Part 5

The most recent editions of the text, or of portions of it, with and without commentaries are the following:--H. Stein, _Herodoti Historiae_ (ed. Major, 2 vols., Berlin, 1869-1871, with _apparatus criticus_; still the best edition of the text); H. Kellenberg, _Historiarum libri IX._ (2 vols., Leipzig, 1887); van Herwerden, [Greek: Historiai] (Leiden, 1885); H. Stein, _Herodotus, erklart_ (Berlin, 1856-1861, and several editions since; the best short commentary and introduction); A. H. Sayce, _The Ancient Empires of the East, Herodotus I.-III., with introductions and appendices_ (1883; an attempt to prove the unveracity of Herodotus, especially in regard to the extent of his travels, which has found little support amongst more recent English or German writers); R. W. Macan, _Herodotus IV.-VI._ (2 vols., 1895) and _Herodotus VII.-IX._ (2 vols., 1908), with exhaustive introduction, appendices and notes; the only scientific edition of these books in English; E. Abbott, _Herodotus V. and VI._ (Oxford, 1893); A. Wiedemann, _Herodots zweites Buch mit sachlichen Bemerkungen_ (Leipzig, 1890; the best and fullest commentary on book ii.).

Among works of value illustrative of Herodotus may be mentioned Bouhier, _Recherches sur Herodote_ (Dijon, 1746); Rennell, _Geography of Herodotus_ (London, 1800); Niebuhr, _Geography of Herodotus and Scythia_ (Eng. trans., Oxford, 1830); Dahlmann, _Herodot, aus seinem Buche sein Leben_ (Altona, 1823); Eltz, _Quaestiones Herodoteae_ (Leipzig, 1841); Kenrick, _Egypt of Herodotus_ (London, 1841); Mure, _Literature of Greece_, vol. iv. (London, 1852); Abicht, _Ubersicht uber den Herodoteischen Dialekt_ (Leipzig, 1869, 3rd ed., 1874), and _De codicum Herodoti fide ac auctoritate_ (Naumburg, 1869); Melander, _De anacoluthis Herodoteis_ (Lund, 1869); Matzat, "Uber die Glaubenswurdigkeit der geograph. Angaben Herodots uber Asien," in _Hermes_, vi.; Budinger, _Zur agyptischen Forschung Herodots_ (Vienna, 1873, reprinted from the _Sitzungsber._ of the Vienna Acad.); Merzdorf, _Quaestiones grammaticae de dialecto Herodotea_ (Leipzig, 1875); A. Kirchhoff, _Uber die Entstehungszeit des Herodotischen Geschichtswerkes_ (Berlin, 1878); Adolf Bauer, _Herodots Biographie_ (Vienna, 1878); H. Delbruck, _Perser und Burgunderkriege_ (Berlin, 1887; of great importance for the criticism of the Persian Wars); N. Wecklein, _Uber die Tradition der Perserkriege_ (Munich, 1876); A. Hauvette-Besnault, _Herodote historien des guerres mediques_ (Paris, 1894); J. A. R. Munro, _Some Observations on the Persian Wars_ (in various vols. of the _Journal of Hellenic Studies_; acute and suggestive); G. B. Grundy, _The Great Persian War_ (London, 1901); J. P. Mahaffy, _History of Greek Classical Literature_, ii. 16 ff. (London, 1880); E. Meyer, _Forschungen zur alten Geschichte_, i. 151 ff., and ii. 196 ff. (Halle, 1892-1899); Busolt, _Griechische Geschichte_, ii. 602 ff. (2nd ed., Gotha, 1895); J. B. Bury, _Ancient Greek Historians_ (1908), lecture 2. For notices of current literature see Bursian's _Jahresbericht_. Students of the original may also consult with advantage the lexicons of Aemilius Portus (Oxford, 1817) and of Schweighauser (London, 1824). On Herodotus' debt to Hecataeus see Wells, in _Journ. Hell. Stud._, 1909, pt. i. (G. R.; E. M. W.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The date of his travels is difficult to determine. E. Meyer inclines to put all the longer journeys, except the Scythian, between 440 and 430 B.C. The journey to Susa and Babylon is put by C. F. Lehmann c. 450 B.C., and by H. Stein before 450.

