upon him-above all, the determined resolution of battling courageously with fortune. He was resolved to try, he says, whether, although she had thrown him among the dust, he should not be able to rise up by his own efforts. His ardour for study grew the stronger as his difficulties increased. For six months he only allowed himself two nights' sleep in the week; and yet all the while his surly and avaricious godfather scarcely ever wrote to him but to inveigh against his indolence —often addressing his letters on the outside, “ To Mr. Heyne, Idler, at Leipsic."

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In the meantime, while his distress was every day becoming more intolerable, he was offered, by one of the professors, the situation of tutor in a family at Magdeburg. Desirable as the appointment would have been in every other respect, it would have removed him from the scene of his studies, and he declined it. He resolved rather to remain in the midst of all his miseries at Leipsic. He was, however, in a few weeks after, recompensed for this noble sacrifice, by procuring, through the recommendation of the same professor, a situation in the university town similar to the one he had refused. This, of course, relieved for a time his pecuniary wants; but still the ardour with which he pursued his studies continued so great, that it at last brought on a dangerous illness, which obliged him to resign his situation, and very soon completely exhausted his trifling resources, so that on his recovery he found himself as poor and destitute as ever. In this extremity, a copy of Latin verses which he had written having attracted the attention of one of the Saxon ministers, he was induced, by the advice of his friends, to set out for the court at Dresden, where it was expected this high patronage would make his fortune. But he was doomed only to fresh disappointments. After having borrowed money to pay the expenses of his journey, all he obtained from the courtier was a few vague promises, which ended in nothing. He was obliged eventually, after having sold his books, to accept the place of copyist in the library of the Count de Bruhl, at the miserable annual salary of one hundred crowns (about 177. sterling)—a sum which, even in that cheap country, was scarcely sufficient to keep him from perishing of hunger. However, with his industrious habits, he found time, beside performing the duties of his situation, to do a little work for the booksellers. He first translated a French romance, for which he was paid twenty crowns. For a learned and excellent edition which he prepared of the Latin poet Tibullus, he received, in successive payments, one hundred crowns, with which he discharged the debts he had contracted at Leipsic. In this way he contrived to exist for a few years, all the while studying hard, and thinking himself amply compensated for the hardships of his lot by the opportunities he had of pursuing his favourite researches, in a city so rich in collections of books and antiquities as Dresden. After he had held his situation in the

library for above two years, his salary was doubled; but before he derived any benefit from the augmentation, the Seven Years' War had commenced. Saxony was overrun by the forces of Frederick the Great, and Heyne's place, and the library itself to which it was attached, were swept away at the same time. He was obliged to fly from Dresden, and wandered about for a long time without any employment. At last he was received into a family at Wittenberg; but in a short time the progress of the war drove him from this asylum also, and he returned to Dresden, where he still had a few articles of furniture, purchased with the little money he had saved while he held his place in the library. He arrived just in time to witness the bombardment of that capital, in the conflagration of which his furniture perished, as well as some property which he had brought with him from Wittenberg, belonging to a lady, one of the family in whose house he lived, for whom he had formed an attachment during his residence there.

Thus left, both of them, without a shilling, the young persons nevertheless determined to share each other's destiny; civil convulsions nerve or harden people to the encountering of strange risks; and they were accordingly united. By the exertions of some common friends, a retreat was procured for Heyne and his wife in the establishment of a M. de Leoben, where he spent some years, during which his time was chiefly occupied in the management of that gentleman's property. At last, at the general peace in 1763, he returned to Dresden; and here ended his hard fortunes. Some time before his arrival in that city, the Professorship of Eloquence in the University of Göttingen had become vacant, by the death of the celebrated John Mathias Gesner. The chair had been offered, in the first instance, to David Ruhnken, one of the first scholars of the age, who declined, however, to leave the University of Leyden, where he had lately succeeded the eminent Hemsterhuys as Professor of Greek. But fortunately for Heyne, Ruhnken was one of the few to whom his edition of Tibullus, and another of the Enchiridion (or Philosophical Manual) of Epictetus, which he had published shortly after, had made his obscure name and great merits known; and with a generous anxiety to befriend one whom he considered to be so deserving, he ventured, of his own accord, to recommend him to the Hanoverian minister, as the fittest person he could mention for the vacant office. Such a testimony from Ruhnken was at once the most honourable and the most efficient patronage Heyne could have had. He was immediately nominated to the Professorship; although he had been as yet so little heard of, that it was with considerable difficulty he was found. He held this appointment for nearly fifty years; in the course of which, as we have already remarked, he may be said, by his successive publications, and the attraction of his lectures, to have placed himself nearly at the head of the classical scholars of his age; while he was at the

