HEYN, PIETER PIETERZOON [commonly abbreviated to Piet] (1578-1629), Dutch admiral, was born at Delfshaven in 1578, the son of Pieter Hein, who was engaged in the herring fishery. The son went early to sea. In his youth he was taken prisoner by the Spaniards, and was forced to row in the galleys during four years. Having recovered his freedom by an exchange of prisoners, he worked for several years as a merchant skipper with success. The then dangerous state of the seas at all times, and the continuous war with Spain, gave him ample opportunity to gain a reputation as a resolute fighting man. Wills which he made before 1623 show that he had been able to acquire considerable property. When the Dutch West India Company was formed he was Director on the Rotterdam Board, and in 1624 he served as second in command of the fleet which took San Salvador in Bahia de Todos os Santos in Brazil. Till 1628 he continued to serve the Company, both on the coast of Brazil, and in the West Indies. In the month of September of that year he made himself famous, gained immense advantage for the Company, and inflicted ruinous loss on the Spaniards, by the capture of the fleet which was bringing the bullion from the American mines home to Spain. The Spanish ships were outnumbered chiefly because the convoy had become scattered by bad management and bad seamanship. The more valuable part of it, consisting of the four galleons, and eleven trading ships in which the king’s share of the treasure was being carried, became separated from the rest, and on being chased by the superior force of Heyn endeavoured to take refuge at Matanzas in the island of Cuba, hoping to be able to land the bullion in the bush before the Dutchman could come up with them. But Juan de Benavides, the Spanish commander, failed to act with decision, was overtaken, and his ships captured in the harbour before the silver could be discharged. The total loss was estimated by the Spaniards at four millions of ducats. Piet Heyn now returned home, and bought himself a house at Delft with the intention of retiring from the sea. In the following year, however, he was chosen at a crisis to take command of the naval force of the Republic, with the rank of Lieutenant-Admiral of Holland, in order to clear the North Sea and Channel of the Dunkirkers, who acted for the king of Spain in his possessions in the Netherlands. In June of 1629 he brought the Dunkirkers to action, and they were severely beaten, but Piet Heyn did not live to enjoy his victory. He was struck early in the battle by a cannon shot on the shoulder and fell dead on the spot. His memory has been preserved by his capture of the Treasure Galleons, which had never been taken so far, but he is also the traditional representative of the Dutch “sea dogs” of the 17th century.
See de Jonge, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Zeewezen; I. Duro, Armada espanola, iv.; der Aa, Biograph. Woordenboek der Nederlanden.
(D. H.)
HEYNE, CHRISTIAN GOTTLOB (1729-1812), German classical scholar and archaeologist, was born on the 25th of September 1729, at Chemnitz in Saxony. His father was a poor weaver, and the expenses of his early education were paid by one of his godfathers. In 1748 he entered the university of Leipzig, where he was frequently in want of the necessaries of life. His distress had almost amounted to despair, when he procured the situation of tutor in the family of a French merchant in Leipzig, which enabled him to continue his studies. After he had completed his university course, he was for many years in very straitened circumstances. An elegy written by him in Latin on the death of a friend attracted the attention of Count von Brühl, the prime minister, who expressed a desire to see the author. Accordingly, in April 1752, Heyne journeyed to Dresden, believing that his fortune was made. He was well received, promised a secretaryship and a good salary, but nothing came of it. Another period of want followed, and it was only by persistent solicitation that Heyne was able to obtain the post of under-clerk in the count’s library, with a salary of somewhat less than twenty pounds sterling. He increased his scanty pittance by translation; in addition to some French novels, he rendered into German the Chaereas and Callirrhoe of Chariton, the Greek romance writer. He published his first edition of Tibullus in 1755, and in 1756 his Epictetus. In the latter year the Seven Years’ War broke out, and Heyne was once more in a state of destitution. In 1757 he was offered a tutorship in the household of Frau Von Schönberg, where he met his future wife. In January 1759 he accompanied his pupil to the university of Wittenberg, from which he was driven in 1760 by the Prussian cannon. The bombardment of Dresden (to which city he had meanwhile returned) on the 18th of July 1760, destroyed all his possessions, including an almost finished edition of Lucian, based on a valuable codex of the Dresden Library. In the summer of 1761, although still without any fixed income, he married, and for some time he found it necessary to devote himself to the duties of land-steward to the Baron von Löben in Lusatia. At the end of 1762, however, he was enabled to return to Dresden, where he was commissioned by P. D. Lippert to prepare the Latin text of the third volume of his Dactyliotheca (an account of a collection of gems). On the death of Johann Matthias Gesner at Göttingen in 1761, the vacant chair was refused first by Ernesti and then by Ruhnken, who persuaded Münchhausen, the Hanoverian minister and principal curator of the university, to bestow it on Heyne (1763). His emoluments were gradually augmented, and his growing celebrity brought him most advantageous offers from other German governments, which he persistently refused. After a long and useful career, he died on the 14th of July 1812. Unlike Gottfried Hermann, Heyne regarded the study of grammar and language only as the means to an end, not as the chief object of philology. But, although not a critical scholar, he was the first to attempt a scientific treatment of Greek mythology, and he gave an undoubted impulse to philological studies.
