It has been several times reprinted since the first edition by Aldus in 1503. Three others of the name of Harpocration are mentioned by Suidas—Harpocration the Argive philosopher, the friend of Julius Cæsar, and commentator upon Plato; Harpocration called Caius, a sophist and rhetorician; and Harpocration called Ælius, also a rhetorician.—B. H. C.
HARPSFELD, John, D.D., a zealous Roman catholic priest, and a chaplain to the notorious Bishop Bonner of Queen Mary's reign. He was born in Old Fish Street, London, educated at Winchester school, and admitted a perpetual fellow of New college, Oxford. In 1551 he exchanged his fellowship for a benefice in London. Three years later he was made by his patron Bonner archdeacon, and found congenial employment in promoting the Marian persecution and in fanning the fires of Smithfield. He had only just been appointed dean of Norwich in 1558 when Mary died, and the spirit of the Reformation again prevailed. Harpsfeld did not, however, yield to the adverse influence without a struggle. He preached at Canterbury a sermon that was held to be seditious, and for which he was rebuked. He was also one of the catholic divines who were to dispute with the reformed about settling religion in the latter end of 1558. He was confined for upwards of a year in the Fleet prison. He died in 1578. He wrote "Homilies to be read in Churches within the Diocese of London," printed at the end of Bonner's Catechism; "Disputations," to be found in Fox's Acts.—R. H.
HARPSFELD, Nicholas, brother to the archdeacon, John Harpsfeld. Like him Nicholas was born in Old Fish Street, London, educated at Winchester, and admitted fellow of New college, Oxford. He applied himself especially, and with eminent success, to the study of the civil and canon law. In 1544 he was made principal of an ancient hall called White hall, which stood on the site of Jesus' college; and two years later he was appointed by King Henry VIII. professor of Greek in the university. In 1553 he gave up his fellowship, took the degree of doctor of civil law, and acquired a considerable practice in the court of Arches. In 1554 he was made archdeacon of Canterbury, and, like his brother, was one of the seven Roman catholic disputants appointed at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign to discuss with the protestants the question of a national religion. The discussion never took place; and as Nicholas denied the queen's supremacy in the church he was imprisoned, and remained in captivity more than twenty years. He occupied his enforced leisure in writing books, mostly in Latin, some of which were published in the names of other people from a fear of adding to the sufferings of the captive. He died in 1583. Among his works are—"Dialogi sex contra summi pontificatus oppugnatores," Antwerp, 1566; "Historia Anglicana Ecclesiastica," Douay, 1622; "A treatise concerning Marriage, occasioned by the pretended divorce between King Hen. VIII. and Queen Katherine," which exists in manuscript in New college library; and "The Life of our Lord," in Latin, a manuscript translation of which is in the Lambeth library.—(Wood's Athenæ, vol. i. p. 491.)—R. H.
HARRINGTON, James, an eminent political writer of the seventeenth century, was born at Upton in Northamptonshire, in the year 1611. His father, Sir Sapcotes Harrington, was descended from an ancient Rutlandshire family. He appears to have received his early education at home. In 1629 he was admitted a gentleman commoner of Trinity college, Oxford, where he had for his tutor the famous Chillingworth. After leaving the university he travelled on the continent, as was usual with young men of fortune. He first visited Holland; and the impression made upon him by the prosperity of the flourishing commonwealth of the United Provinces, then recently emancipated from the yoke of Spain, laid the foundation of the political speculations which were the employment of his future life. From Holland he went to France, and thence to Italy. And if the vigorous growth of the Dutch republic had arrested his attention, the spectacle of the ancient polity of Venice, still solid and apparently undecayed after the shocks of twelve hundred years, produced on the thoughtful Englishman a yet more profound impression. After a minute study of the Venetian constitution, he arrived at the conviction, which is expressed in many places of his writings, that the form of government in that republic was "immutable by any external or internal causes, and to perish only with mankind!" After visiting Germany and Denmark, Harrington returned to England. His father dying about this time, he was left, as the eldest son, guardian of his younger brothers and sisters—a trust which he discharged most prudently and conscientiously. During the first expedition to Scotland in 1639, Harrington accompanied the king as one of his privy chamber extraordinary. When the civil war broke out, he took part with the parliament; but we do not hear of his having borne arms. The parliamentary commissioners who removed the king in 1649 from Newcastle to Holmby house appointed Harrington, who had joined the cortége out of curiosity, to wait upon Charles at the latter place, as being neither a royalist nor personally unacceptable to his majesty. Charles soon conceived a liking for his society, conversed freely with him upon political subjects, and made him a groom of the bedchamber. But he could not endure to listen to Harrington's republican discourses. The latter, on his part, was completely won over by the dignified gentleness of his sovereign to an attachment to his person and an admiration for his character. These feelings even so far influenced his estimate of the merits of the negotiations then pending, that he openly expressed an opinion that the concessions offered by the king were sufficient. He was in consequence removed abruptly from his attendance on the royal person, on the occasion of Charles's removal to Hurst castle. On the fatal 30th January, 1649, he found means to accompany the king on the scaffold, and received from him a last token of his affection. The catastrophe deeply affected him. He often said that "nothing ever went nearer to him; and his grief on that account was so great as to bring a disorder upon him." For some time afterwards he lived in strict privacy, employing himself upon the composition of his "Oceana." By this name he designated England. As this is the work on which his reputation rests, we proceed to give a short outline of its contents. It is divided into three parts—Preliminaries, the Model of the Commonwealth (which is the body of the work), and the Corollary, or conclusion. In the first part he treats of ancient prudence, or state craft; then of modern prudence; after which he introduces nine legislators, representing the polities of Israel, Athens, Sparta, Carthage, Achaia, Rome, Venice, Switzerland, and Holland, who debate upon the merits of their respective systems. Out of the excellences of all these, combined with ideas of his own, he frames the model of his commonwealth, the constitution and laws of which are set forth at large in the second part. He was the first to discover and propound in this work the really important doctrine that "empire follows the balance of property," in other words, that political supremacy naturally and ordinarily resides with that class among the citizens which possesses the largest material stake in the country. "Oceana" was in the press in 1656, but the government of Cromwell was inclined to prohibit its publication. But Harrington, by personally soliciting the Lady Elizabeth Claypole, Oliver's favourite daughter, obtained by her means the protector's consent to its appearing, coupled, however, with the dry remark, that "what he had won by the sword he should not suffer himself to be scribbled out of." During the protectorate Harrington frequented the meetings of a debating club called the Rota, composed of advanced republicans like himself, which practised the vote by ballot in all its proceedings, and made it its principal object to advocate the adoption of that mode of voting by the houses of parliament and all other deliberative bodies. These theorists were listened to for a while; but as soon as Monk had restored the Long parliament, such as it was before Cromwell turned it out of doors, the rapid march of events and the irresistible rebound of the nation towards monarchy soon left them without an audience. Harrington wittily compared the several political parties after 1658 to "a company of puppy-dogs in a bag," where each puppy was biting the nose or the tail of his next neighbour, imagining him to be the sole cause of his uneasiness. In the year following the Restoration, he was arrested and committed to the Tower upon a charge of treasonable designs and practices. He was examined by three lords of the council, but nothing was made of the charge. Indeed the plot was probably imaginary. After five months' confinement in the Tower, he was removed to Plymouth upon some of his relations entering into a bond of £5000 for his safe custody. To cure the scurvy with which he was afflicted, probably owing to the hard prison fare to which he had been subjected, the unfortunate man took large doses of guaiacum, the effect of which was to cause delirium, and permanently to disorder his understanding. Though he lived till 1677, he never afterwards had the perfect use of his faculties
