HITA, GINÉS PEREZ DE (1544?-1605?), Spanish novelist and poet, was born at Mula (Murcia) about the middle of the 16th century. He served in the campaign of 1569-1571 against the Moriscos, and in 1572 wrote a rhymed history of the city of Lorca which remained unpublished till 1889. He owes his wide celebrity to the Historia de los bandos de Zegríes y Abencerrajes (1595-1604), better known as the Guerras civiles de Granada, which purports to be a chronicle based on an Arabic original ascribed to a certain Aben-Hamin. Aben-Hamin is a fictitious personage, and the Guerras de Granada is in reality a historical novel, perhaps the earliest example of its kind, and certainly the first historical novel that attained popularity. In the first part the events which led to the downfall of Granada are related with uncommon brilliancy, and Hita’s sympathetic transcription of life at the Emir’s court has clearly suggested the conventional presentation of the picturesque, chivalrous Moor in the pages of Mlle de Scudéry, Mme de Lafayette, Châteaubriand and Washington Irving. The second part is concerned with the author’s personal experiences, and the treatment is effective; yet, though Calderón’s play, Amar después de la muerte, is derived from it, the second part has never enjoyed the vogue or influence of the first. The exact date of Hita’s death is unknown. His blank verse rendering of the Crónica Troyana, written in 1596, exists in manuscript.
HITCHCOCK, EDWARD (1793-1864), American geologist, was born of poor parents at Deerfield, Massachusetts, on the 24th of May 1793. He owed his education chiefly to his own exertions, and was preparing himself to enter Harvard College when he was compelled to interrupt his studies from a weakness in his eyesight. In 1815 he became principal of the academy of his native town; but he resigned this office in 1818 in order to study for the ministry. Having been ordained in 1821 pastor of the Congregational church of Conway, Mass., he employed his leisure in making a scientific survey of the western counties of the state. From 1825 to 1845 he was professor of chemistry and natural history, from 1845 to 1864 was professor of natural theology and geology at Amherst College, and from 1845 to 1854 was president; the college owed its early success largely to his energetic efforts, especially during the period of his presidency. In 1830 he was appointed state geologist of Massachusetts, and in 1836 was made geologist of the first district of the state of New York. In 1840 he received the degree of LL.D. from Harvard, and in 1846 that of D.D. from Middlebury College, Vermont. Besides his constant labours in geology, zoology and botany, Hitchcock took an active interest in agriculture, and in 1850 he was sent by the Massachusetts legislature to examine into the methods of the agricultural schools of Europe. In geology he made a detailed examination and exposition of the fossil footprints from the Triassic sandstones of the Connecticut valley. His collection is preserved in the Hitchcock Ichnological Museum of Amherst College, and a description of it was published in 1858 in his report to the Massachusetts legislature on the ichnology of New England. The footprints were regarded as those of reptiles, amphibia and birds (?). In 1857 he undertook, with the aid of his two sons, the geological survey of Vermont, which was completed in 1861. As a writer on geological science, Hitchcock was largely concerned in determining the connexion between it and religion, and employing its results to explain and support what he regarded as the truths of revelation. He died at Amherst, on the 27th of February 1864.
His son, Charles Henry Hitchcock (1836- ), did good service in geology, in Vermont, New Hampshire (1868-1878), and other parts of America, and became professor of geology at Dartmouth in 1868.
The following are Edward Hitchcock’s principal works: Geology of the Connecticut Valley (1823); Catalogue of Plants growing without cultivation in the vicinity of Amherst (1829); Reports on the Geology of Massachusetts (1833-1841); Elementary Geology (1840; ed. 2, 1841; and later ed. with C. H. Hitchcock, 1862); Fossil Footmarks in the United States (1848); Outline of the Geology of the Globe and of the United States in particular (1853); Illustrations of Surface Geology (1856); Ichnology of New England (1858); The Religion of Geology and its Connected Sciences (1851; new ed., 1869); Reminiscences of Amherst College (1863); and various papers in the American Journal of Science, and other periodicals.
HITCHCOCK, GEORGE (1850- ), American artist, was born at Providence, Rhode Island, in 1850. He graduated from Brown University in 1872 and from the law school of Harvard University in 1874; then turned his attention to art and became a pupil of Boulanger and Lefebvre in Paris. He attracted notice in the Salon of 1885 with his “Tulip Growing,” a Dutch garden which he painted in Holland. He had for years a studio at Egmond, in the Netherlands. He became a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, France; a member of the Vienna Academy of Arts, the Munich Secession Society, and other art bodies; and is represented in the Dresden gallery; the imperial collection, Vienna; the Chicago Art Institute, and the Detroit Museum of Fine Arts.
HITCHCOCK, ROSWELL DWIGHT (1817-1887), American divine, was born at East Machias, Maine, on the 15th of August 1817, graduated at Amherst College in 1836, and later studied at Andover Theological Seminary, Mass. After a visit to Germany he was a tutor at Amherst in 1839-1842, and was minister of the First (Congregational) Church, Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1845-1852. He became professor of natural and revealed religion in Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, in 1852, and in 1855 professor of church history in the Union Theological Seminary in New York, of which he was president in 1880-1887. He died at Somerset, Mass., on the 16th of June 1887.
Among his works are: Life of Edward Robinson (1863); Socialism (1879); Carmina Sanctorum (with Z. Eddy and L. W. Mudge, 1885); and Eternal Atonement (1888).