same time loved and venerated almost as a father, not only by his numerous pupils, but by all ranks of his fellow-citizens, who, on his death, in 1812, felt that their University and city had lost the man who had been for half a century its chief distinction.

OBSCURE

CHAPTER III.

ORIGIN AND HUMBLE STATION:-EPICTETUS; PROTAGORAS; CLEANTHES; HAÜY; WINCKELMAN; ARNIGIO; DUVAL; BANDINELLI ; SCALIGER; PROTOGENES; BAUDOUIN; GELLI; METASTASIO; HAYDN; OPIE; PARINI; PRIDEAUX; INIGO JONES; CHIEF JUSTICE SAUNDERS ; LINNÆUS; LOMONOSOFF; BEN JONSON; THE MILNERS; JOHN HUNTER.

HEYNE's first disadvantage, of being born in a sphere of life unfavourable even to the awakening of the passion for knowledge, is one which aspiring minds have often overcome. Not to mention the cases of Æsop, PUBLIUS SYRUS, and TERENCE, all of whom were originally slaves, EPICTETUS, the celebrated Stoic philosopher, was born in the same condition, and spent many years of his life in servitude. Having been at last fortunate enough to obtain his freedom, he retired to a small hut; and, when he was barely able to procure the necessaries of life, devoted himself to the study of philosophy. We have seen that the principal record of the doctrines of this philosopher was one of the works edited by Heyne, while at Dresden; and he used to relate that his fortitude, amid the difficulties that he had to struggle with at the time, was not a little strengthened and upheld by the precepts of severe virtue and determined endurance which he found in the system of the old Stoic. Epictetus's own conduct was strikingly in conformity with the lessons he taught, at least if we may believe one of the stories which are told of him. It is said, that before he had obtained his liberty, his master, a brutal man, chose one day to amuse himself by twisting the leg of the slave. "You will break it," remarked Epictetus; and the next moment snap it went. “I told you so,” added the philosopher, with all the indifference in the world. He lived at Rome in a house without a door, and with no furniture, except a table, a small bedstead, and a wretched coverlet; and this even at a time when he enjoyed the greatest familiarity with the Emperor Adrian. One day he was extravagant enough to purchase for himself a lamp made of iron; but he was punished for this deviation from his usual habits, by a thief soon after finding his way into the house, and running off with it. "He shall be cheated," said Epictetus, "if he come back to-morrow,

