in verse, and in such verse as none but he could write. In command and in expression of passion and of pathos, of noble and of evil nature, it equals any other work of this great dramatic poet; in the lifelike fusion of high comedy with deep tragedy it excels them all.Les Burgraves, a tragic poem of transcendent beauty in execution and imaginative audacity in conception, found so little favour on the stage that the author refused to submit his subsequent plays to the verdict of a public audience.
Victor Hugo’s first mature work in prose fiction,Le Dernier Jour d’un condamné, has appeared thirteen years earlier (1829). As a tragic monodrama it is incomparable for sustained power and terrible beauty. The story ofClaude Gueux, published five years later (1834), another fervent protest against the infliction of capital punishment, was followed by many other eloquent and passionate appeals to the same effect, written or spoken on various occasions which excited the pity or the indignation of the orator or the poet. In 1831 appeared the greatest of all tragic or historic or romantic poems in the form of prose narrative,Notre-Dame de Paris. Three years afterwards the author published, under the title ofLittérature et philosophie mêlées, a compilation or selection of notes and essays ranging and varying in date and in style from his earliest effusions of religious royalism to the magnificent essay on Mirabeau which represents at once the historical opinion and the critical capacity of Victor Hugo at the age of thirty-two. Next year he publishedLe Rhin, a series of letters from Germany, brilliant and vivid beyond all comparison, containing one of the most splendid stories for children ever written, and followed by a political supplement rather pathetically unprophetic in its predictions.
At the age of thirty-eight he honoured the French Academy by taking his place among its members; the speech delivered on the occasion was characteristically generous in its tribute to an undeserving memory, and significantly enthusiastic in its glorification of Napoleon. Idolatry of his father’s hero and leader had now superseded the earlier superstition inculcated by his mother. In 1846 his first speech in the chamber of peers—Louis Philippe’s House of Lords—was delivered on behalf of Poland; his second, on the subject of coast defence, is memorable for the evidence it bears of careful research and practical suggestion. His pleading on behalf of the exiled family of Bonaparte induced Louis Philippe to cancel the sentence which excluded its members from France. After the fall and flight of the house of Orleans, his parliamentary eloquence was never less generous in aim and always as fervent in its constancy to patriotic and progressive principle. When the conspiring forces of clerical venality and political prostitution had placed a putative Bonaparte in power attained by perjury after perjury, and supported by massacre after massacre, Victor Hugo, in common with all honourable men who had ever taken part in political or public life under the government superseded by force of treason and murder, was driven from his country into an exile of well-nigh twenty years. Next year he publishedNapoléon le petit; twenty-five years afterwards,Histoire d’un crime. In these two books his experience and his opinion of the tactics which founded the second French empire stand registered for all time. In the deathless volume ofChâtiments, which appeared in 1853, his indignation, his genius, and his faith found such utterance and such expression as must recall to the student alternately the lyric inspiration of Coleridge and Shelley, the prophetic inspiration of Dante and Isaiah, the satiric inspiration of Juvenal and Dryden. Three years afterLes Châtiments, a book written in lightning, appearedLes Contemplations, a book written in sunlight and starlight. Of the six parts into which it is divided, the first translates into many-sided music the joys and sorrows, the thoughts and fancies, the studies and ardours and speculations of youth; the second, as full of light and colour, grows gradually deeper in tone of thought and music; the third is yet riper and more various in form of melody and in fervour of meditation; the fourth is the noblest of all tributes ever paid by song to sorrow—a series of poems consecrated to the memory of the poet’s eldest daughter, who was drowned, together with her husband, by the upsetting of a boat off the coast of Normandy, a few months after their wedding-day, in 1843; the fifth and the sixth books, written during his first four years of exile (all but one noble poem which bears date nine years earlier than its epilogue or postscript), contain more than a few poems unsurpassed and unsurpassable for depth and clarity and trenchancy of thought, for sublimity of inspiration, for intensity of faith, for loyalty in translation from nature, and for tenderness in devotion to truth; crowned and glorified and completed by their matchless dedication to the dead. Three years later again, in 1859, Victor Hugo gave to the world the first instalment of the greatest book published in the 19th century,La Légende des siècles. Opening with a vision of Eve in Paradise which eclipses Milton’s in beauty no less than in sublimity—a dream of the mother of mankind at the hour when she knew the first sense of dawning motherhood, it closes with a vision of the trumpet to be sounded on the day of judgment which transcends the imagination of Dante by right of a realized idea which was utterly impossible of conception to a believer in Dante’s creed: the idea of real and final equity; the concept of absolute and abstract righteousness. Between this opening and this close the pageant of history and of legend, marshalled and vivified by the will and the hand of the poet, ranges through an infinite variety of action and passion, of light and darkness, of terror and pity, of lyric rapture and of tragic triumph.
