Holofernes that caught the attention and stimulated the imagination of the youthful Doyle. although Dr. Bell himself is said to have deprecated the notoriety thus thrust upon him as the alleged model of Holmes, and to have maintained that his use of the faculty of observation was nothing more than could be learned from any good manual of general medical practice.-N. Y. Nation. 197 Holofernes, in Shakespeare's comedy, Love's Labor's Lost (1594). a pedantic schoolmaster in whom are ridiculed the affectations and pomposity of contemporary pedagogues, and especially those who adopted the preciosity of Lyly's Euphues. Shakespeare probably took the name, directly or indirectly, from Rabelais Gargantua, the hero of which was instructed in Paris by a pedant named Holoferne. Much ingenuity has been wasted in identifying the character with John Florio (d. 1625), an Italian philologist and lexicographer settled in London, who might have provoked Shakespeare's spleen by attacking all English dramas as "neither right comedies nor right tragedies, but perverted histories without decorum." It has been pointed out that Holofernes is an imperfect anagram of Johannes Florio, or rather a perfect anagram of Hnes Florio, but the imperfection is a little too glaring. Holt, Felix, hero of George Eliot's novel, Felix Holt the Radical, an ardent but level-headed champion of the workingman believed to be drawn from Gerald Massey. No doubt, Felix is an honourable man, for he refuses to live upon a quack medicine or to look leniently at bribery when it is on his own side. But there is a painful excess of sound judgment about him. He gets into prison, not for leading a mob, but for trying to divert them from plunder by actions which are misunderstood. He is very inferior to Alton Locke, who gets into prison for a similar performance. The impetuosity and vehemence only comes out in his rudeness to Esther and plain speaking to her adopted father; and in trying to make him an ideal of wisdom, George Eliot only succeeds in making him unfit for his part.-LESLIE STEPHEN: George Eliot. Holy Bottle (Fr. Dive Bouteille), in Rabelais's satiric romance Panta gruel (1545), an oracle whose quest occupies much of the time of Pantagruel and his friend Panurge. After Homespun seeking it vainly in many lands, in order to question it as to the advisability of Panurge's marriage, they finally locate it in the island of Lanterns. Here the Bottle is kept in an alabaster fount in a great temple. The attendant priestess throws something into the waters which begins to bubble, and from out the mouth of the oracular bottle proceeds the single word Trinc! (Drink!) The advice is taken and the story ends in an orgy. An order of the Dive Bouteille was instituted in France in the sixteenth century avowedly to carry out the philosophy of Pantagruelism. Homburg, Prince of, hero and title of a romantic drama by Heinrich von Kleist. In a battle fought by Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, against the Swedes the Prince, disobeying orders at a critical moment, rushes in and turns defeat into vic tory. Nevertheless he is arrested for disobedience and condemned to death. Nathalie, the Elector's niece and adopted daughter, who is secretly betrothed to the Prince pleads for pardon which Frederick agrees to grant if the culprit will sign a statement that his sentence is unjust. The Prince_recognizes that he cannot do this. Even his own officers clamoring for his release cannot sway his purpose. The Elector, however, has only been trying him, the Prince is pardoned and formally betrothed to Nathalie. A similar theme is treated by Schiller in his Fight with the Dragon. Homespun, Cecily, in George Colman, Jr.'s comedy, The Heir at Law (1797), an innocent little country girl Like betrothed to Dick Dowlas. her brother Zekiel she was the prototype of a whole line of beings long popular upon the British stage-the original of the simple rustic maiden whose wardrobe was contained within a cotton pocket handkerchief, who trusted and believed in everybody and wept with everybody and was as innocent of London ways as one of her own lambs. Homespun, Zekiel, in George Colman, Jr.'s comedy, The Heir at Law (1797), an honest, warm-hearted, simple-minded rustic, the prototype of a long line of similar characters upon the English stage. Colman was one of the first who awoke sympathy for the woes of the lowly born. He may be said to have created the ebulient and kindly peasant, ever lugging out his small stock of money, ever eager to bestow his last shilling on any teller of a pitiful tale, ever spouting sentiment and morality, as ready with his fists as with his tongue, and invariably expressing joy by stamping his hob-nailed boots and singing "Ri ti tol di iddity, tol de iddity, tol de iddity." This noble creature, after being the idol of pit and gallery for over half a century, was finally slain in the burlesques of H. J. Byron. Homunculus, in Goethe's Faust, Part II, is a small human being whom Wagner, the Famulus of Faust, discarding