Page:Imperialdictiona02eadi Brandeis.pdf/965

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
HOF
913
HOF

great deal of money by various nostrums which he vended, and which he kept secret. One of these is still known as "Hoffmann's Anodyne liquor." To him we are indebted for making known the virtues of the Seidlitz waters, and the knowledge of the salts contained in them. Hoffmann's practice towards the end of his long career was extremely simple. He was in the habit of saying that a few simple well-chosen remedies were of far more value than the most recherché chemical preparations. To such of his patients as expressed themselves anxious to avoid disease, he used to exclaim—"If you wish to preserve your health, avoid doctors and medicines."—W. B—d.

HOFFMANN, Johann Moritz, a German botanist and physician, son of Moritz Hoffmann, born at Altdorf in 1653, and died at Anspach in 1727. He studied medicine at Altdorf, Frankfort-on-the-Oder, and Padua. He afterwards occupied in succession the chairs of anatomy, chemistry, and botany, in the university of Altdorf. In 1713 he became physician to the prince of Anspach. For six years before his death he filled the office of president of the Societas Naturæ Curiosorum. He published "Anatomical, Physiological, and Pathological Observations," besides "Elements of Chemistry" and a "Catalogue of Medicinal Plants in the Altdorf garden," in continuation of that published by his father.—J. H. B.

HOFFMANN, Moritz, a German botanist and physician, was born at Furstenwald in 1622, and died at Altdorf in 1698. Professor Nässler took an interest in him after the death of his parents, and sent him to Padua to prosecute his medical studies. He afterwards became professor of anatomy at Altdorf, and published works both on anatomy and botany. Among these may be noticed, "Synopsis Institutionum Anatomiæ," and a "Catalogue of the Medicinal Plants in the Altdorf garden."—J. H. B.

HOFFMANOWA, Klementyna, a celebrated Polish authoress, was born at Warsaw on the 23rd November, 1798. Her maiden name was Tanska. She received an excellent education; and when about twenty years old, she seems to have been roused to a patriotic sense of the importance of cultivating her native language, which was at that time greatly neglected. The second work she published in 1819, called "Pamiatka" (Memorial of a Good Mother), raised her at once to fame. It was followed by other productions that still further increased her reputation. In 1829 she married, and was thenceforth known as Klementyna Hoffmanowa, her husband's name being Hoffman. After the suppression of the Polish insurrection of 1830, in which she and her husband were involved, they escaped to France, and settled permanently at Paris. There Klementyna Hoffmanowa died on the 20th September, 1845. Her works, which are voluminous, are conspicuous for their national character, their instructive tendency, and their agreeable style. She has been termed not inappropriately the "Polish Miss Edgeworth."—J. J.

HOFLAND, Mrs. Barbara, an amiable and ingenious writer of tales for the young, was born in Sheffield in 1770. Her father, Mr. Robert Wreaks, was a manufacturer of that town. Losing her parents early, little Barbara was educated by an aunt, who discerned and developed her natural talents. At the age of twenty-six she married Mr. Hoole, a man of business in her native place; but after two years of genuine domestic happiness she was left a widow with an infant son. This bereavement was followed by the almost entire failure of her pecuniary resources. Pressing need determined her to publish some poems, written in more prosperous days. The sale of the work was zealously promoted by her friends, and enabled her to establish a school at Harrowgate. In the intervals of her professional duties she wrote and published several small works, which enjoyed considerable popularity. After ten years of widowhood she married, against the advice of her friends, Mr. Hofland the artist. The marriage proved fruitful of anything but happiness; and on her removal to London in 1809, she applied herself with new ardour to her literary labours. Her first publication after settling in the metropolis, a tale entitled "The Daughter-in-law," was extremely successful, and procured from Queen Charlotte a promise to become the patroness of Mrs. Hofland's next work. Accordingly a novel in four volumes, entitled "Emily," was published by her in 1813, and dedicated to the queen. But her fame was most widely spread, and will be most permanently maintained, by a shorter production of the same year, entitled "The Son of a Genius," the details of which, referring to the painful events in a struggling artist's life, were doubtless drawn in some measure from her personal experience. It was declared by both Mr. and Miss Edgeworth, that "no book had done so much good in Ireland, as it was particularly suited to correct the improvident character of the Irish people." The story was translated into many foreign languages, and is as much a favourite in America as in England. Mrs. Hofland continued writing for the remainder of her prolonged life; and is the acknowledged author of seventy works, of which it has been computed three hundred thousand copies have been calculated in England alone. For a list of them see the London catalogue and the Gentleman's Magazine for January, 1845. She survived her son, the Rev. Mr. Hoole, eleven years, and her husband, Mr. Hofland, two years, dying on the 9th of November, 1844. The defect of her writings is a certain want of reality in the personages she pourtrays; the glow of romance which is spread over them, and which colours the scenes they enact, leaves on the mind of the reader an impression of artificiality.—R. H.