Of Heyne’s numerous writings, the following may be mentioned. Editions, with copious commentaries, of Tibullus (ed. E. C. Wunderlich, 1817), Virgil (ed. G. P. Wagner, 1830-1841), Pindar (3rd ed. by G. H. Schäfer, 1817), Apollodorus, Bibliotheca Graeca (1803), Homer, Iliad (1802); Opuscula academica (1785-1812), containing more than a hundred academical dissertations, of which the most valuable are those relating to the colonies of Greece and the antiquities of Etruscan art and history. His Antiquarische Aufsätze (1778-1779) is a valuable collection of essays connected with the history of ancient art. His contributions to the Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen are said to have been between 7000 and 8000 in number. See biography by A. H. Heeren (1813) which forms the basis of the interesting essay by Carlyle (Misc. Essays, ii.); H. Sauppe, Göttinger Professoren (1872); C. Bursian in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, xii.; J. E. Sandys, Hist. Class. Schol. iii. 36-44.
HEYSE, PAUL JOHANN LUDWIG (1830- ), German novelist, dramatist and poet, was born at Berlin on the 15th of March 1830, the son of the distinguished philologist Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Heyse (1797-1855). After attending the Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium in Berlin, he went, in 1849, to Bonn University as a student of the Romance languages, and in 1852 took his doctor’s degree. He had already given proof of great literary ability in the production in 1850 of Der Jungbrunnen, Märchen eines fahrenden Schülers and of the tragedy Francesca von Rimini, when after a year’s stay in Italy, he was summoned, early in 1854, by King Maximilian II. to Munich, where he subsequently lived. Here he turned his attention to novel-writing. He published at Munich in 1855 four short stories in one volume, one of which, at least, L’Arrabbiata, was a masterpiece of its kind. These were the precursors of a series of similar volumes, necessarily unequal at times, but on the whole constituting such a mass of highly complex miniature fiction as seldom before had proceeded from the pen of a single writer. Heyse works in the spirit of a sculptor; he seizes upon some picturesque incident or situation, and chisels and polishes until all the effect which it is capable of producing has been extracted from it. The success of the story usually depends upon the theme, for the artist’s skill is generally much the same, and the situation usually leaves a deeper impression than the characters. Heyse is also the author of several novels on a larger scale, all of which have gained success and provoked abundant discussion. The more important are Kinder der Welt (1873), Im Paradiese (1875)—the one dealing with the religious and social problems of its time, the other with artist-life in Munich—Der Roman der Stiftsdame (1888), and Merlin (1892), a novel directed against the modern realistic movement of which Heyse had been the leading opponent in Germany. He has also been a prolific dramatist, but his plays are deficient in theatrical qualities and are rarely seen on the stage. Among the best of them are Die Sabinerinnen (1859); Hans Lange (1866), Kolberg (1868), Die Weisheit Salomos (1886), and Maria von Magdala (1903). There are masterly translations by him of Leopardi, Giusti, and other Italian poets (Italienische Dichter seit der Mitte des 18ten Jahrhundert) (4 vols., 1889-1890).
Heyse’s Gesammelte Werke appeared in 29 vols. (1897-1899); there is also a popular edition of his Romane (8 vols., 1902-1904) and Novellen (10 vols., 1904-1906). See his autobiography, Jugenderinnerungen und Bekenntnisse (1901); also O. Kraus, Paul Heyses Novellen und Romane (1888); E. Petzet, Paul Heyse als Dramatiker (1904), and the essays by T. Ziegler (in Studien und Studienköpfe, 1877), and G. Brandes (in Moderne Geister, 1887).