After yet another three years’ space the author ofLa Légende des sièclesreappeared as the author ofLes Misérables, the greatest epic and dramatic work of fiction ever created or conceived: the epic of a soul transfigured and redeemed, purified by heroism and glorified through suffering; the tragedy and the comedy of life at its darkest and its brightest, of humanity at its best and at its worst. Two years afterwards the greatest man born since the death of Shakespeare paid homage to the greatest of his predecessors in a volume of magnificent and discursive eloquence which bore the title ofWilliam Shakespeare, and might, as its author admitted and suggested, more properly have been entitledÀ propos de Shakespeare. It was undertaken with the simple design of furnishing a preface to his younger son’s translation of Shakespeare; a monument of perfect scholarship, of indefatigable devotion, and of literary genius, which eclipses even Urquhart’s Rabelais—its only possible competitor; and to which the translator’s father prefixed a brief and admirable note of introduction in the year after thepublication of the volume which had grown under his hand into the bulk and the magnificence of an epic poem in prose. In the same yearLes Chansons des rues el des boisgave evidence of new power and fresh variety in the exercise and display of an unequalled skill and a subtle simplicity of metre and of style employed on the everlasting theme of lyric and idyllic fancy, and touched now and then with a fire more sublime than that of youth and love. Next year the exile of Guernsey published his third great romance,Les Travailleurs de la mer, a work unsurpassed even among the works of its author for splendour of imagination and of style, for pathos and sublimity of truth. Three years afterwards the same theme was rehandled with no less magnificent mastery inL’Homme qui rit; the theme of human heroism confronted with the superhuman tyranny of blind and unimaginable chance, overpowered and unbroken, defeated and invincible. Between the dates of these two great books appearedLa Voix de Guernesey, a noble and terrible poem on the massacre of Mentana which branded and commemorated for ever the papal and imperial infamy of the colleagues in that crime. In 1872 Victor Hugo published in imperishable verse his record of the year which followed the collapse of the empire,L’Année terrible. All the poet and all the man spoke out and stood evident in the perfervid patriotism, the filial devotion, the fatherly tenderness, the indignation and the pity, which here find alternate expression in passionate and familiar and majestic song. In 1874 he published his last great romance, the tragic and historic poem in prose calledQuatrevingt-treize; a work as rich in thought, in tenderness, in wisdom and in humour and in pathos, as ever was cast into the mould of poetry or of fiction.
