A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature/Horne, Richard Henry or Hengist
Horne, Richard Henry or Hengist (1803-1884).—Eccentric poet, was b. in London, and ed. at Sandhurst for the East India Company Service, but failed to get a nomination. After a youth of adventure, partly in the Mexican Navy, he returned to England, and began in 1828 a highly combative literary career with a poem, Hecatompylos, in the Athenæum. His next appearance, The False Medium (1833), an exposition of the obstacles thrown in the way of "men of genius" by literary middlemen, raised a nest of hornets; and Orion, an "epic poem," pub. 1843 at the price of one farthing, followed. His plays, which include Cosmo de Medici (1837), The Death of Marlowe (1837), and Judas Iscariot, did not add greatly to his reputation. In The New Spirit of the Age (1844), he had the assistance of Mrs. Browning. Though a writer of talent, he was not a poet.