all natural methods of generation, has succeeded in fashioning by artificial means. The meaning of Homunculus may be better grasped if we remember that Wagner stands for the letter as Faust for the spirit. The letter without the spirit killeth; the spirit without the letter could make no revelation of itself. Letter and spirit are alike necessary, but only in harmonious union. Faust has recourse to the Mothers to the Infinite, the Absolute the realm of the Idea. Wagner works in the world of natural forces, concerns himself with methods of expression. Grammar, rhetoric, historyall these human arts are typified by Homunculus. As the Earth-Spirit prepares the garment of Life which the Deity wears, so Wagner prepares the garment of expression with which the idea must clothe itself. Honeyman, Miss, in Thackeray's novel, The Newcomes, aunt to Clive Newcome and sister of Rev. Charles Honeyman, a little, brisk old lady, cheerful, frugal, honest, laborious, charitable, who lets out lodgings in Steyne Gardens and whose superior manners and prosperity win her from the neighboring tradespeople the title of Duchess. Honeythunder, Mr. Luke, in Dickens's Edwin Drood, chairman of the Convened Composite Committee of Hope Central and District Philanthropists, a large man, with a tremendous voice, and an appearance of being constantly engaged in crowding everybody to the wall. Honeywood, hero of Goldsmith's comedy, The Good-natured Man (1767), a young man of good family and ample fortune, whose aim in life is to be generally beloved, and whose motto is "universal benevolence." He can neither refuse nor contradict; he gives away with lavish liberality to worthy and unworthy alike; he suffers his servants to plunder him; he tries to fall in with the humor of every one and to agree with every one. Goldsmith himself is the undoubted original of this character. At last Honeywood is reformed through the influence of his uncle, Sir William, and of Miss Richland, whom he married, and in the last act he confesses that his system of universal benevolence had been a fatal mistake. Though inclined to the right, I had not courage to condemn the wrong; my charity was but injustice, my benevolence but weakness, and my friendship but credulity." Honeywood, Sir William, in the same comedy, the uncle of the above, a generous and high-minded gentleman, whose benevolence, however, is limited by the demands of good sense, and who strives to bring his nephew within the same judicious bounds. Honoria, subject of Dryden's poem, Theodore and Honoria, imitated from a story in Boccaccio's Decameron, 8th day. The mounted spectre of a knight pursues with dogs the ghostly form of the woman who in life had scornfully repelled his love. Boccaccio's story the names given as Guido Cavalcante and Nostalgia degli Onesti. In are Hope, Evelyn, heroine of a poem by Browning in Men and Women (1855). Evelyn, a maid of sixteen, is dead. He who had loved her, a man thrice as old," contemplating her as she lies in the beauty of death and asking himself whether his love was all in vain, replies that love is 44 eternal, that there never will be one lost good, and that he will claim her in the life to come or in worlds not yet created, and be more worthy of her then than now. Horatio, in Shakespeare's Hamlet, the faithful friend and counsellor of the titular hero. Horatio is the only complete man in the play solid, well-knit and true; a noble, quiet nature with that highest of all qualities, judgment, always sane and prompt, who never drags his anchors for any wind of opinion or fortune, but grips all the closer to the reality of things. He seems one of those calm, undemonstrative men whom we love and admire without asking to know why, crediting them with the capacity for great things, without any test of actual achievement, because we feel that their manhood is a constant quality, and no mere accident of circumstance and opportunity. -J. R. LowELL: Literary Essays, Shakespeare Once More. Horner, Gilpin, a goblin page of somewhat baffling characteristics, introduced by Sir Walter Scott in his Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805). Lord Cranstoun's page is somewhat unearthly. It is a little misshapen dwarf whom he found one day when he was huntIng in a solitary glen and took home with him. It never speaks except now and then to cry "Lost! lost! lost!" and is on the whole a hateful, malicious little urchin with no one good quality but his unaccountable fidelity and attachment to his master.FRANCIS JEFFREY: Essays from the Edinburgh Review-Walter Scott. Hortense, in Dickens's Bleak House, the French maid to Lady Dedlock. She looks "like a very neat she-wolf imperfectly tamed." She imperfectly guesses Lady Dedlock's secret, shoots Mr. Tulkinghorn, and disappears, still defiant, in the custody of Mr. Inspector Bucket. Hosier, Admiral, the subject of Richard Glover's ballad, Admiral Hosier's Ghost (1739), was a British officer who in command of 20 ships and 3000 men was sent to the Spanish West Indies with