HOFLAND, Thomas Christopher, landscape painter, was the son of a cotton manufacturer at Worksop, Nottinghamshire, where he was born, December 25, 1777. Owing to family reverses, young Hofland was compelled, when about eighteen, to turn his talent for art to account, and for some years he taught drawing in London and Derby. In 1808 he married Mrs. Hoole.—(See the preceding memoir.) About 1811 he removed to London, and for some time depended mainly on the sale of copies of the works of the great landscape painters exhibited at the British Institution, and the profits of his wife's literary labours. But a couple of small landscapes, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1812, and still more a large "Storm off the coast of Scarborough," to which in 1814 the directors of the British Institution awarded the premium of a hundred guineas, and which was purchased by the marquis of Stafford, attracted attention to his merits, and permitted him to follow the bent of his original genius. His career might henceforth have been smooth, if not highly prosperous; but the duke of Marlborough, known by his bibliographical and building eccentricities, employed him to prepare a magnificently illustrated account of his seat at White Knights—the painter to design the plates, and his wife to write the descriptions. Unfortunately he had likewise to make the arrangements with the engravers and others, and the result was that he was left, not only without remuneration for his own and his wife's labour, but responsible to the engravers for theirs. He thus found himself burdened with a heavy load of debt, which it took him years to remove; ultimately, however, the whole was honourably discharged. During these years Hofland remained in London, diligently engaged in producing pictures of a size and kind that met with a ready sale. No English painter has ever more happily rendered the gentle placid beauties of external nature; though the grander physical features, or the more impressive or evanescent atmospheric phenomena, he neglected to represent. Hofland was one of the original founders of the Society of British Artists, and most of his pictures were exhibited in its gallery; but he also usually sent one or more works to the Royal Academy exhibitions. In 1840 he visited Italy, and after his return painted several small pictures from sketches made at Herculaneum, Pompeii, and the beautiful country around. But a low fever contracted during his Italian tour clung to him in England; and after protracted suffering, he died at Leamington, January 3, 1843. Hofland was also an angler, and he gave to the world the results of his experience with rod and pencil in a very prettily illustrated "British Angler's Manual," 8vo, 1839.—J. T—e.

* HOFMANN, August Wilhelm, Ph.D., was born in Giessen, April 8, 1818. Having been assistant to Liebig in the laboratory at Giessen, he became in 1845 extraordinary professor of chemistry in the university of Bonn. Three years afterwards he was appointed professor in the Royal College of Chemistry in London. He is best known for his brilliant researches on the compound ammonias. The first of these bodies was discovered in 1848 by Weertz, who distilled the cyanic ethers with caustic potash and obtained some most remarkable compounds bearing the closest resemblance to common ammonia, but containing one equivalent of an organic radical in place of one equivalent of hydrogen. Next year Hofmann arrived at the same bodies by a different path. He found that ammonia can be made to unite with an iodide of an alcohol-radical, and that the compounds so obtained yield organic bases when distilled with caustic alkalis Continuing his experiments in this direction during that and the following years, he obtained most important results. Among