A Finding List: Part 2.

Bacon’s Acquaintances, Friends, Companions, Colleagues

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W-X-Y-Z

In this section, it was felt the need to contain all persons referred to in Bacon’s works, speeches, and letters who were his acquaintances, friends, or companions.

They are given a well deserved synoptical, yet understandable biography. This way, all references noted to persons mentioned by Bacon would be well understood to why he referred to them, and under what circumstances they surrounded his lifestyle. In continuation to these synoptical biographies, are the works of these persons either in a detailed account that will be found in the Appendix volume or in a synoptical form after each individual biography.
Where no additional information is added to those works, is due to the lack of historical records, which is believed to be more and more noted to modern researchers on the history of those times and especially when compiling such a volume as this one.

A jesty note from Edmund Burke will end the introduction to this part: “Strip majesty of its externals and it is merely a jest.” [(m)ajest(y).]

H

Hall Edward (d.1547) Solicitor. Became one of the judges of the Sheriff’s Court. His History of the Union of the Two Noble and Illustre families of Lancastre and Yorke brings the history down to the year 1532. It was not published till 1548, the year after the death of the author, and had been completed by Grafton.

Hall. Dr (1575–1635) Celebrated writer in the age of Elizabeth on matters of anatomy and chirurgy. He was also well known, in his day also as a poet. His chief work, copies of which are extremely rare, was published in 1565, under the title of The Court of Virtue: containing many Holy or Spretual Songs, Sonnettes, Psalms, Ballets, and short sentences, as well of Holy Scripture as others, with Musical Notes. 1

Harington John. Sir (1561–1612) One of the most noted characters in the reign of Elizabeth, as a courtier and a man of wit. His poems are chiefly of a secular character; but some few of his minor pieces have a moral and religious tendency, and among them are a few versions of selected psalms. 2 He published An Apologie of Poetrie in 1591.

Harvey William. Dr (1578–1657) Physician to King James I., and discoverer of the circulation of the blood at this period; a discovery which serves to explain the whole animal œconomy. Sir Thomas Browne, who well knew the importance of it, refers it to the discovery of the New World. Harvey was educated at Caius College, Cambridge, and the University of Padua. Charles I., gave him the Wardenship of Merton College in Oxford as a reward for his service, but the times suffered him not to receive or enjoy any benefit by it. He was also physician to Francis Bacon, then Lord Chancellor, “whom he esteemed much for his wit and style, but would not allow him to be a great Philosopher. Said he to me, He writes Philosophy like a Lord Chancellor, speaking in derision; I have cured him. (Aubrey). Harvey also had the Earl of Arundel among his patients.

Hayward John. Sir (1564–1627) Born at Felixstowe and was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. “The First Part of the Life and Reign of King Henry the IV., extending to the end of the first year of his reign. Imprinted at London by John Wolfe, and are to be sold at his shop in Pope’s head Alley, near to the Exchange. 1599.” 4to. pp. 149, besides title page, dedication, and preface. Copies of this work differ in the ornaments upon the title page, and in the dedication. It would seem that part of the impression was worked off when a mistake of fronti instead of fronte was discovered in the dedication. The title page and dedication were then again set up, with different typographical ornaments, and the mistake corrected. It was reprinted London 1642, 8vo. with Sir Robert Cotton’s Short View of the reign of Henry III., prefixed. Lowndes, in his Bibliographer’s Manual, makes mention of an edition in 1627, 4to., of which there is no trace. The work itself, and the principal events upon which it dwells are the misgovernment of a sovereign and his advisers; the unauthorised return to England of Henry of Lancaster; and the unbounded popularity by force of which he was borne onwards to the throne, it will be seen that the book was justly calculated to irritate, if not to alarm, Queen Elizabeth I. [See Appendices Hayward’s Pamphlet].