[2] Most recent critics (e.g. Stein, Meyer, Busolt) put the visit to Egypt after the suppression of the revolt under Inarus and Amyrtaeus (i.e. after 449 B.C.), on the strength of Herod. 2. 30, which implies the restoration of Persian authority.

[3] Stein, Meyer, Busolt, and other recent writers attribute his departure from Halicarnassus to political causes, e.g. the ascendancy of the anti-Athenian party in the state.

[4] This story is on chronological grounds rejected by all recent critics.

[5] Opinion is divided as to this visit to Athens after his settlement at Thurii. Stein, Meyer and Busolt hold that much of his work (especially the later books) was composed at Athens soon after 430 B.C. See further Wachsmuth, _Rheinisches Museum_, lvi. (1901) 215-218. Macan, _Herodotus_ VII.-IX. (_Introduction_, pp. xlv.-lxvi.), seeks to prove that the last three books were the first part of the _Histories_ to be composed. He is followed in this view by Bury.

HEROET, ANTOINE, surnamed LA MAISON-NEUVE (d. 1568), French poet, was born in Paris of a family connected with the famous chancellor, Francois Olivier. His poetry belongs to his early years, for after he had taken orders he ceased to write profane poetry, no doubt because he considered it out of keeping with his calling, in which he attained the dignity of bishop of Digue. His chief work is _La Parfaicte Amye_ (Lyons, 1542) in which he developed the idea of a purely spiritual love, based chiefly on the reading of the Italian Neo-Platonists. The book aroused great controversy. La Borderie replied in _L'Amye de cour_ with a description of a very much more human woman, and Charles Fontaine contributed a _Contr' amye de cour_ to the dispute. Heroet, in addition to some translations from the classics, wrote the _Complainte d'une dame nouvellement surprise d'amour_, an _Epistre a Francois I^er_, and some pieces included in the now very rare _Opuscules d'amour par Heroet, La Borderie et autres divins poetes_ (Lyons, 1547). Heroet belongs to the Lyonnese school of which Maurice Sceve may be regarded as the leader. Clement Marot praises him, and Ronsard was careful to exempt him with one or two others from the scorn he poured on his immediate predecessors.

See H. F. Cary, _The Early French Poets_ (1846).

HEROIC ROMANCES, the name by which is distinguished a class of imaginative literature which flourished in the 17th century, principally in France. The beginnings of modern fiction in that country took a pseudo-bucolic form, and the celebrated _Astree_ (1610) of Honore d'Urfe (1568-1625), which is the earliest French novel, is properly styled a pastoral. But this ingenious and diffuse production, in which all is artificial, was the source of a vast literature, which took many and diverse forms. Although its action was, in the main, languid and sentimental, there was a side of the _Astree_ which encouraged that extravagant love of glory, that spirit of "panache," which was now rising to its height in France. That spirit it was which animated Marin le Roy, sieur de Gomberville (1600-1674), who was the inventor of what have since been known as the Heroical Romances. In these there was experienced a violent recrudescence of the old medieval elements of romance, the impossible valour devoted to a pursuit of the impossible beauty, but the whole clothed in the language and feeling and atmosphere of the age in which the books were written. In order to give point to the chivalrous actions of the heroes, it was always hinted that they were well-known public characters of the day in a romantic disguise.

