HOFFMANN, FRANÇOIS BENOÎT (1760-1828), French dramatist and critic, was born at Nancy on the 11th of July 1760. He studied law at the university of Strassburg, but a slight hesitation in his speech precluded success at the bar, and he entered a regiment on service in Corsica. He served, however, for a very short time, and, returning to Nancy, he wrote some poems which brought him into notice at the little court of Lunéville over which the marquise de Boufflers then presided. In 1784 he went to Paris, and two years later produced the opera Phèdre. His opera Adrien (1792) was objected to by the government on political grounds, and Hoffmann, who refused to make the changes proposed to him, ran considerable risk under the revolutionary government. His later operas, which were numerous, were produced at the Opéra Comique. In 1807 he was invited by Étienne to contribute to the Journal de l’Empire (afterwards the Journal des débats). Hoffmann’s wide reading qualified him to write on all sorts of subjects, and he turned, apparently with no difficulty, from reviewing books on medicine to violent attacks on the Jesuits. His severe criticism of Chateaubriand’s Martyrs led the author to make some changes in a later edition. He had the reputation of being an absolutely conscientious and incorruptible critic and thus exercised wide influence. Hoffmann died in Paris on the 25th of April 1828. Among his numerous plays should be mentioned an excellent one-act comedy, Le Roman d’une heure (1803), and an amusing one-act opera Les Rendez-vous bourgeois.
See Sainte-Beuve, “M. de Feletz et la critique littéraire sous l’Empire” in Causeries du lundi, vol. i.
HOFFMANN, FRIEDRICH (1660-1742), German physician, a member of a family that had been connected with medicine for 200 years before him, was born at Halle on the 19th of February 1660. At the gymnasium of his native town he acquired that taste for and skill in mathematics to which he attributed much of his after success. At the age of eighteen he went to study medicine at Jena, whence in 1680 he passed to Erfurt, in order to attend Kasper Cramer’s lectures on chemistry. Next year, returning to Jena, he received his doctor’s diploma, and, after publishing a thesis, was permitted to teach. Constant study then began to tell on his health, and in 1682, leaving his already numerous pupils, he proceeded to Minden in Westphalia to recruit himself, at the request of a relative who held a high position in that town. After practising at Minden for two years, Hoffmann made a journey to Holland and England, where he formed the acquaintance of many illustrious chemists and physicians. Towards the end of 1684 he returned to Minden, and during the next three years he received many flattering appointments. In 1688 he removed to the more promising sphere of Halberstadt, with the title of physician to the principality of Halberstadt; and on the founding of Halle university in 1693, his reputation, which had been steadily increasing, procured for him the primarius chair of medicine, while at the same time he was charged with the responsible duty of framing the statutes for the new medical faculty. He filled also the chair of natural philosophy. With the exception of four years (1708-1712), which he passed at Berlin in the capacity of royal physician, Hoffmann spent the rest of his life at Halle in instruction, practice and study, interrupted now and again by visits to different courts of Germany, where his services procured him honours and rewards. His fame became European. He was enrolled a member of many learned societies in different foreign countries, while in his own he became privy councillor. He died at Halle on the 12th of November 1742.
Of his numerous writings a catalogue is to be found in Haller’s Bibliotheca medicinae practicae. The chief is Medicina rationalis systematica, undertaken at the age of sixty, and published in 1730. It was translated into French in 1739, under the title of Médecine raisonnée d’Hoffmann. A complete edition of Hoffmann’s works, with a life of the author, was published at Geneva in 1740, to which supplements were added in 1753 and 1760. Editions appeared also at Venice in 1745 and at Naples in 1753 and 1793. (See also [Medicine].)
HOFFMANN, JOHANN JOSEPH (1805-1878), German scholar, was born at Würzburg on the 16th of February 1805. After studying at Würzburg he went on the stage in 1825; but owing to an accidental meeting with the German traveller, Dr Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796-1866), in July 1830, his interest was diverted to Oriental philology. From Siebold he acquired the rudiments of Japanese, and in order to take advantage of the instructions of Ko-ching-chang, a Chinese teacher whom Siebold had brought home with him, he made himself acquainted with Malay, the only language except Chinese which the Chinaman could understand. In a few years he was able to supply the translations for Siebold’s Nippon; and the high character of his work soon attracted the attention of older scholars. Stanislas Julien invited him to Paris; and he would probably have accepted the invitation, as a disagreement had broken out between him and Siebold, had not M. Baud, the Dutch colonial minister, appointed him Japanese translator with a salary of 1800 florins (£150). The Dutch authorities were slow in giving him further recognition; and he was too modest a man successfully to urge his claims. It was not till after he had received the offer of the professorship of Chinese in King’s College, London, that the authorities made him professor at Leiden and the king allowed him a yearly pension. In 1875 he was decorated with the order of the Netherlands Lion, and in 1877 he was elected corresponding member of the Berlin Academy. He died at the Hague on the 23rd of January 1878.
Hoffmann’s chief work was his unfinished Japanese Dictionary, begun in 1839 and afterwards continued by L. Serrurier. Unable at first to procure the necessary type, he set himself to the cutting of punches, and even when the proper founts were obtained he had to act as his own compositor as far as Chinese and Japanese were concerned. His Japanese grammar (Japanische Sprachlehre) was published in Dutch and English in 1867, and in English and German in 1876. Of his miscellaneous productions it is enough to mention “Japans Bezüge mit der koraischen Halbinsel und mit Schina” in Nippon, vii.; Yo-San-fi-Rok, L’Art d’élever les vers à soie au Japon, par Ouckaki Mourikouni (Paris, 1848); “Die Heilkunde in Japan” in Mittheil. d. deutsch. Gesellsch. für Natur- und Völkerk. Ost-Asiens (1873-1874); and Japanische Studien (1878).