Chapter Hoby to Holcroft of H by Biographical Dictionary of English Literature

Hoby to Holcroft

Hoby, Sir Thomas (1530-1566).—Translator, born at Leominster, and educated at Cambridge, translated Bucer’s Gratulation to the Church of England, and The Courtyer of Count Baldessar Castilio, the latter of which had great popularity. Hoby died in Paris while ambassador to France.

Hoccleve, Or Occleve, Thomas (1368?-1450?).—Poet, probably born in London, where he appears to have spent most of his life, living in Chester’s Inn in the Strand. Originally intended for the Church, he received an appointment in the Privy Seal Office, which he retained until 1424, when quarters were assigned him in the Priory of Southwick, Hants. In 1399 a pension of £10, subsequently increased to £13, 6s. 8d., had been conferred upon him, which, however, was paid only intermittently, thus furnishing him with a perpetual grievance. His early life appears to have been irregular, and to the end he was a weal, vain, discontented man. His chief work is De Regimine Principum or Governail of Princes, written 1411-12. The best part of this is an autobiographical prelude Mal Regle de T. Hoccleve, in which he holds up his youthful follies as a warning. It is also interesting as containing, in the MS. in the British Museum, a drawing of Chaucer, from which all subsequent portraits have been taken.

Hoffman, Charles Fenno (1806-1884).—Poet, etc., born in New York, son of a lawyer, was bred to the same profession, but early deserted it for literature. He wrote a successful novel, Greyslaer, and much verse, some of which displayed more lyrical power than any which had preceded it in America.

Hogg, James (The Ettrick Shepherd) (1770-1835).—Poet, and writer of tales, belonged to a race of shepherds, and began life by herding cows until he was old enough to be trusted with a flock of sheep. His imagination was fed by his mother, who was possessed of an inexhaustible stock of ballads and folk-lore. He had little schooling, and had great difficulty in writing out his earlier poems, but was earnest in giving himself such culture as he could. Entering the service of Mr. Laidlaw, the friend of Scott, he was by him introduced to the poet, and assisted him in collecting material for his Border Minstrelsy. In 1796 he had begun to write his songs, and when on a visit to Edinburgh in 1801 he collected his poems under the title of Scottish Pastorals, etc., and in 1807 there followed The Mountain Bard. A treatise on the diseases of sheep brought him £300, on the strength of which he embarked upon a sheep-farming enterprise in Dumfriesshire which, like a previous smaller venture in Harris, proved a failure, and he returned to Ettrick bankrupt. Thenceforward he relied almost entirely on literature for support. With this view he, in 1810, settled in Edinburgh, published The Forest Minstrel, and started the Spy, a critical journal, which ran for a year. In 1813 The Queen’s Wake showed his full powers, and finally settled his right to an assured place among the poets of his country. He joined the staff of Blackwood, and became the friend of Wilson, Wordsworth, and Byron. Other poems followed, The Pilgrims of the Sun (1815), Madoc of the Moor, The Poetic Mirror, and Queen Hynde (1826); and in prose Winter Evening Tales (1820), The Three Perils of Man (1822), and The Three Perils of Woman. In his later years his home was a cottage at Altrive on 70 acres of moorland presented to him by the Duchess of Buccleuch, where he died greatly lamented. As might be expected from his almost total want of regular education, Hogg was often greatly wanting in taste, but he had real imagination and poetic faculty. Some of his lyrics like The Skylark are perfect in their spontaneity and sweetness, and his Kilmeny is one of the most exquisite fairy tales in the language. Hogg was vain and greedy of praise, but honest and, beyond his means, generous. He is a leading character, partly idealised, partly caricatured, in Wilson’s Noctes Ambrosianæ.

Hogg, Thomas Jefferson (1792-1862).—Biographer, son of John Hogg, a country gentleman of Durham, educated at Durham Grammar School, and University Coll., Oxford, where he made the acquaintance of Shelley, whose lifelong friend and biographer he became. Associated with S. in the famous pamphlet on The Necessity of Atheism, he shared in the expulsion from the University which it entailed, and thereafter devoted himself to the law, being called to the Bar in 1817. In 1832 he contributed to Bulwer’s New Monthly Magazine his Reminiscences of Shelley, which was much admired. Thereafter he was commissioned to write a biography of the poet, of which he completed 2 vols., but in so singular a fashion that the material with which he had been entrusted was withdrawn. The work, which is probably unique in the annals of biography, while giving a vivid and credible picture of S. externally, shows no true appreciation of him as a poet, and reflects with at least equal prominence the humorously eccentric personality of