In the _Astree_ of Honore d'Urfe, which was a pure pastoral, in the religious romances of Pierre Camus (1582-1653), in the comic _Francion_ of Charles Sorel, piquancy had been given to the recital by this belief that real personages could be recognized under the disguises. But in the _Carithee_ of Gomberville (1621) we have a pastoral which is already beginning to be a heroic romance, and a book in which, under a travesty of Roman history, an appeal is made to an extravagantly chivalrous enthusiasm. A further development was seen in the _Polyxene_ (1623) of Francois de Moliere, and the _Endymion_ (1624) of Gombauld; in the latter the elderly queen, Marie de' Medici, was celebrated under the disguise of Diana, for whom a beautiful shepherd of Caria (the author himself) nourishes a hopeless passion. The earliest of the Heroic Romances, pure and simple, is, however, the celebrated _Polexandre_ (1629) of Gomberville. The author began by intending his hero to represent Louis XIII., but he changed his mind, and drew a portrait of Cardinal Richelieu. In this novel, for the first time, the romantic character proper to this class of books is seen undiluted; there is no intrusion of a personage who is not celebrated for his birth, his beauty or his exploits. The story deals with the adventures of a hero who visits all the sea-coasts of the world, the most remote as well as the most fabulous, in search of an ineffable princess, Alcidiane. This absurd and pretentious, yet very original piece of invention enjoyed an immense success, and historical romances of a similar class competed for the favour of the public. There was an equal amount of geography and more of ancient history in the _Ariane_ (1632) of Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin (1595-1676), a book which, long neglected, has in late years been rediscovered, and which has been greeted by M. Paul Morillot as the most readable and the least tiresome of all the Heroic Romances. The type of that class of literature, however, has always been found in the highly elaborate writings of Gauthier de Coste de la Calprenede (1609-1663), which enjoyed for a time a prodigious celebrity, and were read and imitated all over Europe. La Calprenede was a Gascon soldier, imbued with all the extravagance of his race, and in full sympathy with the audacity and violence of the aristocratic society of France in his day. His _Cassandre_, which appeared in ten volumes between 1642 and 1645, is perhaps the most characteristic of all the Heroic Romances. It deals with a highly romantic epoch of ancient history, the decline of the empire of Alexander the Great. The wars of the Persians and of the Scythians are introduced, and among the characters are discovered such personages as Artaxerxes, Roxana and Ephestion. It must not be supposed, however, that la Calprenede makes the smallest effort to deal with the subject accurately or realistically. The figures are those of his own day; they are seigneurs and great ladies of the court of Louis XIII., masquerading in Macedonian raiment. The passion of love is dominant throughout, and it is treated in the most exalted and hyperbolical spirit. The central heroes of the story, Oroondate and Lysimachus, are dignified, eloquent and amorous; they undergo unexampled privations in the quest of incomparable ladies whose beauty and whose nobility is only equalled by their magnificent loyalty. These books were written with an aim that was partly didactic. Their object was to entertain the ladies and to gratify a taste for endlessly wire-drawn sentimentality, but it was also to teach fortitude and grandeur of soul and to inculcate lessons of practical chivalry. La Calprenede followed up the success of his _Cassandre_ with a _Cleopatre_ (1647) in twelve volumes, and a _Faramond_ (1661) which he did not live to finish. He became more extravagant, more rhapsodical as he proceeded, and he lost all the little hold on history which he had ever held. _Cleopatre_, nevertheless, enjoyed a prodigious popularity, and it became the fashion to emulate as far as possible the prowess of its magnificent hero, the proud Artaban. It should be said that la Calprenede objected to his books being styled romances, and insisted that they were specimens of "history embellished with certain inventions." He may, in opposition to his wishes, claim the doubtful praise of being, in reality, the creator of the modern historical novel. He was immediately imitated or accompanied by a large number of authors, of whom two have achieved a certain immortality, which, unhappily, must be confessed to be partly of ridicule. The vogue of the historical romance was carried to its height by a brother and a sister, Georges de Scudery (1601-1667) and Madeleine de Scudery (1608-1701), who represented in their own persons all the extravagant, tempestuous and absurd elements of the age, and whose elephantine romances remain as portents in the history of literature. These novels--there are five of them--were signed by Georges de Scudery, but it is believed that all were in the main written by Madeleine. The earliest was _Ibrahim, ou l'Illustre Bassa_ (1641); it was followed by _Le Grand Cyrus_ (1648-1653) and the final, and most preposterous member of the series was _Clelie_ (1649-1654). The romances of Mlle de Scudery (for to her we may safely attribute them) are much inferior in style to those of la Calprenede. They are pretentious, affected and sickly. The author abuses the element of analysis, and pushes a psychology, which was beyond the age in penetration, to a wearisome and excessive extent. Nothing, it is probable, in the whole evolution of the Historical Romances has attracted so much attention as the "Carte de Tendre" which occurs in the opening book of _Clelie_. This celebrated map, drawn by the heroine in order to show the route from New Friendship to Tender, and a geographical symbol, therefore, of the progress of love, with its city of Tender-upon-Esteem, its sea of Enmity, its river of Inclination, its rock-built citadel of Pride, its cold lake of Indifference, is a miracle of elaborate and incongruous ingenuity. But, amusing as it is, it shows into what depths of puerility the amorous casuistry of these romances had fallen. These novels formed the chief topic of conversation and of correspondence in the literary society which gathered at and around the Hotel de Rambouillet, and in the personages of Mlle de Scudery's romances could be recognized all the famous leaders of that society. The mawkish love-making and the false heroism of these monstrous novels went rapidly out of fashion in France soon after 1660, when the epoch of the Heroic Romance came to an end. In England the Heroic Romance had a period of flourishing popularity. All the principal French examples were very promptly translated, and "he was not to be admitted into the academy of wit who had not read _Astrea_ and _The Grand Cyrus_." The great vogue of these books in England lasted from about 1645 to 1660. It led, of course, to the composition of original works in imitation of the French. The most remarkable and successful of these was _Parthenissa_, published in 1654 by Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill and afterwards Earl of Orrery (1621-1679), which was greatly admired by Dorothy Osborne and her correspondents. Addison speaks in the "Spectator" of the popularity of all these huge books, "the _Grand Cyrus_, with a pin stuck in one of the middle leaves, _Clelie_, which opened of itself in the place that describes two lovers in a bower." When the drama, and in particular tragedy, was reinstituted in England, sentimental readers found a field for their emotions on the stage, and the heroic romances immediately began to go out of fashion. They lingered, however, for a quarter of a century more, and M. Jusserand has analysed what may be considered the very latest of the race, _Pandion and Amphigenia_, published in 1665 by the dramatist, John Crowne.