orders to blockade but not to attack. His men were decimated by disease; he himself died of a broken heart at this enforced inaction. The poem tells how, after Vernon's victory, the ghosts of Hosier and his men arose all in dreary hammocks shrouded, which for wind Howe ing sheets they wore" and lamented their lost opportunities. Hotspur, a popular nickname given to Harry Percy (1364-1403), the son of the Earl of Northumberland, on account of his fiery temper. Shakespeare adopts the pseudonym in the two parts of Henry IV. Hotspur, who to bring him into contrast with the Prince is made much younger than the Harry Percy of history, is as ardent in the pursuit of glory as the Prince seems to be indifferent to it. To his hot temper and quick sense of personal honor, small matters are great; he does not see things in their true poportions; he lacks self-control, he has no easiness of nature. Yet he is gallant, chivalrous, not devoid of generosity nor of quick affections, though never in a high sense disinterested.-DOWDEN: Shakespeare Primer. Houyhnhnms, in Swift's Gulliver's Travels, a race of horses endowed with reason and bearing rule over the degraded yahoos-the latter being caricatures of humanity as the former are sublimations of the animal creation. The name is obviously onomatapoetic and is meant to suggest the neighing of a horse. Nay, would kind Jove my organs so dispose To hymn harmonious Houyhnhnms through the nose, I'd call thee Houyhnhnm, that high-sounding Howe, Miss, in Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe (1751), the friend and correspondent of the heroine. Miss Howe is an admirably sketched character, drawn in strong contrast to that of Clarissa, yet worthy of being her friend— with more of worldly perspicacity, though less of abstracted principle; and who, when they argue upon points of doubt and deli cacy, is often able, by going directly to the question at issue, to start the game, while her more gifted correspondent does but beat the bush. Her high spirit and disinterested devotion for her friend, acknowledging, as she does on all occasions, her own inferiority, show her in a noble point of view; and though we are afraid she must have given honest Hickman (notwithstanding her resolution to the contrary) rather an uneasy time of it after marriage, yet it is impossible not to think that she was a prize worth suffering for.-SIR WALTER ScoTT. Miss Howe, who is called a young lady of sense and honor, is not only extremely silly, but a more vicious character than Sally Martin, whose crimes are owing at Hubbard first to seduction and afterwards to necessity; while this virtuous damsel without any blind on one side and wall-eyed on the other, is reminiscent of Don Quixote's Rosinante and Gargantua's mare. Hudson, Sir Geoffrey, a famous dwarf (1678-1698), court jester to Henrietta Maria, the Queen of Charles reason insults her mother at home and ridicules her abroad; abuses the man she marries and is impertinent and impudent with great applause.-LADY M. W. MONTAGU: Letter to the Countess of Bute, March 1. Hubbard, Bartley, the chief char-II of England, is introduced into acter in Howells' novel, A Modern Instance (1882). 1752. A rascal of the most frequent American pattern. He is neither cruel nor a slave of his passions, nor has he any desire to sacrifice others to himself. On the contrary, he is very good-natured and amiable, and likes to see everybody happy about him. But of honor or principle he has no idea whatever. In fact, for the old-fashioned notion of principle he has substituted a new ideathat of the primary importance of "smartness"-i.e., of that quality which enables a man to get ahead of his fellow by short cuts, dodges, tricks, devices of all kinds which just fall short of crime.-N. Y. Nation. Huddibras, Sir, in Spenser's Faërie Queene (11, ii), the suitor of Perissa (who typifies extravagance), and himself described as a man more huge in strength than wise in works." Hudibras, Sir, titular hero of a burlesque epic in octosyllabic verse by Samuel Butler, published in three parts (1663, 1664, 1678). The name is derived from the Sir Huddibras (q.v.) of Spenser; the setting is imitated from Don Quixote, though the spirit is quite different. Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away because he deemed it obsolete; Butler would dismiss Puritanism with a kick because he deemed it a still dangerous innovation, scotched but not killed. Hudibras is a true-blue Presbyterian, ignorant and conceited, but a pedantic pretender to learning, who starts out on a crusade against the follies and amusements of the time, bent on reforming them by apostolic blows and knocks." His attendant squire is Ralpho, an Independent and an evident recrudescence of Sancho Panza. Hudibras is variously said to be drawn from Sir Samuel Luke or Sir Henry Rosewell. He is represented as humpbacked and potbellied. His orange-tawny beard is long and unkempt because he had vowed not to trim it until the monarchy was overthrown. His horse, Scott's novel, Peveril