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Heyne, ETUDIANT NEGLIGEANT.' For half a year he would leave him without all help; then promise to come, and see what he was doing; come accordingly, and return without leaving him a penny; neither could the destitute youth ever obtain any public furtherance; no freytisch (free-table) or stipendium was to be procured. Many times he had no regular meal; ' often not three halfpence for a loaf at mid-day.' He longed to be dead, for his spirit was often sunk in the gloom of darkness. 'One good heart alone,' says he, 'I found, and that in the servant girl of the house where I lodged. She laid out money for my most pressing necessities, and risked almost all she had, seeing me in such frightful want. Could I but find thee in the world even now, thou good pious soul, that I might repay thee what thou then didst for me!

Heyne declares it to be still a mystery to him how he stood all this. 'What carried me forward,' continues he, ' was not ambition; my youthful dream of one day taking a place, or aiming to take one, among the learned. It is true, the bitter feeling of debasement, of deficiency in education and external polish; the consciousness of awkwardness in social life, incessantly accompanied me. But my chief strength lay in a certain defiance of fate. This gave me courage not to yield; everywhere to try to the uttermost whether I was doomed without remedy never to rise from this degradation.

Of order in his studies there could be little expectation. He did not even know what profession he was aiming after; old Sebastian was for theology; and Heyne, though himself averse to it, affected, and only affected to comply; besides he had no money to pay class fees: it was only to open lectures, or at most to ill-guarded class-rooms that he could gain admission. Of this ill-guarded sort was Winkler's; into which poor Heyne insinuated himself to hear philosophy. Alas! the first problem of all philosophy, the keeping of soul and body together, was well nigh too hard for him. Winkler's students were of a riotous description, accustomed, among other improprieties, to scharren, scraping with the feet. One day they chose to receive Heyne in this fashion; and he could not venture back. 'Nevertheless,' adds he, simply enough, the beadle came to me sometime afterwards, demanding the fee: I had my own shifts to take before I could raise it.'

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Ernesti was the only teacher from whom he derived any benefit; the man, indeed, whose influence seems to have shaped the whole subsequent course of his studies. By dint of excessive endeavors he gained admittance to Ernesti's lectures; and here first learned, says Heeren,what interpretation of the classics meant.

But Heyne's best teacher was himself. No pressure of distresses, no want of books, advisers, or encouragement, not hunger itself could abate his resolute perseverance. What books he could come at, he borrowed; and such was his excess of zeal in reading, that for a whole half year he allowed himself only two nights of sleep in the week, till at last a fever obliged him to be more moderate. His diligence was undirected, or ill-directed, but it never rested, never paused, and must at length prevail. Fortune had cast him into a cavern, and he was groping darkly round; but the prisoner was a giant, and would at length burst forth as a giant into the light of day. Heyne, without any clear aim, almost without any hope, had set his heart on attaining knowledge; a force, as of instinct, drove him on, and no promise and no threat could turn him back. It was at the very depth of his destitution, when he had not three groschen for a loaf to dine on,' that he refused a tutorship, with handsome enough appointments, but which was to have removed him from the University. Crist had sent for him one Sunday, and made him the proposal: There arose a violent struggle within me,' says he, which drove me to and fro for several days; to this hour it is incomprehensible to me where I found resolution to determine on renouncing the offer, and pursuing my object in Leipsic.' A man with a half volition goes backwards and forwards, and makes no way on the smoothest road a man with a whole volition advances on the roughest, and will reach his purpose if there be a little wisdom in it.

With his first two years residence in Leipsic, Heyne's personal narrative terminates. A long series of straitened hopeless days were yet appointed him. By Ernesti's or Crist's recommendation, he occasionally got employment in giving private lessons; at one time, he worked as secretary and classical hodman to Cruscius, the philosopher,' who felt a little rusted in his Greek and Latin; everywhere he found the scantiest accommodation, and, shifting from side to side in dreary vicissitudes of want, had to spin out an existence, warmed by no ray of comfort, except the fire that burnt or smouldered unquenchably within his own bosom. However, he had now chosen a profession, that of law, at which, as at many other branches of learning, he was laboring with his old diligence. Of preferment in this province there was, for the present, little or no hope; but this was no new thing with Heyne. By degrees, too, his fine talents and endeavors, and his perverse situation, began to attract notice and sympathy; and here and there some well-wisher had his eye on him, and stood ready to do him a service. Two and twenty years of penury and joyless struggling had now passed over the man; how many more such might be added was

still uncertain; yet, surely the longest winter is followed by a spring.

Another trifling incident, little better than that old 'pedantic adventure,' again brought about important changes in Heyne's situation. Among his favorers in Leipsic had been the preacher of a French chapel, one Lacoste, who, at this time, was cut off by death. Heyne, it is said, in the real sorrow of his heart, composed a long Latin Epicedium on that occasion; the poem had nowise been intended for the press; but certain hearers of the deceased were so pleased with it, that they had it printed, and this in the finest style of typography and decoration. It was this latter circumstance, not the merit of the verses, which is said to have been considerable, that attracted the attention of Count Brühl, the well-known prime minister and favorite of the Elector. Brühl's sons were studying in Leipsic; he was pleased to express himself contented with the poem, and to say, that he should like to have the author in his service. A prime minister's words are not as water spilt upon the ground, which cannot be gathered; but rather as heavenly manna, which is treasured up and eaten, not without a religious sentiment. Heyne was forthwith written to from all quarters, that his fortune was made: he had but to show himself in Dresden, said his friends, with one voice, and golden showers from the ministerial cornucopia would refresh him almost to saturation. For, was not the Count taken with him; and who in all Saxony, not excepting Serene Highness itself, could gainsay the Count? Over-persuaded, and against his will, Heyne at length determined on the journey; for which, as an indispensable preliminary, fifty-one thalers' had to be borrowed; and so, following this hopeful quest, he actually arrived at Dresden in April, 1752. Count Brühl received him with the most captivating smiles; and even assured him in words, that he, Count Brühl, would take care of him. But a prime minister has so much to take care of! Heyne danced attendance all spring and summer, happier than our Johnson, inasmuch as he had not to 'blow his fingers in a cold lobby,' the weather being warm; and obtained not only promises, but useful experience of their value at courts.

