Chapter Holinshed to Hood of H by Biographical Dictionary of English Literature

Holinshed to Hood

Holinshed, Or Hollingshead, Raphael Or Ralph died 1580?).—Belonged to a Cheshire family, and is said by Anthony Wood to have been at one of the University, and to have been a priest. He came to London, and was in the employment of Reginald Wolf, a German printer, making translations and doing hack-work. His Chronicles of Englande, Scotlande, and Irelande, from which Shakespeare drew much of his history, was based to a considerable extent on the collections of Leland, and he had the assistance of W. Harrison, R. Stanyhurst, and others. The introductory description of England and the English was the work of Harrison, Stanyhurst did the part relating to Ireland, and Holinshed himself the history of England and Scotland, the latter being mainly translated from the works of Boece and Major. published in 1577 it had an eager welcome, and a wide and lasting popularity. A later edition in 1586 was edited by J. Hooker and Stow. It is a work of real value—a magazine of useful and interesting information, with the authorities cited. Its tone is strongly Protestant, its style clear.

Holland, Josiah Gilbert (1819-1881).—Novelist and poet, born in Massachusetts, helped to found and edited Scribner’s Monthly (afterwards the Century Magazine), in which appeared his novels, Arthur Bonnicastle, The Story of Sevenoaks, Nicholas Minturn. In poetry he wrote Bitter Sweet (1858), Kathrina, etc.

Holland, Philemon (1552-1637).—Translator, born at Chelmsford, and educated at Cambridge, was master of the free school at Coventry, where he also practised medicine. His chief translations, made in good Elizabethan English, are of Pliny’s Natural History, Plutarch’s Morals, Suetonius, Xenophon’s Cyropædia, and Camden’s Britannia. There are passages in the second of these which have hardly been excelled by any later prose translator of the classics. His later years were passed in poverty.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell (1809-1894).—Essayist, novelist, and poet, was born of good Dutch and English stock at Cambridge, Massachusetts, the seat of Harvard, where he graduated in 1829. He studied law, then medicine, first at home, latterly in Paris, whence he returned in 1835, and practised in his native town. In 1838 he was appointed Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Dartmouth Coll., from which he was in 1847 transferred to a similar chair at Harvard. Up to 1857 he had done little in literature: his first book of poems, containing “The Last Leaf,” had been published But in that year the Atlantic Monthly was started with Lowell for ed., and Holmes was engaged as a principal contributor. In it appeared the trilogy by which he is best known, The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1857), The Professor, The Poet (1872), all graceful, allusive, and pleasantly egotistical. He also wrote Elsie Venner (1861), which has been called “the snake story of literature,” and The Guardian Angel. By many readers he is valued most for the poems which lie imbedded in his books, such as “The Chambered Nautilus,” “The Last Leaf,” “Homesick in Heaven,” “The Voiceless,” and “The Boys.”

Home, John (1722-1808).—Dramatist, son of the Town-Clerk of Leith, where he was b., ed. there and at Edinburgh, and entered the Church. Before doing so, however, he had fought on the Royalist side in the ’45, and had, after the Battle of Falkirk, been a prisoner in Doune Castle, whence he escaped. His ministerial life, which was passed at Athelstaneford, East Lothian, was brought to an end by the action of the Church Courts on his producing the play of Douglas. This drama, which had been rejected by Garrick, but brought out in Edinburgh in 1756, created an immense sensation, and made its appearance in London the following year. Home then became private secretrayto the Earl of Bute, who gave him the sinecure of Conservator of Scots Privileges at Campvere in Holland. Thereafter he was tutor to the Prince of Wales (George III.), who on his accession conferred upon him a pension of £300. Other plays were The Siege of Aquileia, The Fatal Discovery (1769), Alonzo, and Alfred (1778), which was a total failure. He also wrote a History of the Rebellion. In 1778 he settled in Edinburgh, where he was one of the brilliant circle of literary men of which Robertson was the centre. He supported the claims of Macpherson to be the translator of Ossian.

Hone, William (1780-1842).—Miscellaneous writer, born at Bath, in his youth became a convinced and active democrat. His zeal in the propagation of his views, political and philanthropic, was so absorbing as to lead to a uniform want of success in his business undertakings. He published many satirical writings, which had immense popularity, among which were The Political House that Jack Built (1819), The Man