Heath Douglas Denon (1811–1859) Born in Chancery Lane. So named after his godfather Mons. Denon, a noted French savant, Director of the Louvre, and Master of the Mint under Napoleon. He attended a private school at Greenwich, kept by Dr Burney, but left before he was 16, owning to indifferent health, and spent the best part of 1826–27 in Paris, with his father’s friend Monsieur Guyet, a strong Liberal, whose house was the frequent meeting place of the more eminent members of the opposition to the Government of Chas. X. Guizot, Casimir Périer and the Duc de Broglie, were all friends of the Guyets. Here he learnt French, and heard and saw much of interest. He was a spectator of the famous review of the National Guard in 1827, when the men, in place of the expected Vive le Roi, shouted to the King A bas Villèle, the name of the reactionary Premier, who had attempted to destroy the liberty of the Press. Madame de la Ferriè, of Paris and St Cloud, was Mlle. Guyet, she states that her father was a friend and associate of Monsieur Thiers. Returning from France about May 1827, he went up to Cambridge with his elder brother John for the Long Vacation, and read for two Long Vacations with Henry Malden, ex-fellow of Trinity, with whom he resided. Malden was a great classical scholar, and no bad mathematician, but Heath specially read classics with him, and mathematics with Challis, of Trinity. In October 1828, he went into residence at Trinity, and obtained his scholarship April 23, 1830. His degree in 1832 was very remarkable. He graduated as senior Wrangler, and took the first Smith’s Prize.
In the Classical Tripos of the same year he was placed ninth in the first class. Above him were Lushington, Shilleto, Thompson, Venables, and Alford. Looking at the competition, his classical was little lower than his mathematical degree, yet he used to say that he had never learnt Greek grammar, except by extensive reading, and that he never could do Latin verses, having never been taught that accomplishment at school. In short, he was a great scholar over a very extensive field of learning, and ought, it appears, to have become a fine literary critic. He was elected Fellow of Trinity in the same year as his degree, other distinguished men of this year, such as Thompson, Alford, Dobson, and even Lushington, having to wait till 1834. He collaborated in a complete edition of Bacon’s Works, in which Ellis undertook the philosophical, Heath the professional, and Spedding the literary and miscellaneous, to which he afterwards added the life and letters. In 1849 Mr. Ellis had a severe attack of rheumatic fever, which entirely disabled him for the work he had undertaken: he died in 1859. Spedding therefore, had to take his place, and edit as best he could, Bacon’s Philosophical Works. The book was published between 1857 and 1859. [Also see Spedding James; Ellis Leslie Robert.]

Herbert George (1593–1633) Born at Montgomery Castle. Herbert had the benefit of a high moral training at the hands of a good mother, and he early in life showed a marked inclination towards the study of divinity. After leaving Westminster School he proceeded to Cambridge, graduating there in 1612. He became an accomplished scholar and good musician, and his contributions to poetry very soon placed him in the foremost rank among the literary circles of his day. Soon after his appointment as Deputy Orator at Cambridge, he was advanced, chiefly through the influence of Sir Francis Nethersole, to the full Oratorship at the University, a post he had long coveted. In this capacity he was necessarily brought into contact with Court officials, and others of distinction. It was then that he made the acquaintance of Bacon, and we find him expressing a tribute of gratitude to his new friend in one of his orations, on the bestowal of the Instauratio to the University of Cambridge. Herbert, as a man and a poet, was as much appreciated in his own day as he is at the present time. He counted as his admirers and friends such writers as Crashaw, Vaughan, and Donne; and the revered Izaak Walton not only delighted to quote his poetry, but bequeathed to us a description of his Life for which we shall ever be grateful. Speaking of his Temple, Walton says: “It is a Book in which by declaring his own spiritual conflicts, he hath comforted and raised many a dejected soul, and charmed them with sweet and quiet thoughts.” Bacon, in referring to the translations into Latin of his Henry the Seventh and the Essays, says that the work was performed “by some good pens that do not forsake me,” and by this he is supposed to refer to the assistance rendered by Herbert, Selden, and Ben Jonson.

The Dedication of his Psalms into Verse:
To my very good Friend Mr. George Herbert.
The pains that it pleased you to take about some of my writings I cannot forget, which did put me in mind to dedicate to you this poor exercise of my sickness. Besides, it being my manner for dedications, to choose those that I hold most fit for the argument, I thought, that in respect of divinity and poesy met, whereof the one is the matter, and the other the style of this little writing, I could not make better choice: so, with signification of my love and acknowledgment, I ever rest your affectionate friend.
Fr. St. Alban.

