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 on the ground that it had been obtained by “spiritual” influence. It was held that the burden of establishing the validity of the gift lay on Home, and as he failed to do so the case was decided against him. He continued, however, to give séances, mostly on the Continent, and in 1871 appeared before the tsar of Russia and two Russian scientists, who attested the phenomena evoked. Returning to England he submitted to a series of experiments designed to test his pretensions before Professor (subsequently Sir William) Crookes, which the latter declared to be thoroughly genuine; and Professor von Boutlerow, of the Russian Academy of Science, after witnessing a similar series of experiments, expressed the same opinion. Home published two volumes of Incidents of my Life and Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism. He married successively two well-connected Russian ladies. He died at Auteuil, France, on the 21st of June 1886.

HOME, JOHN (1722–1808), Scottish dramatic poet, was born on the 22nd of September 1722 at Leith, where his father, Alexander Home, who was distantly related to the earls of Home, filled the office of town-clerk. He was educated at the grammar school of his native town, and at the university of Edinburgh, where he graduated M.A. in 1742. Though he showed a fondness for the profession of arms, he studied divinity, and was licensed by the presbytery of Edinburgh in 1745. In the same year he joined as a volunteer against the Pretender, and was taken prisoner at the battle of Falkirk (1746). With many others he was carried to the castle of Doune in Perthshire, but soon effected his escape. In July 1746 Home was presented to the parish of Athelstaneford, Haddingtonshire, vacant by the death of Robert Blair, the author of The Grave. He had leisure to visit his friends and became especially intimate with David Hume who belonged to the same family as himself. His first play, Agis: a tragedy, founded on Plutarch’s narrative, was finished in 1747. He took it to London and submitted it to Garrick for representation at Drury Lane, but it was rejected as unsuitable for the stage. The tragedy of Douglas was suggested to him by hearing a lady sing the ballad of Gil Morrice or Child Maurice (F. J. Child, Popular Ballads, ii. 263). The ballad supplied him with the outline of a simple and striking plot. After five years’ labour he completed his play, which he took to London for Garrick’s opinion. It also was rejected, but on his return to Edinburgh his friends resolved that it should be brought out in that city. It was produced on the 14th of December 1756 with overwhelming success, in spite of the opposition of the presbytery, who summoned Alexander Carlyle to answer for having attended its representation. Home wisely resigned his charge in 1757, after a visit to London, where Douglas was brought out at Covent Garden on the 14th of March. Peg Woffington played Lady Randolph, a part which found a later exponent in Mrs Siddons. David Hume summed up his admiration for Douglas by saying that his friend possessed “the true theatric genius of Shakespeare and Otway, refined from the unhappy barbarism of the one and licentiousness of the other.” Gray, writing to Horace Walpole (August, 1757), said that the author “seemed to have retrieved the true language of the stage, which has been lost for these hundred years,” but Samuel Johnson held aloof from the general enthusiasm, and averred that there were not ten good lines in the whole play (Boswell, Life, ed. Croker, 1848, p. 390). In 1758 Home became private secretary to Lord Bute, then secretary of state, and was appointed tutor to the prince of Wales; and in 1760 his patron’s influence procured him a pension of £300 per annum and in 1763 a sinecure worth another £300. Garrick produced Agis at Drury Lane on the 21st of February 1758. By dint of good acting and powerful support, according to Genest (Short Account &c., iv. 513 seq.), the piece kept the stage for eleven days, but it was lamentably inferior to Douglas. In 1760 his tragedy, The Siege of Aquileia, was put on the stage, Garrick taking the part of Aemilius. In 1769 his tragedy of The Fatal Discovery had a run of nine nights; Alonzo also (1773) had fair success in the representation; but his last tragedy, Alfred (1778), was so coolly received that he gave up writing for the stage. In 1778 he joined a regiment formed by the duke of Buccleuch. He sustained severe injuries in a fall from horseback which permanently affected his brain, and was persuaded by his friends to retire. From 1767 he resided either at Edinburgh or at a villa which he built at Kilduff near his former parish. It was at this time that he wrote his History of the Rebellion of 1745, which appeared in 1802. Home died at Merchiston Bank, near Edinburgh, on the 5th of September 1808, in his eighty-sixth year.

The Works of John Home were collected and published by Henry Mackenzie in 1822 with “An Account of the Life and Writings of Mr John Home,” which also appeared separately in the same year, but several of his smaller poems seem to have escaped the editor’s observation. These are—“The Fate of Caesar,” “Verses upon Inveraray,” “Epistle to the Earl of Eglintoun,” “Prologue on the Birthday of the Prince of Wales, 1759” and several “Epigrams,” which are printed in vol. ii. of Original Poems by Scottish Gentlemen (1762). See also Sir W. Scott, “The Life and Works of John Home” in the Quarterly Review (June, 1827). Douglas is included in numerous collections of British drama. Voltaire published his Le Caffé, ou l’Écossaise (1760), Londres (really Geneva), as a translation from the work of Mr Hume, described as pasteur de l’église d’Édimbourg, but Home seems to have taken no notice of the mystification.

HOMEL, or, a town of Russia, in the government of Mogilev, and 132 m. by rail S.S.E. of the town of Mogilev, on the Sozh, a tributary of the Dnieper. Pop. (1900) 45,081, nearly half of whom are Jews. It is an important junction of the railways from Vilna to Odessa and from Orel to Poland, and is in steamer communication with Kiev and Mogilev. In front of Prince Paskevich’s castle stands an equestrian statue of the Polish general Joseph Poniatowski, and in the cathedral is the tomb of the chancellor Nikolai Petrovich Rumantsev, by Canova. The town carries on a brisk trade in hops, corn and timber; there are also paper-pulp mills and oil factories. Homel was founded in the 12th century, and after changing hands several times between Poles and Russians was annexed to Russia in 1772. In 1648 it suffered at the hands of the Cossack chieftain Bogdan Chmielnicki.

 HOME OFFICE, a principal government department in the United Kingdom, the creation of which dates from 1782, when the conduct of foreign affairs, which had previously been divided between the northern and southern secretaries, was handed over to the northern department (see ). The home department retained control of Irish and colonial affairs, and of war business until 1794, when an additional secretary of state was re-appointed. In 1801 the colonial business was transferred from the home department, which now attends only to domestic affairs. The head of the department, the principal secretary of state for home affairs, or home secretary, is a member of the government for the time being, and of the cabinet, receiving a salary of £5000 a year. He is the proper medium of communication between the sovereign and the subject, and receives petitions addressed to the crown. He is responsible for the maintenance of the king’s peace and attends to the administration of criminal justice, police and prisons, and through him the sovereign exercises his prerogative of mercy. Within his department is the supervision of lunatic asylums, reformatories and industrial schools, and it is his duty to see after the internal well-being of the country, to enforce the rules made for the health or safety of the community generally, and especially of those classes employed in special trades or dangerous occupations. He is assisted by a permanent under-secretary, a parliamentary secretary and several assistant under-secretaries.

See Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution. (1907).

 HOMER ( ), the great epic poet of Greece. Many of the works once attributed to him are lost; those which remain are the two great epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, thirty-three Hymns, a mock epic (the Battle of the Frogs and Mice), and some pieces of a few lines each (the so-called Epigrams).

Ancient Accounts of Homer.—Of the date of Homer probably no record, real or pretended, ever existed. Herodotus (ii. 53) maintains that Hesiod and Homer lived not more than 400 years