Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/761

Rh part of the brow prominent. A lion’s skin is generally worn or carried. Lysippus worked out the finest type of sculptured Hercules, of which the Farnese by Glycon is a grand specimen. The infantine struggle with serpents was a favourite subject. Quite distinct was the Idzean Hercules, a Cretan Dactyl eonnected with the cult of Rhea or Cybele. The Greeks recognized Hercules in an Egyptian deity Chom and an Indian Dorsanes, not to mention personages of other mytho- logies. Hercules is supposed to have visited Italy on his return from Erythia, when he slew Cacus, son of Vulcan, the giant of the Aventine mount in Rome, who had stolen his oxen. To this victory was assigned the founding of “the dra maxiza. With respect to the Roman relations of the hero, it is manifest that the native myths of Recaranus, or Sancus, or Dius Fidius, were transferred to the Hellenic Hercules.

1em  HERDER, (1744–1803), one of the most prolific and influential writers that Germany has produced, was born in Mohrungen, a small town near Konigsberg, in 1744. Like his contemporary Lessing, with whose literary aims his own had so much in common, Werder had throughout his life to struggle against adverse circumstauces. is father was poor, having to put together a subsistence by uniting the humble offices of sexton, choir singer, and petty schoolmaster. Gottfried seems to have got some rudimentary instruction from his father, after which he was sent to the grammar school (gymnasium) of his native town. The mode of discipline practised by the pedantic and irritable old man who stood at the head of this institution was not at all to the young student’s liking, and the impression made upon him stimulated him later ou to work out his projects of school reform. The hard- ships of his early years drove him to introspection and to solitary communion with nature, and thus favoured a more than proportionate development of the sentimental and poetic side of his mind. When quite young he ex- pressed a wish to enter the church, but his aspirations were somewhit rudely discouraged by the local clergyman. In 1762, at the age of eighteen, he went up to Kénigsberg with the intention of studying medicine, but finding himself unequal to the operations of the dissecting-room, he aban- doned this object, and by the help of one or two friends and his own self-supporting labours, followed out his earlier idea of the clerical profession by joining the university. There he came under the influence of Kant, who was just then passing from physical to metaphysical problems. Without becoming a disciple of Kant, the young Herder was deeply stimulated to fresh critical inquiry by that thinker’s revolutionary ideas in philosophy. To Kant’s lectures and conversations he further owed something of his large interest in cosmological and anthropological problems. Among the writers whom he most carefully read were Plato, Hume, Shaftesbury, Leibnitz, Diderot, and Rousseau. Another personal influence under which he fell at Konigs- berg, and which was destined to be far more permanent, was that of Hamann, “the northern Mage.” This writer had already won a name, and in the young Herder he found a mind well fitted to be the receptacle and vehicle of his new ideas on literature. From this vague, incoherent, yet clever writer our author acquired some of his strong feeling for the natural naif element in poetry, and for the earliest developments of national literature. Even before he went to Kénigsberg he had begun to compose verses, and at the age of twenty he took up the pen as a chief occupa- tion. His first published writings were occasional poems and articles contributed to the AGuigsberg Journal. Soon after this he got a double appointment at Riga, as assistant master at the cathedral school, and as curate to the sub- urban churches. In this busy commercial town, in some- what improved pecuniary and social circumstances, he developed the main ideas of his writings. In the year 1767 he published his first considerable work Fragmente tiber die neuere deutsche Literatur, which at once made him widely known and secured for him the favourable interest of Lessing. From this time he continued to pour forth a number of critical writings on literature, art, &c. His bold ideas on these subjects, which were a great advance even on Lessing’s doctrines, naturally excited hostile criticism, an in consequence of this opposition, which took the form of aspersions on his religious orthodoxy, he resolved to leave Riga. He was much carried away at this time by the idea of a radical reform of social life in Livonia, which (after the example of Rousseau) he thought to effect by means of a better method of school-training. With this plan in view he began (1769) a tour through France, England, Holland, &c., for the purpose of collecting infor- mation respecting their systems of education. It was during the solitude of his voyage to France, when on deck at night, that he first shaped his idea of the genesis of primitive poetry, and of the gradual evolution of humanity. Having received an offer of an appointment as travelling tutor and chaplain to the young prince of Eutin-Holstein, he aban- doned his somewhat visionary scheme of a social reconstruc- tion of a Russian province. He has, however, left a curious sketch of his projected school reforms. His new duties led him to Strasburg, where he met the young Goethe, on whose poetical development he exercised so potent an influ- ence. At Darmstadt he made the acquaintance of Caroline © Flachsland, to whom he soon became betrothed, and who for the rest of his life supplied him with that abundance of consolatory sympathy which his sensitive and rather querulous nature appeared to require. The engagement as tutor did not prove an agreeable one, and he soon threw it up (1771) in tavour of an appointment as court preacher and member of the consistory at Biickeburg. Here he had to encounter bitter opposition from the orthodox clergy and their followers, among whom he was received as a free- thinker. His health continued poor, and a fistula in the eye, from which he had suffered from early childhood, and to cure which he had undergone a number of painful operations, continued to trouble him. Further, pecuniary difficulties, from which he never long managed to keep himself free, by delaying his marriage, added to his depres- sion. The correspondence between Herder and Caroline Flachsland indicates a relationship which offers a curious parallel and contrast to that of Lessing and his future wife under very similar circumstances. Notwithstanding these trying circumstances he resumed literary work, which his travels had interrupted. For some time he had been greatly interested by the poetry of the north, more particularly Percy’s Leliques, the poems of “Ossian ” (in the genuineness of which he like many others believed), and the works of Shakespeare. Under the influence of this reading he now finally broke with classicism and became the leader of the new “Sturm und Drang” movement. He co-operated with a band of young writers at Darmstadt and Frankfort, includ- ing Goethe, who in a journal of their own sought to diffuse the new ideas of Herder. His marriage took place in 1773. In 1776 he obtained through Goethe’s influence the post of upper court preacher and upper member of the consistory at Weimar, where he passed the rest of his life. There he enjoyed the society of Goethe, Wieland, Jean Paul (who came to Weimar in order to be near Herder), and others, the patronage of the court, with whom as a preacher he was very popular, and an opportunity of carrying out some of