Chapter Head to Helps of H by Biographical Dictionary of English Literature

Head to Helps

Head, Sir Francis Bond (1793-1875).—Traveller, essayist, and biographer, served in the Engineers, went to South America as manager of a mining company, which failed, and then turned to literature, and made considerable reputation by a book of travels, Rapid Journeys across the Pampas and among the Andes (1827), which was followed by Bubbles from the Brunnens of Nassau (1834). He was Governor Upper Canada 1835-37, but was not a great success. Thereafter he contributed to the Quarterly Review, and repub. his articles as Stokers and Pokers—Highways and Byways, and wrote a Life of Bruce, the Abyssinian traveller. He was made a Baronet in 1836.

Hearn, Lafcadio (1850-1906).—Journalist and writer on Japan, son of an Irish Army surgeon and of a Greek lady, born in Leucadia, Ionian Islands, lost his parents early, and was sent home to be taken charge of by an aunt in Wales, a Roman Catholic. On her death, when he was still a boy, he was left penniless, delicate, and half blind, and after experiencing great hardships; in spite of which he educated himself, he took to journalism. Going to New Orleans he attained a considerable reputation as a writer with a distinctly individual style. He came under the influence of Herbert Spencer, and devoted himself largely to the study of social questions. After spending three years in the French West Indies, he was in 1890 sent by a publisher to Japan to write a book on that country, and there he remained, becoming a naturalised subject, taking the name of Yakomo Koizumi, and marrying a Japanese lady. He lectured on English literature in the Imperial University at Tokio. Though getting nearer than, perhaps, any other Western to an understanding of the Japanese, he felt himself to the end to be still an alien. Among his writings, which are distinguished by acute observation, imagination, and descriptive power of a high order, are Stray Leaves from Strange Literature (1884), Some Chinese Ghosts (1887), Gleanings in Buddha Fields (1897), Ghostly Japan, Kokoro, Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life, etc. He was also an admirable letter-writer.

Hearne, Thomas (1678-1735).—Antiquary, born at White Waltham, Berkshire, and educated at Oxford, where in 1712 he became second keeper of the Bodleian Library. A strong Jacobite, he was deprived of his post in 1716, and afterwards he refused, on political grounds, the chief librarianship. He published a large number of antiquarian works, including Reliquiæ Bodleianæ (1703), and edition of Leland’s Itinerary and Collectanea, Camden’s Annals, and Fordun’s Scotochronicon. Some of his own collections were published posthumously.

Heber, Reginald (1783-1826).—Poet, son of the Rector of Malpas, a man of family and wealth, and half-brother of Richard Heber, the famous book-collector, was educated at Oxford, where he gained the Newdigate prize for his poem, Palestine, and was elected in 1805 Fellow of All Souls. After travelling in Germany and Russia,he took orders in 1807, and became Rector of the family living of Hodnet. In 1822, after two refusals, he accepted the Bishopric of Calcutta, an office in which he showed great zeal and capacity. He died of apoplexy in his bath at Trichinopoly in 1826. In addition to Palestine he wrote Europe, a poem having reference specially to the Peninsular War, and left various fragments, including an Oriental romance based on the story of Bluebeard. Heber’s reputation now rests mainly on his hymns, of which several, e.g., From Greenland’s Icy Mountains, Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning, and Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, are sung wherever the English language is known. He also wrote a Life of Jeremy Taylor (1822). Heber was a scholar and wit as well as a devoted Christian and Churchman.

Helps, Sir Arthur (1813-1875).—Essayist and historian, was born at Streatham, Surrey, and educated at Eton and Cambridge After leaving the University he was private secretrayto various public men, and in 1841, his circumstances rendering him independent of employment, he retired to Bishop’s Waltham, and devoted himself for 20 years to study and writing. Appointed, in 1860, Clerk to the Privy Council, he became known to, and a favourite of, Queen Victoria, who entrusted him with the task of editing the Speeches and Addresses of the Prince Consort (1862), and her own book, Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands (1868). Of his own publications the first was Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd (1835), a series of aphorisms, and there followed, among others, Essays written in the Intervals of Business (1841), Friends in Council, 4 series (1847-59), Realmah (1869), and Conversations on War and General Culture, (1871). In history Helps wrote The Conquerors of the New World (1848-52),