The introduction to his first volume ofActes et paroles, ranging in date from 1841 to 1851, is dated in June 1875; it is one of his most earnest and most eloquent appeals to the conscience and intelligence of the student. The second volume contains the record of his deeds and words during the years of his exile; like the first and the third, it is headed by a memorable preface, as well worth the reverent study of those who may dissent from some of the writer’s views as of those who may assent to all. The third and fourth volumes preserve the register of his deeds and words from 1870 to 1885; they contain, among other things memorable, the nobly reticent and pathetic tribute to the memory of the two sons, Charles (1826-1871) and François (1828-1873), he had lost since their common return from exile. In 1877 appeared the second series ofLa Légende des siècles; and in the same year the author of that colossal work, treating no less of superhuman than of human things, gave us the loveliest and most various book of song on the loveliest and simplest of subjects ever given to man,L’Art d’être grandpère. Next year he publishedLe Pape, a vision of the spirit of Christ in appeal against the spirit of Christianity, his ideal follower confronted and contrasted with his nominal vicar; next year againLa Pitié suprême, a plea for charity towards tyrants who know not what they do, perverted by omnipotence and degraded by adoration; two years laterReligions et religion, a poem which is at once a cry of faith and a protest against the creeds which deform and distort and leave it misshapen and envenomed and defiled; and in the same yearL’Ane, a paean of satiric invective against the past follies of learned ignorance, and lyric rapture of confidence in the future wisdom and the final conscience of the world. These four great poems, one in sublimity of spirit and in supremacy of style, were succeeded next year by a fourfold gift of even greater price,Les Quatre Vents de l’esprit: the first book, that of satire, is as full of fiery truth and radiant reason as any of his previous work in that passionate and awful kind; the second or dramatic book is as full of fresh life and living nature, of tragic humour and of mortal pathos, as any other work of the one great modern dramatist’s; the third or lyric book would suffice to reveal its author as incomparably and immeasurably the greatest poet of his age, and one great among the greatest of all time; the fourth or epic book is the sublimest and most terrible of historic poems—a visionary pageant of French history from the reign and the revelries of Henry IV. to the reign and the execution of Louis XVI. Next year the great tragic poem ofTorquemadacame forth to bear witness that the hand which wroteRuy Blashad lost nothing of its godlike power and its matchless cunning, if the author ofLe Roi s’amusehad ceased to care much about coherence of construction from the theatrical point of view as compared with the perfection of a tragedy designed for the devotion of students not unworthy or incapable of the study; that his command of pity and terror, his powers of intuition and invention, had never been more absolute and more sublime; and that his infinite and illimitable charity of imagination could transfigure even the most monstrous historic representative of Christian or Catholic diabolatry into the likeness of a terribly benevolent and a tragically magnificent monomaniac. Two years later Victor Hugo published the third and concluding series ofLa Légende des siècles.
On the 22nd of May 1885 Victor Hugo died. He was given a magnificent public funeral, and his remains were laid in the Pantheon. The first volume published of his posthumous works was the exquisite and splendidThéâtre en liberté, a sequence if not a symphony of seven poems in dramatic form, tragic or comic or fanciful eclogues, incomparable with the work of any other man but the author ofThe TempestandThe Winter’s Talein combination and alternation of gayer and of graver harmonies. The unfinished poems,DieuandLa Fin de Satan, are full to overflowing of such magnificent work, such wise simplicity of noble thought, such heroic and pathetic imagination, such reverent and daring faith, as no other poet has ever cast into deathless words and set to deathless music.Les Jumeaux, an unfinished tragedy, would possibly have been the very greatest of his works if it had been completed on the same scale and on the same lines as it was begun and carried forward to the point at which it was cut short for ever. His reminiscences of “Things Seen” in the course of a strangely varied experience, and his notes of travel among the Alps and Pyrenees, in the north of France and in Belgium, in the south of France and in Burgundy, are all recorded by such a pen and registered by such a memory as no other man ever had at the service of his impressions or his thoughts.Toute la lyre, his latest legacy to the world, would be enough, though no other evidence were left, to show that the author was one of the very greatest among poets and among men; unsurpassed in sublimity of spirit, in spontaneity of utterance, in variety of power, and in perfection of workmanship; infinite and profound beyond all reach of praise at once in thought and in sympathy, in perception and in passion; master of all the simplest as of all the subtlest melodies or symphonies of song that ever found expression in a Border ballad or a Pythian ode.