Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/116
Reports of Cases determined by Sir John Holt, 1681-1710, appeared at London in 1738; and The Judgments delivered in the case of Asliby v. White and otJiers, and in the case of John Patyand others, printed from original MSS., at London, 1837. See Burnet s Own Times; Taller, No. xiv. ; a Life, published in 1764; Welsby, Lives of Eminent English Judges of the 17th and 18th Centuries, 1846; and Campbell s Lives of the Lord Chief Justices.
HÖLTY, Ludwig Heinrich Christoph (1748–1776), German poet, and one of the founders of the " Hainbund," was born at Mariensee in Hanover, December 21, 1748. His father, who was a pastor, was three times married, and Holty was the eldest of his ten children. His second wife, Holty s mother, died in 1758, and her children were tenderly brought up by the third wife, together with her own large family. In his ninth year, Holty, till then a beautiful and lively child, was smitten with smallpox, and was for some time nearly blind. On his recovery, his features and dis position were altered, and he was through life plain, silent, and awkward. From an early age he was an inveterate lover of solitude and books. He was taught at home by his father, besides the ordinary school branches, Latin, French, and Hebrew, and at the age of sixteen was sent to the public school of Celle. On leaving Celle three years later, he went as a theological student to Gottingen, where, however, he devoted his leisure hours to the study of the English and Italian poets, and began his own literary career. The appearance of some of his verses in a Gottingen weekly paper, especially those on the death of Munchhausen, brought his name before the public, and he was shortly afterwards admitted as a member of the "German Society." He now made the acquaintance of Biirger, Miller, Voss, Boie, the brothers Stolberg, and other poets, in conjunction with whom he formed in 1772 the famous poetical brother hood known as the " Hainbuud." The next two years were spent by Holty in this brilliant and enthusiastic company; and, with the assistance of a scholarship and a post in the philological seminary in Gottingen, he suc ceeded in making a scanty livelihood by teaching English and Greek and by making translations. In 1774, having abandoned the intention of entering the church, he accom panied his friend Miller to Leipsic, where he remained for a year in the hopes of obtaining a private tutorship. The penniless young poet had for some time been silently attached to a lady, who about this time married some more eligible suitor. His health now began to cause him anxiety s and symptoms of consumption, inherited from his mother, made their appearance. His prospects were further altered by the death of his father in 1775 ; and Holty found him self not only thrown entirely on his own resources, but obliged in some measure to assist his family. Towards the end of 1775 he settled in Hanover, to be near his physician Zimmermann and his friend Boie, and there he died in his twenty-eighth year, September 1, 1776. Holty was a writer of ballads, idylls, elegies, and odes. His conceptions, if not lofty, are always graceful, his style finished, his language and rhythm faultless. He was from the first one of the shining lights of the " Hainbund," and during his short career became one of the most popu lar of German lyric poets. Many of his songs have become folk-songs, and his ballads have been ranked with those of Burger.
Holty was engaged when he died in collecting and revising liis poems for the press ; and after his death Ins friends Boie and Voss undertook the charge of their publication. In 1782, however, an incorrect edition of his works appeared edited by Geissler, which contained many poems not by Holty. The correct edition was first published by Voss and Stolberg in 1783, and again, revised, in 1804. An edition of his Gcdichtc, with a biographical introduction and notes by Karl Halm, was published by Brockhaus in the Bibliothek der Deutschen Nationalhtcratur (1870).