HEYNE, Christian Gottlob, an illustrious classical scholar and archaeologist, was born on the 25th of September 1729, in a suburb of the city of Chemnitz, in Saxony, where his father, having been compelled by some religious persecutions to abandon his native country of Silesia, had settled, supporting his family in great poverty by exercising the trade of a weaver. It was only by the liberality of his godfathers that Heyne was enabled to obtain his primary instruction in the elementary school of Chemnitz, and afterwards to prosecute his classical studies in the gymnasium of that city. In 1745 he entered the University of Leipsic. There he was so scantily supported by those on whose assistance he relied, that he was frequently in want even of the common necessaries of life, and was sometimes indebted for food to the generosity of a maid-servant in the house where he lodged. In this situation, without even the hope of future distinction, he continued to struggle against every difficulty and disappointment in the acquisition of knowledge. For six months he is said to have allowed only two nights in the week to sleep, and was at the same time forced to endure the reproaches which his godfather thought himself entitled to inflict on him for negligence in the prosecution of his studies. His distress had almost amounted to despair, when he procured the situation of preceptor in the family of a French merchant resident in Leipsic. He was thus enabled to continue his studies, though with much interruption; the emoluments of his appointment being sufficient to support him in what was at least comparative comfort. Under Ernesti, he was initiated into the criticism of the classical authors; from the prelections of the celebrated Bach he acquired a competent knowledge of the Roman jurisprudence; and through the instructions of Christius, who lectured on archaeology, and with whom he was intimately acquainted, his attention was strongly directed to the works of ancient art. Having finished his studies at the university, he was exposed for many years to all the accumulated distresses of poverty and neglect. The first situation he was able to procure was that of copyist in the library of Count de Bruhl, with a salary of only an hundred dollars, which he obtained in the year 1753. From the necessity of adding something to this scanty pittance, he was forced to employ himself in the drudgery of translation; and, besides some French novels, he [7:11:291]translated into German the Greek romance of Chariton. He published his first edition of Tibullus in 1755, and in 1756 his Epictetus. In 1756, his emoluments as copyist were doubled, and the education of Prince Maurice de Bruhl was intrusted to him, but without any additional salary. The invasion of Saxony by the Prussians deprived him of his appointment, and even destroyed the library on which it depended. The period of the seven years’ war was that in which he was chiefly exposed to the storms of fortune; and his marriage with Theresa Weisse, a young woman of distinguished genius, but equally poor with himself, increased his misery. Having been obliged to retire into Lausatia, he lived for some years as steward in the family of the Baron de Leoben. He was enabled, however, to return to Dresden in 1762, where he was intrusted, by Lippert, with the care of writing the Latin text of the third volume of his Ωactyliotheca.

At length, in the commencement of the year 1763, his merit met with its reward, and a new and illustrious career was opened to him. On the death of John Matthew Gesner, in 1761, it became necessary for the curators of the university of Göttingen to look around for a successor capable of sustaining the reputation which the institution had acquired by the learning and talents of that distinguished scholar. The appointment was offered to Ernesti, who, whilst he declined leaving the university of Leipsic, proposed Ruhnkenius of Leyden or Saxius of Utrecht for the situation. Ruhnken likewise refused the appointment, but having been strongly impressed by the taste and learning displayed by the editor of Tibullus and Epictetus, he advised Munckhausen, the Hanoverian minister and principal curator of the university of Göttingen, to bestow the professorship on Heyne, whose merit, though known to few, he ventured to promise would do honour to the choice. The minister had the good sense to acquiesce in the recommendation of this great scholar, and Heyne, after some delay, became professor of eloquence in Göttingen. Though his appointments were at first few, and his emoluments inconsiderable, these were gradually augmented in proportion as his usefulness was approved, and ąs his growing celebrity rendered it an object with the other governments of Germany to secure for their literary institutions the services of so distinguished a scholar. He refused the most advantageous and honourable overtures from Cassel, Berlin, and Dresden. In his different capacities of professor, principal librarian, member of the Royal Society, and chief editor of the Literary Gazette, and still more by his publications, he mainly contributed to raise the university of Göttingen to the distinguished rank it holds among the academies of Europe. After a long and useful career, graced with all the distinctions which in Germany are conferred on literary eminence, he died, full of years and honour, on the 14th of July 1814.