for he shall find only an earthen one." PROTAGORAS, the celebrated sophist, had been a common porter before he applied to study. He lived at Abdera, in Thrace, the same town in which resided the famous Democritus, commonly called the Laughing Philosopher, who one day met him carrying into the city a very heavy load of wood on his back, and was a good deal surprised on perceiving that the pieces were piled on one another exactly in the way best adapted to make the burden rest easily on the shoulders. In order to discover whether this geometrical arrangement was the effect of skill or chance, he requested the young man to unbind the load, and make it up again in the same manner this Protagoras immediately did with great dexterity; upon which Democritus, convinced that his talents were of a superior order, admitted him forthwith among his disciples, and spared no pains in instructing him in the different branches both of natural and moral philosophy. And, to mention no more instances, CLEANTHES, another of the Stoics, was brought up to the profession of a pugilist, and used to exhibit himself in that character at the public games; till, longing to study philosophy, he betook himself for that purpose to Athens, where he arrived with only three drachms (about three shillings and sixpence) in his pocket. In these circumstances he was obliged, for his support, to employ himself in drawing water, carrying burdens, and other such humble and laborious occupations. He contrived, however, to proceed with his studies at the same time, bringing his fee of an obolus, or penny, every day to his master, Zeno, with great punctuality. On the death of Zeno, he succeeded him in his school, but still continued his menial labours as usual. "I draw water," he was wont to say, "and do any other sort of work which presents itself, that I may give myself up to philosophy without being a burden to any one." He was so poor, indeed, that, the wind having blown aside his mantle one day when he happened to be present at one of the public shows, his fellow-citizens perceived he had no tunic, or under garment, and gave him one. He was always treated, notwithstanding his poverty, with the greatest respect at Athens.

In modern times we have many examples, also, of persons whom the love of knowledge has found in the lowest obscurity, and who have possessed themselves of the highest acquirements in science or literature, in spite of every disadvantage of birth. Heyne, as we have mentioned, was the son of a poor weaver. So was the Abbé Haüy, who died at Paris in 1822, celebrated for his writings and discoveries in crystallography-a science, indeed, of which he may be almost considered as the founder. It is the science which treats of those curious regular figures which so many solid bodies are found to possess in their natural state, or which they may be made to assume artificially, by dissolving or fusing them, and then allowing their particles to return to

a state of solidity, which latter process is called their crystallization. Now it happens that the same substance is not found to have always the same figure externally when in a crystallized state, but is susceptible of several different forms, some of which do not appear at first to have any resemblance to each other. All preceding inquirers had been very much perplexed by this circumstance, in their attempts to establish a theory of crystallized bodies; and various principles had been successively adopted and rejected as the foundations of a scientific arrangement of them. At length Haüy had his attention directed to the subject, by having accidentally picked up an uncommonly beautiful specimen of calcareous spar, which presented the figure of a six-sided prism, and had been detached from a group of similar crystals. By trying to split this specimen in various directions with the blade of a knife, and dividing it only where he found a natural joint, he at last reduced it to the form of a rhomboid, or oblongated cube, which it retained in spite of all subsequent sections. Now this is exactly the form in which another calcareous spar, called Iceland Spar, is commonly found; whence Haüy was led to suspect that, by the application of the process he had employed, all crystallized substances of the same species might be reduced to the same primitive form. This idea he pursued with exceeding ingenuity; till, by means not only of his unparalleled dexterity, in the dissection of crystals, but of a most masterly combination of algebraical and geometrical reasoning, he made it highly probable that the principle of his theory is of universal application, and that it is only necessary to strip them of their external coatings to discover the same radical figure in all crystals of the same species.

But, to proceed the celebrated WINCKELMAN, the distinguished writer on classical antiquities and the fine arts, was the son of a shoemaker. His father, after vainly endeavouring for some time, at the expense of many sacrifices, to give him a learned education, was at last obliged, from age and ill-health, to retire to an hospital, where he was, in his turn, supported for several years in part by the hard labours of his son, who, aided by the kindness of his professors, contrived to keep himself at college chiefly by teaching some of his younger or less advanced fellow-students. BARTHOLOMEW ARNIGIO, an Italian poet of the sixteenth century, of considerable genius and learning, followed his father's trade of a blacksmith till he was eighteen years old, when he began of his own accord to apply to his studies; and by availing himself of the aid sometimes of one friend, and sometimes of another, prepared himself at last for entering the University of Padua. VALENTINE JAMERAY DUVAL, a very able antiquary of the last century, who at the time of his death held the office of keeper of the imperial medals at Vienna, as well as that of one of the preceptors to the prince, and after