Herbert Mary. Countess Of Pembroke (1561–1621) To the most illustrious heroine, decked with all gifts of mind and of body, Mary Countess of Pembroke. Descended from laurel-crowned ancestors, Delia; true-born sister of Sidney, the bard of Apollo; nourishing parent of literature, to whose spotless embrace virtue, defiled by the assault of barbarism and ignorance, flees for refuge as Philomela from the Thracian tyrant [Tereus] in times past; Muse of the poets of our time and of all most happily budding wits; descendant of the gods, you now infuse into my rough pen the spirit of an exalted madness, whereby my poor self seems to me able to surpass that which my raw natural talent is wont to bring forth. Deign to be protectress to this posthumous Amyntas, as to an adopted son of yours; and more so in that the dying father [Watson] in all humility named you as its guardian.
And although your illustrious name, not only among us but also foreign nations, is propagated too widely ever to be destroyed by the rusty antiquity of time or augmented by the praise of mortals (for how can anything be more than infinite?), crowned with the verse of many as Ariadne with a diadem of stars, refuse even so to despise this pure priest of Phœbus [Apollo] if he bestow another star upon your crown; but accept and watch over it with that purity of mind which the father of men and of gods, Jupiter, has linked with your noble family as its inheritance. So shall I, whose most slender resources are but the seashore myrtle of Venus and the evergreen tresses [laurel] of the Pineian nymph [Daphne], on the first page of every poem call upon you, Mistress of the Muses, for aid: In short, your virtue, which exceeds virtue itself, itself will likewise exceed eternity. Most eager to do you honour. (Marlowe).  3

Hilliard (1547–1619) Engraver. The miniature portrait of Bacon in his eighteenth year, 1578, bares the inscription si tabula daretur digna, animum mallem; [if one could but paint his mind]; says Spedding, “of the artist’s own emotion”. Hilliard was the most celebrated of English miniaturists. Son of an Exeter goldsmith, he was trained as a jeweller. In about 1570, he was appointed Court Miniaturist and Goldsmith by Elizabeth I., and also worked for King James I., but after the turn of the century his position as the leading miniaturist in the country was challenged by his former pupil Isaac Oliver. These two were head and shoulders above their contemporaries and dominated the limning of their era. Hilliard’s reputation extended to France, which he visited c.1577–78. In his treatise The Arte of Limning, written in about 1600 but not published until 1912, Hilliard declared himself as a follower of Holbein’s manner 4 of limning. In particular, he avoided the use of shadow for modelling and in his treatise he records that this was in agreement with Queen Elizabeth’s taste, “for the lyne without shadows showeth all to good jugment, but the shadowe without lyne showeth nothing”.
But while for Holbein a miniature was always a painting reduced to a small scale, Hilliard developed in the miniature an intimacy and subtlety peculiar to that art. He combined his unerring use of line with a jeweller’s exquisiteness in detail, an engraver’s elegance in calligraphy, and a unique realization of the individuality of each sitter. His miniatures are often freighted with enigmatic inscription and intrusive allegory (e.g. a hand reaching from a cloud); yet this literary burden usually manages to heighten the vividness with which the sitter’s face is impressed.
Apart from the Queen herself, many others of the great Elizabethans sat for him, including Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Sir Philip Sidney. The finest collection of his miniatures is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. He is known also to have worked on a large scale and among the paintings attributed to him are portraits of Elizabeth I., in the National Portrait Gallery, London, and in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. In spite of his success, Hilliard had considerable financial problems and in 1617 was briefly imprisoned for debt. His son Lawrence was also a miniaturist. That Hilliard’s works were greatly admired at the time appears from his being celebrated by Dr. Donne, in the poem of the Storm, in which he says: “An hand or eye by Hilliard drawn, is worth a history by a worse painter made.”

Hobbes Thomas (1588–1679) The philosopher of Malmosbury, as it used to be the fashion to call him, was born at that town on April 5, 1588, and was the son of the vicar of Charlton, a village in the immediate neighbourhood, then a seat of the Knyvets, which early in Hobbes life went by marriage to the Howards, and before his death was connected with John Dryden (1631–1700). He went early to Magdalen Hall at Oxford, and took his degree. Somewhat before his majority he was recommended to the Cavendish family, as tutor to the future (second) Earl of Devonshire, and for the greater part of a century he remained a client of the house, and not infrequently a member of the household. He made the grand tour with his pupil in 1610, and returning to London became acquainted with most of the literary society of James I’s time, being closely associated with Bacon. His own first literary effort was late and not original, being a translation of Thucydides which he published in 1628, his fortieth year. It is, though not rigidly exact, a very good translation as good as his subsequent attempt on Homer is bad.
In the same year his pupil died. He returned to his old business, and conducted the son of Sir Gervase Clifton over the Continent, but he soon resorted again to the Devonshire family, making his third journey abroad as tutor in charge of his first pupils son. Now, in the middle of the fourth decade of the century, was introduced to the strongly mathematical and philosophical group of Parisian men of letters. He plunged, not with happy results, into mathematics; he attacked philosophy with results, in part at least, very happy. On his return to England ho took the Royalist side, and, being always a very timid person, fled abroad again, lest the Parliament should take notice of his published or MS., works. Of these De Cive appeared in 1642; Leviathan in 1651. The wonderful little Human Nature had been written as early as 1640, but was not published till much later. As he had fled from England to France, so he fled from France to England, owing to some slight from Charles II., to whom he had been tutor for a time. But after the Restoration Charles gave him a pension. He enjoyed it for nearly twenty years and died at Hardwick Hall, on December 4, 1679 in his ninety-second year. His works are chiefly known in the edition (16 vols.) of Molesworth, which, though the print and paper are excellent, is simply not edited at all. A Danish scholar, Dr. Tunnies, has recently given some careful recessions of particular works from MS.