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He was to be made a secretary, with five hundred, with four hundred, or even with three hundred thalers of income: only, in the meanwhile, his old stock of fifty-one,' had quite run out, and he had nothing to live upon. By great good luck, he procured some employment in his old craft, private teaching, which helped him through the winter; but, as this ceased, he remained without resources. He tried working for the booksellers, and translated a French romance and a Greek one, Chariton's

Loves of Chareas and Callirhoe: however, his emoluments would scarcely furnish him with salt, not to speak of victuals. He sold his few books. A licentiate in divinity, one Sonntag, took pity on his houselessness, and shared a garret with him; where, as there was no unoccupied bed, Heyne slept on the floor, with a few folios for his pillow. So fared he as to lodging in regard to board, he gathered empty pease-cods, and had them boiled; this was not unfrequently his only meal.-O, ye poor naked wretches! what would Bishop Watson say to this? -At length, by dint of incredible solicitations, Heyne, in the autumn of 1753, obtained, not his secretaryship, but the post of underclerk (copist) in the Brühl Library, with one hundred thalers of salary; a sum barely sufficient to keep in life, which, indeed, was now a great point with him. In such sort was this young scholar taken care of.'

Nevertheless, it was under these external circumstances that he first entered on his proper career, and forcibly made a place for himself among the learned men of his day. In 1574, he prepared his edition of Tibullus, which was printed next year at Leipsic ;* a work said to exhibit remarkable talent, inasmuch as the rudiments of all those excellences, by which Heyne afterwards became distinguished as a commentator on the classics, are more or less apparent in it.' The most illustrious Henry Count von Brühl, in spite of the dedication, paid no regard to this Tibullus; as indeed Germany at large paid little; but, in another country, it fell into the hands of Rhunken, where it was rightly estimated, and lay waiting, as in due season appeared, to be the pledge of better fortune for its au

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Meanwhile the day of difficulty for Heyne was yet far from past. The profits of his Tibullus served to cancel some debts; on the strength of his hundred thalers, the spindle of Clotho might still keep turning, though languidly; but, ere long, new troubles arose. His superior in the library was one Rost, a poetaster, atheist, and gold-maker, who corrupted his religious principles, and plagued him with caprices: Over the former evil, Heyne at length triumphed, and became a rational Christian; but the latter was an abiding grievance; not, indeed, for ever, for it was removed by a greater. In 1756, the Seven Years' War broke out; Frederick advanced towards Dresden, animated with especial fury against Brühl; whose palaces accordingly were in a few months reduced to ashes, as his 70,000

*Albii Tibulli quæ extant Carmina, Novis curis castigata. Illustrissimo Domino Henrico Comiti de Bruhl inscripta. Lipsia, 1755.

splendid volumes were annihilated by fire and by water,* and all his domestics and dependants turned to the street without appeal.

Heyne had lately been engaged in studying Epictetus, and publishing, ad fidem Codd. Muspt., an edition of his Enchiridion;t from which, quoth Heeren, his great soul had acquired much stoical nourishment. Such nourishment never comes wrong in life; and, surely, at this time, Heyne had need of it all. However, he struggled as he had been wont; translated pamphlets, sometimes wrote newspaper articles; eat when he had wherewithal, and resolutely endured when he had not. By and by, Rabener, to whom he was a little known, offered him a tutorship in the family of a Herr von Schöuberg, which Heyne, not without reluctance, accepted. Tutorships were at all times his aversion; his rugged plebian proud spirit made business of that sort grievous but want stood over him, like an armed man, and was not to be reasoned with.

Theresa, in this narrative, appears to us a noble, interesting being; noble not in sentiment only, but in action and suffering; a fair flower trodden down by misfortune, but yielding, like flowers, only the sweeter perfume for being crushed, and which it would have been a blessedness to raise up and cherish into free growth. Yet, in plain prose, we must question whether the two were happier than others in their union; both were quick of temper: she was all a heavenly light, he in good part a terrestrial mass, which perhaps she could never wholly illuminate; the balance of the love seems to have lain much on her side. Nevertheless, Heyne was a steadfast, true, and kindly, if no ethereal man; he seems to have loved his wife honestly; and so amid light and shadow they made their pilgrimage together, if not better than other mortals, not worse, which was to have been feared.

Neither, for the present, did the pressure of distress weigh heavier on either than it had done before. He worked diligently, as he found scope, for his old Mæcenases, the Booksellers; the war-clouds grew lighter, or at least the young pair better used to them; friends also, were kind, often assisting and hospitably entertaining them.

*One rich cargo, on its way to Hamburg, sank in the Elbe; another still more valuable portion had been, for safety, deposited in a vault, through which passed certain pipes of artificial water-works; these the cannon broke, and, when the vault came to be opened, all was reduced to pulp and mould. The bomb-shells burnt the remainder.

† Lipsia, 1756. brary.

The Codices, or rather the Codex, was in Brühl's li

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