merit met with its reward, and a new and illustrious career was opened to him. On the death of Johann Matthias Gesner at Göttingen in 1761, the appointment to the vacant chair had been first offered to Ernesti, who, however, declined leaving the university of Leipsic, but proposed Ruhnken of Leyden or Saxe of Utrecht for the appointment. Ruhnken likewise refused it, but having been strongly impressed with the taste and learning displayed by the editor of Tibullus and Epictetus, he advised Münchhausen, the Hanoverian minister and principal curator of the university of Göttingen, to bestow the professorship on Heyne, whose merit, though known to few, he was confident would do honour to the choice. The minister had the good sense to acquiesce in the recommendation of this great scholar, and Heyne, after some delay, became professor of eloquence in Göttingen. Though his appointments were at first few and his emoluments inconsiderable, these were gradually augmented in proportion as his usefulness was proved, and his growing celebrity rendered it an object with the other Governments of Germany to secure the services of so distinguished a scholar. He refused the most advantageous and honourable overtures from Cassel, Berlin, and Dresden. As professor, principal librarian, member of the Royal Society, and chief editor of the Gelehrte Anzeigen, and still more by his publications, he greatly contributed to raise the university of Göttingen to the distinguished rank it still holds among the seminaries of Europe. After a long and useful career, graced with all the distinctions which in Germany are conferred on literary eminence, he died, full of years and honour, on the 14th of July 1812.
Besides Tibullus (1755; 4th ed. by Wunderlich in 1817) and the Enchiridion of Epictetus (1756; 2d ed. 1776), he edited Virgil (1767-75; new ed. by Wagner, 1830-44), Pindar (1773; 3d ed. 1817), the Bibliotheca Græca of Apollodorus (1782; 2d ed. 1803), and the Iliad (1802),—all illustrated with copious commentaries. His Opuscula Academica, in six vols. (1785-1812), contain a series of more than a hundred academical dissertations, of which the most valuable are those respecting the colonies of Greece and the antiquities of Etruscan art and history. He left also a great number of papers on almost every subject of erudition, more especially on ancient mythology, among the Commentationes Societatis Regiæ Gottingensis, His Antiquarische Aufsätze, in two vols., comprise a valuable collection of essays connected with the history of ancient art. His contributions to the Göttinger Gelehrte Anzeigen are said by Heeren to have been between 7000 and 8000 in number. In the earlier part of his life he translated, or rather wrote anew, a great part of the Universal History. See Heeren, Heyne’s Biographie (1813), which forms the basis of the interesting essay by Carlyle, originally published in the Foreign Review (1828), and now reprinted in his Miscellanies, vol. ii.
HEYWOOD, a manufacturing town of Lancashire, is situated on the Roch, and on the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, 3 miles east of Bury and the same distance south-west of Rochdale. It possesses several handsome churches and chapels, among which may be mentioned St Luke’s church, erected in 1860, with a tall spire and a peal of bells. The other principal buildings are the national school, the mechanics’ institute, the new Conservative club-house, and the market-hall. A new park—the Queen’s Park—purchased and laid out at the cost of £11,000 with money which devolved to Her Majesty in right of her duchy and county palatine of Lancaster, was publicly opened on the 2d of August 1879. Heywood Hall in the neighbourhood of the town was at one time the residence of Peter Heywood, who contributed to the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. Heywood owes its rise to the enterprise of the Peels, its first manufactures having been introduced by the father of the first Sir Robert Peel. It is an important seat of the cotton manufacture, in connexion with which it has upwards of fifty factories, and there are in addition power-loom factories, iron foundries, boiler-works, and railway waggon works. Coal is wrought extensively in the neighbourhood, The population in 1871 was 21,248.
HEYWOOD, John (c. 1500–1565), sometimes styled “the Epigrammatist,” was born, it is not known in what year, at North Mims near St Albans. He was educated at Oxford, and afterwards made the acquaintance of Sir Thomas More, who introduced him at court. His skill in music and his inexhaustible fund of ready wit made him a special favourite of Henry VIII., and afterwards of his daughter Mary. On the accession of Elizabeth, Heywood, who was a zealous Catholic, retired to Malines in Belgium, where he died in 1565. A collection of his works was published in 1562.
His longest single composition is the allegorical work, written in the octave stanza, entitled The Spider and the Fly (1556), in which the flies are the Roman Catholics and the spiders the Protestants, while Queen Mary is represented by the housemaid with her broom (the sword), executing the commands of her master (Christ) and her mistress (the church). It has been justly characterized by Warton as dull, tedious, and trifling. Of greater literary interest are the Interludes (A Play between Johan the Husband, Tyb the Wife, and Sir Johan the Priest; A merry Play between the Pardoner and the Friar, the Curate and Neighbour Prat; The play called the four P’s, a new and very merry Interlude of a Palmer, a Pardoner, a Polycary, and a Pedlar; A Play of Genteelness and Nobility; A Play of Love; A Play of the Weather) which form a connecting link between the old moralities and the modern drama, and were extremely popular in their day. They generally represent some ludicrous incident of a homely kind in a style of the broadest farce, but in their way display considerable skill and talent. Other works of Heywood are a comic poem in long verse entitled A Dialogue containing in effect the number of all the Proverbs in the English tongue compact in a matter concerning two marriages; and three collections of Epigrams.
HEYWOOD, Thomas, a voluminous dramatist and miscellaneous author of the 16th and 17th centuries, was born in Lincolnshire and was educated at Cambridge, where he became a fellow of Peterhouse. The dates of his birth and death are alike unknown, and the few facts of his life that are preserved have been gleaned chiefly from his own writings. He is mentioned in the MS. book of Henslowe as having written a book or play for the Lord Admiral’s Company in October 1596; and from the same source we learn that in 1598 he was regularly engaged as a player and a sharer in that company. In the preface to The English Traveller, written in 1633, he describes himself as having had “an entire hand or at least a main-finger in two hundred and twenty plays.” Of this number, which probably afterwards was considerably exceeded (for we find him still writing in 1640, and indeed his last published piece did not appear until 1655), only three and twenty survive; but they amply attest that had he chosen to concentrate his powers, he might easily have ranked with the Massingers, Fords, and others of his great contemporaries. “Heywood,” says Charles Lamb, “is a sort of prose Shakespeare; his scenes are to the full as natural and affecting.” His facility and variety are almost without a parallel, his fancy was inexhaustible, and his invention never at a loss; but he delighted to excess in what he called “merry accidents, intermixed with apt and witty jests,” or in other words, in the broadest and coarsest farce. His best pieces, such as A Woman Killed with Kindness, Fortune by Land and Sea, The English Traveller, and The Fair Maid of the West, lie chiefly in the department of what has been called the domestic drama.
Besides his dramatic works, which were partly reprinted by the “Shakespeare Society,” and were published in a complete edition of six vols, with notes and illustrations in 1874, he was the author of Troia Britannica or Great Britain’s Troy (1609), a poem in seventeen cantos “intermixed with many pleasant poetical tales” and “concluding with an universal chronicle from the creation until the present time;” An Apology for Actors, containing three brief treatises (1612); Γυναικεῑον or nine books of various history concerning women (1624); England’s Elizabeth, her Life and Troubles during her minority from the Cradle to the Crown (1681); The Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels (1685); Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas selected out of Lucian, &c. (1687); and The Life of Merlin surnamed Ambrosius (1641).