In Greek literature he has given us editions of Homer’s Iliad, Pindar, Diodorus Siculus, Apollodorus, and Epictetus; and, in Latin, editions of Virgil and Tibullus; all illustrated with copious commentaries. His Opuscula Academica, in five volumes, contain a series of 116 academical dissertations, of which the most valuable are those respecting the antiquities of Etruscan art and history, and the researches regarding the colonies of Greece. He has left us also a great number of papers on almost every subject of erudition, more especially on ancient mythology, amongst the Commentationes Societatis Regiae Gottingensis. His Antiquarische Aufsatze, in two volumes, comprise a valuable collection of essays on different subjects connected with the history of ancient art. In the earlier part of his life he translated, or rather wrote anew, a great part of the Universal History.

After this notice of the chief events of his life, and of his literary productions, it may be proper to say somewhat in regard to the distinctive merit which has raised Heyne to so eminent a place amongst the promoters of classical literature. And here it is chiefly as an interpreter of the ancient poets, and as an original investigator of the ancient mythology, that he must rest his claims to the celebrity he has acquired. As a critic of the works of art, his desert is great, but he has no pretentions to original or peculiar discoveries.

The example of the great philologists of Holland, and the more immediate influence of Ernesti and Gesner on the taste and pursuits of their countrymen, had, before the middle of the last century, awakened in Germany a new zeal for the study of the ancient authors, and had advanced the criticism of classical literature to a rapid and vigorous maturity. The great writers of antiquity ought not, however, to be read with a regard limited merely to their language; they more especially deserve a close and enthusiastic study, for the admirable means which they afford of improving the understanding and of cultivating the taste. From the year 1760, about which period the Germans had begun to devote themselves, with an enthusiasm as zealous as it was tardy, to the cultivation of their native language and literature, several intelligent philologers displayed a more refined and philosophical method in their treatment of the different branches of classical learning, and, without neglecting either the grammatical investigation of the language, or the critical constitution of the text, no longer regarded a Greek or Roman writer as a subject for the mere grammarian and critic, but, considering the study of the ancients as a school for thought, for feeling, and for taste, they initiated us into the great mystery of reading every thing in the same spirit in which it had originally been written. They demonstrated, both by doctrine and example, in what manner it was necessary for us to enter into the thoughts of the writer, to pitch ourselves in unison with his peculiar tone of conception and expression, whether erroneous or correct, and in every instance accurately to investigate the circumstances by which the mind of the poet or philosopher was affected, the motives by which he was animated, and the influences which co-operated in giving the intensity and character to his feelings. It was shown how generally the conception of the reader was merely a veil thrown over the thought of the original. It was no longer allowed to combine modern with ancient ideas, to convert the derivative with the original thought, or to translate it by a new and factitious signification. At the head of this school stands Heyne, both as its founder and principal ornament; and, however some of his disciples may have exposed themselves to ridicule in their application of the principles on which this system of interpretation rests, yet it cannot be denied that nothing has contributed so decisively to maintain and promote the study of classical literature, as the combination which Heyne has effected of philosophy with erudition, both in his commentaries on the ancient authors, and in those works in which he has illustrated various points of antiquity, or discussed the habit of thinking and spirit of the ancient world.