of the Peak. He tells Julian Peveril the true story of how the late queen had caused him to be enclosed in a pie which was served up at a royal banquet. A Humorous Lieutenant, The, chief comic character (otherwise unnamed) in a tragi-comedy of that title by Beaumont and Fletcher (1616). sort of privileged jester at the Court of Antigonus, King of Macedon, he accidentally drinks up a love-potion prepared by the royal order for a recalcitrant maiden named Celia. Thereupon the Lieutenant becomes violently enamored of the king and exhibits his passion in various absurd ways. Humphrey, Master, in Dickens's Old Curiosity Shop, a deformed, misshapen old clockmaker who according to the original scheme was to have been the narrator of the story, as may be gathered from the earlier chapters which appeared (1840) as part of a serial, Master Humphrey's Clock. Sam Weller and his father were resuscitated from the Pickwick Papers to assist the sale, but only two tales were included in the publication, (completed in 1841) and these (Barnaby Rudge and The Old Curiosity Shop) were afterwards republished separately. From that time, says Dickens, Master Humphrey's Clock, "as originally constructed, became one of the lost books of the earth, which, we all know, are far more precious than any that can be read for love or money." The original clock" is said to be in existence. The town of Barnard Castle is most picturesque, with a ruined castle of the Baliols. Dickens in early life used frequently to come friends of his. down and stay there with some young artist The idea of Humphrey's Clock first sprang from Humphrey, the watchmaker in the town, and the picture in the beginning of the book is of the clock over the door of his shop.-AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE, The Story of My Life, vol. ii, p. 275. Hunter, Mr. and Mrs. Leo, in Arrius; he defeats Messala in a Dickens's Pickwick Papers, a couple famous chariot race; after many viciswho, as their name implies, are in-situdes he, his mother and sister are defatigable hunters of society lions healed of leprosy by the Messiah. He so as to exhibit them in their own witnesses the baptism, miracles, trial parlors. and crucifixion of Christ and turns Christian himself. Hur, Judah Ben, hero of a historical romance, Ben Hur, a Tale of the Christ, by Gen. Lew Wallace. The head of a wealthy and noble family in Jerusalem, he is wrongly accused by his false friend Messala of attempted murder on the Roman governor, is stripped of all his possessions and condemned to the galleys. His galley is attacked and sunk by robbers; his bravery in its defence leads to his being adopted by the tribune Iachimo, in Shakespeare's Cymbeline (1605), a friend of Posthumus, who accepts the latter's wager that he cannot seduce Imogen from her wifely fidelity to Posthumus. When he finds her incorruptible, Iachimo manages to get smuggled into her chamber and as she sleeps he takes a mental inventory of its contents, notes certain marks on her body, and possesses himself of her bracelet. The evidence convinces Posthumus; he repudiates his wife and hands lachimo the stakes, his own diamond ring. Later, Imogen disguised as a boy page, is brought before King Cymbeline and, being bid to demand a favor, asks that Iachimo shall reveal how he obtained the diamond ring upon his finger, whereupon the whole truth I Hurlothrumbo, hero of a dramatic extravaganza (1730) by the English actor-dramatist, Samuel Johnson, which had a great contemporary vogue. Consider, then, before, like Hurlo-Thrumbo, Believe me, Simple minded critics have been of opinion that Shakespeare constructed Iago on the lines of the historic Richard IIIthat is to say found him in literature, in the pages of a chronicler. Shakespeare met Iago in his own life, saw portions and aspects of him on every hand throughout his manhood, encountered him piecemeal as it were on his daily path, till one fine day when he thoroughly felt and understood what malignant cleverness and baseness can effect, he melted down all these fragments, and out of them cast this figure. -COLERIDGE. There is no character in Shakespeare's plays so full of serpentine power and serpentine poison as Iago. The Iachimo of Cymbeline is a faint sketch in water colors of the absolute villain lago. He is envious of have wronged his honor; but his malignancy Cassio, and suspects that the Moor may is out of all proportion to even its alleged motives.-E. DOWDEN: The Shakespeare Primer. Ianthe, in classical mythology the maiden for whose sake Iphis was changed from female to male. Sir William Davenant, in The Siege of Rhodes (1656), took the name for his leading female character. Pepys's Diary often refers to Mrs. Betterton as Ianthe, because that was the part in which he most admired her. Shelley and Byron have made the name familiar to modern readers. Shelley's Ianthe in Queen Mab (1810) is the maiden to whom the queen appears in a dream. Byron's Ianthe, to whom he dedicated his Childe Harold in the introductory stanzas written |