See Gordon de Percel, _De l'usage des romans_ (1734); Andre Le Breton, _Le Roman au XVII^e siecle_ (1890); Paul Morillot, _Le Roman en France depuis 1610_ (1894); J. J. Jusserand, _Le Roman anglais au XVII^e siecle_ (1888). (E. G.)

HEROIC VERSE, a term exclusively used in English to Indicate the rhymed iambic line or HEROIC COUPLET. In ancient literature, the heroic verse, [Greek: heroikon metron], was synonymous with the dactylic hexameter. It was in this measure that those typically heroic poems, the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ and the _Aeneid_ were written. In English, however, it was not enough to designate a single iambic line of five beats as heroic verse, because it was necessary to distinguish blank verse from the distich, which was formed by the heroic couplet. This had escaped the notice of Dryden, when he wrote "The English Verse, which we call Heroic, consists of no more than ten syllables." If that were the case, then _Paradise Lost_ would be written in heroic verse, which is not true. What Dryden should have said is "consists of two rhymed lines, each of ten syllables." In French the alexandrine has always been regarded as the heroic measure of that language. The dactylic movement of the heroic line in ancient Greek, the famous [Greek: rhythmos heroos] of Homer, is expressed in modern Europe by the iambic movement. The consequence is that much of the rush and energy of the antique verse, which at vigorous moments was like the charge of a battalion, is lost. It is owing to this, in part, that the heroic couplet is so often required to give, in translation, the full value of a single Homeric hexameter. It is important to insist that it is the couplet, not the single line, which constitutes heroic verse. It is interesting to note that the Latin poet Ennius, as reported by Cicero, called the heroic metre of one line _versum longum_, to distinguish it from the brevity of lyrical measures. The current form of English heroic verse appears to be the invention of Chaucer, who used it in his _Legend of Good Women_ and afterwards, with still greater freedom, in the _Canterbury Tales_. Here is an example of it in its earliest development:--

"And thus the longe day in fight they spend, Till, at the last, as everything hath end, Anton is shent, and put him to the flight, And all his folk to go, as best go might."

This way of writing was misunderstood and neglected by Chaucer's English disciples, but was followed nearly a century later by the Scottish poet, called Blind Harry (_c._ 1475), whose _Wallace_ holds an important place in the history of versification as having passed on the tradition of the heroic couplet. Another Scottish poet, Gavin Douglas, selected heroic verse for his translation of the _Aeneid_ (1513), and displayed, in such examples as the following, a skill which left little room for improvement at the hands of later poets:--

"One sang, 'The ship sails over the salt foam, Will bring the merchants and my leman home'; Some other sings, 'I will be blithe and light, Mine heart is leant upon so goodly wight.'"