The poverty of Germany in manuscripts has compelled her scholars to rest satisfied in general with the critical apparatus which the philosophers of other nations have collected. What they necessarily wanted in the originality of subsidiary stores, they have, however, endeavoured to supply, by a sound and rational employment of those already compiled; and the praise of useful diligence cannot certainly, with justice, be denied to their labours in this department. Originality, however, was possible in the higher criticism, which does not rest on the collection of readings or the authority of manuscripts, and in the mode of the illustration applied to the ancient writers: in [7:11:292] these respects the later pbilologers of Germany have earned a glory peculiar to themselves, and which must be remembered as long as learning and ingenuity are respected. How cogently have they reasoned on the authenticity or spuriousness of particular writings, and how skilfully have they applied the test to the interpolations of later times; towhat new conclusions are we now brought in regard to Orpheus, Homer, Anacreon, Longinus, &c. by the critical investigations of Schneider, Wolf, Fischer, Hermann, Weiske, and others; how differently has the controversy in regard to the authenticity of certain orations of Cicero been recently concluded by Wolf, compared with the result of Markland’s and Gesner’s investigations. In this department Heyne does not, however, hold the same pre-eminence which he has attained as an enlightened and popular interpreter; for though his discussions in the higher criticism are both numerous and valuable, he is as much surpassed in boldness and originality by Wolf, as he is inferior to Hermann in the minuteness and ingenuity of his reasoning.

There is, however, another department in which the labours of Heyne are more original, and in which he merits all the honour to which a discoverer is entitled. Until the middle of the eighteenth century, mythology was nothing else than the nomenclature of divinities, a collection of the manifold and discordant legends of their several relations, actions, and destinies, and the delineation of their forms from the works of the poets and artists, illustrated, perhaps, by a mystical and allegorical commentary. About this period some more profound thinkers began to regard the mythical traditions in a higher view, as sources of human history; but, from too confined an acquaintance with the circumstances and condition of the ancient world, they took too high a standard for their explanations, and, through a mystical and allegorical interpretation, thinking they had discovered, under the veil of mythological narration, ideas of the deepest wisdom, they confidently framed thereon hypotheses for the history of mankind, for the arts, for philosophy, and the other sciences, which threatened altogether to extinguish the glimmering light that was still afforded us for the periods of remote antiquity.

Heyne opened a less ambitious but more certain path. Following the observations which travellers had collected in regard to new and uncivilized nations, he applied these to the condition of the Greeks, who, as history informs us, from a rude and sensual barbarism, gradually advanced to a state of civilization and intellectual refinement. He thus arrived at the simple conclusion, that the mythical tales of antiquity contain the first attempts at reasoning, the most ancient history, philosophy, and theology embodied in a poor, unformed, and consequently figurative language; and, therefore, that mythology is a system comprehending partly the original form of representation through objects of sense peculiar to a rude age, expressed in fables, ceremonies, and monuments, transplanted into later times; partly a kind of poetical apparatus derived and formed from this original mythology, and intended only by its authors for the purposes of poetical effect. He hence justly concluded that it is impossible to attain any real insight into the nature of mythical narration, unless the mythi of the most ancient poets are carefully distinguished from the abusive applications made of them in the poetry of after times, and unless mythology be kept separate from the philosophy conversant about mythology. In conformity with these fundamental rules, Heyne has illustrated Apollodorus; and in the same spirit he has conducted those researches into the nature and tendency of the different mythi of Greece, which he has published in the Transactions of the Poyal Society of Gottingen. His views have been almost universally admitted to be correct in principle, and his applications to have been conducted with the most profound learning and almost unequalled ingenuity. A great number of followers have pursued the path he opened; and his theory has now attained the form and stability of a system, through the labours of his disciples. Amongst these, the names of Martin Hermann (not the philologer), of Voss, and of Manso, are especially to be distinguished. The theologians of Germany have likewise applied the same theory to the interpretation of the Sacred Books; and the researches of Eichhorn, Bauer, Ilgen, Hartmann, Vater, De Wette, and a host of other philosophical divines, into the pretended biblical mythi, have been pursued with a learning and acuteness equalled only by the impious audacity of their conclusions, (v. v.)