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 HOLSTENIUS, LUCAS, the Latinized name of Luc Holste (1596–1661), German humanist, geographer and theological writer, was born at Hamburg. He studied at Leiden university, where he became intimate with the most famous scholars of the age—J. Meursius, D. Heinsius and P. Cluverius, whom he accompanied on his travels in Italy and Sicily. Disappointed at his failure to obtain a post in the gymnasium of his native town, he left Germany for good. Having spent two years in Oxford and London, he went to Paris. Here he obtained the patronage of N. de Peiresc, who recommended him to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, papal nuncio and the possessor of the most important private library in Rome. On the cardinal’s return in 1627 he took Holstenius to live with him in his palace and made him his librarian. Although converted to Roman Catholicism in 1625, Holstenius showed his liberal-mindedness by strenuously opposing the strict censorship exercised by the Congregation of the Index. He was appointed librarian of the Vatican by Innocent X., and was sent to Innsbruck by Alexander VII. to receive Queen Christina’s abjuration of Protestantism. He died in Rome on the 2nd of February 1661. Holstenius was a man of unwearied industry and immense learning, but he lacked the persistency to carry out the vast literary schemes he had planned. He was the author of notes on Cluvier’s Italia antiqua (1624); an edition of portions of Porphyrius (1630), with a dissertation on his life and writings, described as a model of its kind; notes on Eusebius Against Hierocles (1628), on the Sayings of the later Pythagoreans (1638), and the De diis et mundo of the neo-Platonist Sallustius (1638); Notae et castigationes in Stephani Bysantini ethnica (first published in 1684); and Codex regularum, Collection of the Early Rules of the Monastic Orders (1661). His correspondence (Epistolae ad diversos, ed. J. F. Boissonade, 1817) is a valuable source of information on the literary history of his time.

See N. Wilckens, Leben des gelehrten Lucae Holstenii (Hamburg, 1723); Johann Moller, Cimbria literata, iii. (1744).

HOLSTER, a leather case to hold a pistol, used by a horseman and properly fastened to the saddle-bow, but sometimes worn in the belt. The same word appears in Dutch, from which the English word probably directly derives. The root is hel- or hul- to cover, and is seen in the O. Eng. heolster, a place of shelter or concealment, and in “hull” a sheath or covering. The German word for the same object, holfter, is, according to the New English Dictionary, from a different root.

HOLT, SIR JOHN (1642–1710), lord chief justice of England, was born at Thame, Oxfordshire, on the 30th of December 1642. His father, Sir Thomas Holt, possessed a small patrimonial estate, but in order to supplement his income had adopted the profession of law, in which he was not very successful, although he became sergeant in 1677, and afterwards for his political services to the “Tories” was rewarded with knighthood. After attending for some years the free school of the town of Abingdon, of which his father was recorder, young Holt in his sixteenth year entered Oriel College, Oxford. He is said to have spent a very dissipated youth, and even to have been in the habit of taking purses on the highway, but after entering Gray’s Inn about 1660 he applied himself with exemplary diligence to the study of law. He was called to the bar in 1663. An ardent supporter of civil and religious liberty, he distinguished himself in the state trials which were then so common by the able and courageous manner in which he supported the pleas of the defendants. In 1685–1686 he was appointed recorder of London, and about the same time he was made king’s sergeant and received the honour of knighthood. His giving a decision adverse to the pretensions of the king to exercise martial law in time of peace led to his dismissal from the office of recorder, but he was continued in the office of king’s sergeant in order to prevent him from becoming counsel for accused persons. Having been one of the judges who acted as assessors to the peers in the Convention parliament, he took a leading part in arranging the constitutional change by which William III. was called to the throne, and after his accession he was appointed lord chief justice of the King’s Bench. His merits as a judge are the more apparent and the more remarkable when contrasted with the qualities displayed by his predecessors in office. In judicial fairness, legal knowledge and ability, clearness of statement and unbending integrity he has had few if any superiors on the English bench. Over the civil rights of his countrymen he exercised a jealous watchfulness, more especially when presiding at the trial of state prosecutions, and he was especially careful that all accused persons should be treated with fairness and respect. He is, however, best known for the firmness with which he upheld his own prerogatives in opposition to the authority of the Houses of Parliament. On several occasions his physical as well as his moral courage was tried by extreme tests. Having been requested to supply a number of police to help the soldiery in quelling a riot, he assured the messenger that if any of the people were shot he would have the soldiers hanged, and proceeding himself to the scene of riot he was successful in preventing bloodshed. While steadfast in his sympathies with the Whig party, Holt maintained on the bench entire political impartiality, and always held himself aloof from political intrigue. On the retirement of Somers from the chancellorship in 1700 he was offered the great seal, but declined it. His death took place in London on the 5th of March 1710. He was buried in the chancel of Redgrave church.

