HEBEL, JOHANN PETER (1760-1826), German poet and popular writer, was born at Basel on the 10th of May 1760. The father dying when the child was little over a year old, he was brought up amidst poverty-stricken conditions in the village of Hausen in the Wiesental, where he received his earliest education. Being of brilliant promise, he found friends who enabled him to complete his school education and to study theology (1778-1780) at Erlangen. At the end of his university course he was for a time a private tutor, then became teacher at the Gymnasium in Karlsruhe, and in 1808 was appointed director of the school. He was subsequently appointed member of the Consistory and “evangelical prelate.” He died at Schwetzingen, near Heidelberg, on the 22nd of September 1826. Hebel is one of the most widely read of all German popular poets and writers. His poetical narratives and lyric poems, written in the “Alemanic” dialect, are “popular” in the best sense. His Allemannische Gedichte (1803) “bucolicize,” in the words of Goethe, “the whole world in the most attractive manner” (verbauert das ganze Universum auf die anmutigste Weise). Indeed, few modern German poets surpass him in fidelity, naïveté, humour, and in the freshness and vigour of his descriptions. His poem, Die Wiese, has been described by Johannes Scherr as the “pearl of German idyllic poetry”; while his prose writings, especially the narratives and essays contained in the Schatzkästlein des rheinischen Hausfreundes (Tübingen, 1811; new edition, Stuttg. 1869, 1888), belong to the best class of German stories, and according to August Friedrich Christian Vilmar (1800-1868) in his Geschichte der deutschen Literatur are “worth more than a cartload of novels” (wiegen ein ganzes Fuder Romane auf). Memorials have been erected to him at Karlsruhe, Basel and Schwetzingen.
A complete edition of Hebel’s works—Sämtliche Werke—was first published at Stuttgart in 8 vols. (1832-1834); subsequent editions appeared in 1847 (3 vols.), 1868 (2 vols.), 1873 (edited by G. Wendt, 2 vols.), 1883-1885 (edited by O. Behaghel, 2 vols.) and 1905 (edited by E. Keller, 5 vols.), as well as innumerable reprints. Hebel’s correspondence has been edited by O. Behaghel (1883). See G. Längin, J. P. Hebel, ein Lebensbild (1894), and the introduction to Behaghel’s edition.
HEBER, REGINALD (1783-1826), English bishop and hymn-writer, was born at Malpas in Cheshire on the 21st of April 1783. His father, who belonged to an old Yorkshire family, held a moiety of the living of Malpas. Reginald Heber early showed remarkable promise, and was entered in November 1800 at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he proved a distinguished student, carrying off prizes for a Latin poem entitled Carmen seculare, an English poem on Palestine, and a prose essay on The Sense of Honour. In November 1804 he was elected a fellow of All Souls College; and, after finishing his distinguished university career, he made a long tour in Europe. He was admitted to holy orders in 1807, and was then presented to the family living of Hodnet in Shropshire. In 1809 Heber married Amelia, daughter of Dr Shipley, dean of St Asaph. He was made prebendary of St Asaph in 1812, appointed Bampton lecturer for 1815, preacher at Lincoln’s Inn in 1822, and bishop of Calcutta in January 1823. Before sailing for India he received the degree of D.D. from the university of Oxford. In India Bishop Heber laboured indefatigably, not only for the good of his own diocese, but for the spread of Christianity throughout the East. He undertook numerous tours in India, consecrating churches, founding schools and discharging other Christian duties. His devotion to his work in a trying climate told severely on his health. At Trichinopoly he was seized with an apoplectic fit when in his bath, and died on the 3rd of April 1826. A statue of him, by Chantrey, was erected at Calcutta.
Heber was a pious man of profound learning, literary taste and great practical energy. His fame rests mainly on his hymns, which rank among the best in the English language. The following may be instanced: “Lord of mercy and of might”; “Brightest and best of the sons of the morning”; “By cool Siloam’s shady rill”; “God, that madest earth and heaven”; “The Lord of might from Sinai’s brow”; “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty”; “From Greenland’s icy mountains”; “The Lord will come, the earth shall quake”; “The Son of God goes forth to war.” Heber’s hymns and other poems are distinguished by finish of style, pathos and soaring aspiration; but they lack originality, and are rather rhetorical than poetical in the strict sense.
Among Heber’s works are: Palestine: a Poem, to which is added the Passage of the Red Sea (1809); Europe: Lines on the Present War (1809); a volume of poems in 1812; The Personality and Office of the Christian Comforter asserted and explained (being the Bampton Lectures for 1815); The Whole Works of Bishop Jeremy Taylor, with a Life of the Author, and a Critical Examination of his Writings (1822); Hymns written and adapted to the Weekly Church Service of the Year, principally by Bishop Heber (1827); A Journey through India (1828); Sermons preached in England, and Sermons preached in India (1829); Sermons on the Lessons, the Gospel, or the Epistle for every Sunday in the Year (1837). The Poetical Works of Reginald Heber were collected in 1841.
See the Life of Reginald Heber, D.D. ..., by his widow, Amelia Heber (1830), which also contains a number of Heber’s miscellaneous writings; The Last Days of Bishop Heber, by Thomas Robinson, A.M., archdeacon of Madras (1830); T. S. Smyth, The Character and Religious Doctrine of Bishop Heber (1831), and Memorials of a Quiet Life, by Augustus J. C. Hare (1874).
HEBER, RICHARD (1773-1833), English book-collector, the half-brother of Reginald Heber, was born in London on the 5th of January 1773. As an undergraduate at Brasenose College, Oxford, he began to collect a purely classical library, but his taste broadening, he became interested in early English drama and literature, and began his wonderful collection of rare books in these departments. He attended continental book-sales, purchasing sometimes single volumes, sometimes whole libraries. Sir Walter Scott, whose intimate friend he was, and who dedicated to him the sixth canto of Marmion, classed Heber’s library as “superior to all others in the world”; Campbell described him as “the fiercest and strongest of all the bibliomaniacs.” He did not confine himself to the purchase of a single copy of a work which took his fancy. “No gentleman,” he remarked, “can be without three copies of a book, one for show, one for use, and one for borrowers.” To such a size did his library grow that it over-ran eight houses, some in England, some on the Continent. It is estimated to have cost over £100,000, and after his death the sale of that part of his collection stored in England realized more than £56,000. He is known to have owned 150,000 volumes, and probably many more. He possessed extensive landed property in Shropshire and Yorkshire, and was sheriff of the former county in 1821, was member of Parliament for Oxford University from 1821-1826, and in 1822 was made a D.C.L. of that University. He was one of the founders of the Athenaeum Club, London. He died in London on the 4th of October 1833.