Holbein (d.1543) German painter, draftsman, and designer renowned for the precise rendering of his drawings and the compelling realism of his portraits, particularly those recording the Court of King Henry VIII., of England. Holbein was a member of a family of important artists. His father, Hans Holbein the Elder, and his uncle Sigmund were renowned for their somewhat conservative examples of late Gothic painting in Germany. One of Holbein’s brothers, Ambrosius, became a painter as well, but he apparently died about 1519 before reaching maturity as an artist. The Holbein brothers no doubt first studied with their father in Augsburg; they both also began independent work about 1515 in Basle, Switzerland. It should be noted that this chronology places Holbein firmly in the second generation of 16th century German artists.
Albrecht Dürer, Matthias Grünewald, and Lucas Cranach the Elder all were born between 1470 and 1480 and were producing their mature masterpieces by the time Holbein was just beginning his career. Holbein is, in fact, the only truly outstanding German artist of his generation. Holbein’s work in Basle during the decade of 1515–25 was extremely varied, if also sometimes derivative. Trips to northern Italy (c.1517) and France (1524) certainly affected the development of his religious subjects and portraiture, respectively. Holbein entered the painters’ corporation in 1519, married a tanner’s widow, and became a burgher of Basle in 1520. By 1521 he was executing important mural decorations in the Great Council Chamber of Basle’s town hall. Unfortunately, none of Holbein’s many great frescoes executed here and in England and Germany have survived intact. Their beauty must be judged, instead, from his sketches and copies of the frescoes made by later artists. Holbein was associated early on with the Basle publishers and their humanist circle of acquaintances. There he found portrait commissions such as that of the humanist scholar Bonifacius Amerbach (1519, Kunstmuseum, Basle). In this and other early portraits Holbein showed himself a master of the current German portrait idiom, using robust characterization and accessories, strong gaze, and dramatic silhouette.
In Basle, Holbein was also active in designing woodcuts for title pages and book illustrations. He increased his reputation as a book illustrator by a series of woodcuts for the German translation of the Bible by Martin Luther. The artist’s most famous work in this area, a series of 41 scenes illustrating the medieval allegorical concept of the Dance of Death, was designed by him and cut by another artist as early as about 1523 to 1526 but was not published until 1538. Its scenes display an immaculate sense of order, packing much information about the lifestyles and habits of Death’s victims into a very small format. He completed also a series of pen-and-ink sketches for The Praise of Folie by the Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus. In portraiture, too, Holbein’s minute sense of observation was soon evident. His first major portrait of Desiderius Erasmus (1523, Louvre, Paris) portrays the Dutch humanist scholar as physically withdrawn from the world, sitting at his desk engaged in his voluminous European correspondence; his hands are as sensitively rendered as his carefully controlled profile. Protestantism, which had been introduced into Basle as early as 1522, grew considerably in strength and importance there during the ensuing four years. By 1526 severe iconoclastic riots and strict censorship of the press swept over the city. In the face of what, for the moment at least, amounted to a freezing of the arts, Holbein left Basle late in 1526, with a letter of introduction from Erasmus, to travel by way of The Netherlands to England. Though only about twenty-eight years old, he would achieve remarkable success in England. His most impressive works of this time were executed for the statesman and author Sir Thomas More and included a magnificent single portrait of the humanist (1527, Frick Collection, New York City). In this image, the painter’s close observation extends to the tiny stubble of More’s beard, the iridescent glow of his velvet sleeves, and the abstract decorative effects of the gold chain that he wears. Holbein also completed a life-size group portrait of More’s family; this work is now lost, though its appearance is preserved in copies and in preparatory drawing in the Kunstmuseum, Basle. This painting was the first example in northern European art of a large group portrait in which the figures are not shown kneeling, the effect of which is to suggest the individuality of the sitters rather than impiety.