Reports of Cases determined by Sir John Holt (1681–1710) appeared at London in 1738; and The Judgments delivered in the case of Ashby v. White and others, and in the case of John Paty and others, printed from original MSS., at London (1837). See Burnet’s Own Times; Tatler, No. xiv.; a Life, published in 1764; Welsby, Lives of Eminent English Judges of the 17th and 18th Centuries (1846); Campbell’s Lives of the Lord Chief Justices; and Foss, Lives of the Judges.

HOLTEI, KARL EDUARD VON (1798–1880), German poet and actor, was born at Breslau on the 24th of January 1798, the son of an officer of Hussars. Having served in the Prussian army as a volunteer in 1815, he shortly afterwards entered the university of Breslau as a student of law; but, attracted by the stage, he soon forsook academic life and made his début in the Breslau theatre as Mortimer in Schiller’s Maria Stuart. He led a wandering life for the next two years, appearing less on the stage as an actor than as a reciter of his own poems. In 1821 he married the actress Luise Rogée (1800–1825), and was appointed theatre-poet to the Breslau stage. He next removed to Berlin, where his wife fulfilled an engagement at the Court theatre. During his sojourn here he produced the vaudevilles Die Wiener in Berlin (1824), and Die Berliner in Wien (1825), pieces which enjoyed at the time great popular favour. In 1825 his wife died; but soon after her death he accepted an engagement at the Königsstädter theatre in Berlin, when he wrote a number of plays, notably Lenore (1829) and Der alte Feldherr (1829). In 1830 he married Julie Holzbecher (1809–1839), an actress engaged at the same theatre, and with her played in Darmstadt. Returning to Berlin in 1831 he wrote for the composer Franz Gläser (1798–1861) the text of the opera Des Adlers Horst (1835), and for Ludwig Devrient the drama, Der dumme Peter (1837). In 1833 Holtei again went on the stage and toured with his wife to various important cities, Hamburg, Leipzig, Dresden, Munich and Vienna. In the last his declamatory powers as a reciter, particularly of Shakespeare’s plays, made a furore, and the poet-actor was given the appointment of manager of the Josefstädter theatre in the last-named city. Though proud of his successes both as actor and reciter, Holtei left Vienna in 1836, and from 1837 to 1839 conducted the theatre in Riga. Here his second wife died, and after wandering through Germany reciting and accepting a short engagement at Breslau, he settled in 1847 at Graz, where he devoted himself to a literary life and produced the novels Die Vagabunden (1851), Christian Lammfell (1853) and Der letzte Komödiant (1863). The last years of his life were spent at Breslau, where being in poor circumstances he found a home in the Kloster der barmherzigen Brüder, and here he died on the 12th of February 1880.

As a dramatist Holtei may be said to have introduced the “vaudeville” into Germany; as an actor, although remaining behind the greater artists of his time, he contrived to fascinate his audience by the dramatic force of his exposition of character; as a reciter, especially of Shakespeare, he knew no rival. August