The verse so successfully mastered was, however, not very generally used for heroic purposes in Tudor literature. The early poets of the revival, and Spenser and Shakespeare after them, greatly preferred stanzaic forms. For dramatic purposes blank verse was almost exclusively used, although the French had adopted the rhymed alexandrine for their plays. In the earlier half of the 17th century, heroic verse was often put to somewhat unheroic purposes, mainly in prologues and epilogues, or other short poems of occasion; but it was nobly redeemed by Marlowe in his _Hero and Leander_ and respectably by Browne in his _Britannia's Pastorals_. It is to be noted, however, that those Elizabethans who, like Chapman, Warner and Drayton, aimed at producing a warlike and Homeric effect, did so in shambling fourteen-syllable couplets. The one heroic poem of that age written at considerable length in the appropriate national metre is the _Bosworth Field_ of Sir John Beaumont (1582-1628). Since the middle of the 17th century, when heroic verse became the typical and for a while almost the solitary form in which serious English poetry was written, its history has known many vicissitudes. After having been the principal instrument of Dryden and Pope, it was almost entirely rejected by Wordsworth and Coleridge, but revised, with various modifications, by Byron, Shelley (in _Julian and Maddalo_) and Keats (in _Lamia_). In the second half of the 19th century its prestige was restored by the brilliant work of Swinburne in _Tristram_ and elsewhere. (E. G.)

HEROLD, LOUIS JOSEPH FERDINAND (1791-1833), French musician, the son of Francois Joseph Herold, an accomplished pianist, was born in Paris, on the 28th of January 1791. It was not till after his father's death that Herold in 1806 entered the Paris conservatoire, where he studied under Catal and Mehul. In 1812 he gained the grand prix de Rome with the cantata _La Duchesse de la Valliere_, and started for Italy, where he remained till 1815 and composed a symphony, a cantata and several pieces of chamber music. During his stay in Italy also Herold for the first time ventured on the stage with the opera _La Gioventu di Enrico V._, first performed at Naples in 1815 with moderate success. During a short stay in Vienna he was much in the society of Salieri. Returning to Paris he was invited by Boieldieu to collaborate with him on an opera called _Charles de France_, performed in 1816, and soon followed by Herold's first French opera, _Les Rosieres_ (1817), which was received very favourably. Herold produced numerous dramatic works for the next fifteen years in rapid succession. Only the names of some of the more important need here be mentioned:--_La Clochette_ (1817), _L'Auteur mort et vivant_ (1820), _Marie_ (1826), and the ballets _La Fille mal gardee_ (1828) and _La Belle au bois dormant_ (1829). Herold also wrote a vast quantity of pianoforte music, in spite of his time being much occupied by his duties as accompanist at the Italian opera in Paris. In 1831 he produced the romantic opera _Zampa_, and in the following year _Le Pre aux clercs_ (first performance December 15, 1832), in which French _esprit_ and French chivalry find their most perfect embodiment. These two operas secured immortality for the name of the composer, who died on the 18th of January 1833, of the lung disease from which he had suffered for many years, and the effects of which he had accelerated by incessant work. Herold's incomplete opera _Ludovic_ was afterwards printed by J. F. F. Halevy.

HERON (Fr. _heron_; Ital. _aghirone_, _airone_; Lat. _ardea_; Gr. [Greek: erodios]: A.-S. _hragra_; Icelandic, _hegre_; Swed. _hager_; Dan. _heire_; Ger. _Heiger_, _Reiher_, _Heergans_; Dutch, _reiger_), a long-necked, long-winged and long-legged bird, the typical representative of the group _Ardeidae_. It is difficult or even impossible to estimate with any accuracy the number of species of _Ardeidae_ which exist. Professor Hermann Schlegel in 1863 enumerated 61, besides 5 of what he terms "conspecies," as contained in the collection at Leyden (_Mus. des Pays-Bas_, Ardeae, 64 pp.),--on the other hand, G. R. Gray in 1871 (_Handlist_, &c. iii. 26-34) admitted above 90, while Dr Anton Reichenow (_Journ. fur Ornithologie_, 1877, pp. 232-275) recognizes 67 as known, besides 15 "subspecies" and 3 varieties, arranging them in 3 genera, _Nycticorax_, _Botaurus_ and _Ardea_, with 17 sub-genera. But it is difficult to separate the family, with any satisfactory result, into genera, if structural characters have to be found for these groups, for in many cases they run almost insensibly into each other--though in common language it is easy to speak of herons, egrets, bitterns, night-herons and boatbills. With the exception of the last, Professor Schlegel retains all in the genus _Ardea_, dividing it into _eight_ sections, the names of which may perhaps be Englished--great herons, small herons, egrets, semi-egrets, rail-like herons, little bitterns, bitterns and night-herons.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Heron.]