Before Holbein journeyed to England in 1526, he had apparently designed works that were both pro and anti Lutheran in character. On returning to Basle in 1528, he was admitted, after some hesitation, to the new faith. It would be difficult to interpret this as a very decisive change, for Holbein’s most impressive religious works, like his portraits, are brilliant observations of physical reality but seem never to have been inspired by Christian spirituality. This is evident in both the claustrophobic, rotting body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb (1521, Kunstmuseum, Basle) and in the beautifully composed Family of Burgomaster Meyer Adoring the Virgin (1526, Schlossmuseum, Darmstadt). In this latter painting Holbein skilfully combined a late medieval German compositional format with precise Flemish realism and a monumental Italian treatment of form. Holbein apparently quite voluntarily gave up almost all religious painting after about 1530.
In Basle, from 1528 to 1532, Holbein continued his important work for the town council. He also painted what is perhaps his only psychologically penetrating portrait, that of his wife and two children (c.1528, Kunstmuseum, Basle). This picture no doubt conveys some of the unhappiness of that abandoned family. In spite of generous offers from Basle, Holbein left his wife and children in that city for a second time, to spend the last 11 years of his life primarily in England. By 1533 Holbein was already painting court personalities. His portrait of the statesman Thomas Cromwell brought the artist recognition at Court, and by 1536 he was established as Court painter to Henry VIII., of England. It is estimated that during the last 10 years of his life Holbein executed approximately 150 portraits, life-size and miniature, of royalty and nobility alike. These portraits ranged from a magnificent series depicting German merchants who were working in London to a double portrait of the French ambassadors to Henry VIII’s Court (1533, National Gallery, London) two portraits of the King himself (1536, Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid) and his different wives, Jane Seymour (1536, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) and Anne of Cleves (Louvre, Paris). In these and other examples, the artist revealed his fascination with plant, animal, and decorative accessories.
Holbein’s preliminary drawings of his sitters contain detailed notations concerning jewellery and other costume decorations as well. Sometimes such objects point to specific events or concerns in the sitter’s life, or act as attributes referring to a sitter’s occupation or character. The relation between accessories and face is a charged and stimulating one, avoiding simple correspondence. In an analogous fashion, Holbein’s mature portraits present an intriguing play between surface and depth. The sitter’s outlines and position within the frame are carefully calculated, while inscriptions applied on the surface in gold leaf lock the sitter’s head into place. Juxtaposed with this finely tuned two-dimensional design are illusionistic miracles of velvet, fur, feathers, needlework, and leather. Holbein acted not only as a portraitist but also as a fashion designer for the Court. The artist made designs for all the state robes of the King; he left, in addition, more than 250 delicate drawings for everything from buttons and buckles to pageant weapons, horse outfitting, and bookbinding for the royal household. This choice of work indicates Holbein’s Mannerist concentration on surface texture and detail of design, a concern that in some ways precluded the incorporation of great psychological depth in his portraits. The artist’s record of the Court of King Henry VIII., of England, as well as the taste that he virtually imposed upon that Court, was his most remarkable achievement. The fact that Holbein’s portraits do not reveal the character or spiritual inclinations of his sitters is perfectly paralleled by knowledge of the artist’s life.
His biography is basically a recounting of disparate facts; about his personality practically nothing is known. Not one note or letter from his own hand survives. Other men’s opinions of him are often equally inscrutable. Erasmus, one of Holbein’s most renowned sitters, praised and recommended him on one occasion but scorned the artist as opportunistic at another time. Henry VIII., who sent Holbein to the European continent to help select a bride by providing a dependable portrait for his scrutiny, was perhaps the only person who had absolute confidence in Holbein. The artist’s detachment and his refusal to submit to an authority that might inhibit his own creative (but very worldly) powers enabled him to produce paintings whose beauty and brilliance have never been questioned. Had he been a more devout Christian or more subject to the turmoil of his times, his artistic achievement might have been quite different. In recent times, the lack of spiritual involvement in his work has been consistently noted, especially inasmuch as the 16th century was a time when few artists managed to remain above the religious conflict sweeping Europe. Thus, the effect of Holbein’s art has often been felt to be more artistic and external than expressionistic or emotional. Only in that sense, however, is his achievement finally limited. He usually marked his prints with ciphers HB or BI, or signed them HANS. HOLB. He died of the plague in London.