HOWEL DDA (“the Good”) (d. 950), prince of Deheubarth (South Central Wales) from before 915, and king of Wales from 943 to 950, was the grandson of Rhodri Mawr (the Great), who had united practically the whole of Wales under his supremacy. As Idwal Voel succeeded his father Anarawd, the elder son of Rhodri, as lord of Gwynedd in 915, so Howel at some time before that date succeeded Rhodri’s younger son Cadell as prince of Deheubarth. Howel married Elen, daughter of the last king of Dyfed, and also added Kidweli and Gwyr to his dominions, while on the death of Idwal, who was slain by the English in 943, he took possession of Gwynedd. Both these princes had done homage to the English kings, Edward the Elder and Aethelstan, in 922 and 926, and we find that Howel attended the witans of the English kingdom and witnessed about ten charters between the years 931 and 949. He was secure, therefore, from attack on the eastern side of his kingdom, and it is not certain whether he was engaged in any of the battles recorded during these years in Wales, either in Môn 914, at Dinas Newydd 919 or at Brun 935. To the peaceful character of his reign is probably due the high place which he holds among the Welsh princes. From 943 to 950 Howel Dda was probably ruler of all Wales except Powys (apparently dependent on Mercia), Brecheiniog, Buallt, Gwent and Morgannwg. With Morgan Hen, king of Morgannwg, Howel had a dispute which was eventually settled in favour of the former at the court of the English king. Howel died in 950, and such unity as he had preserved at once disappeared in a war between his sons and those of Idwal Voel. The code of laws attributed to this prince is perhaps his chief claim to fame. He is said to have summoned four men from each cantref in his dominions to the Ty Gwyn (perhaps Whitland in Caermarthenshire) to codify existing custom. Three codes, accordingly called Venedotian, Demetian and Gwentian, are said to have been written down by Bleggwryd, archdeacon of Llandaff (see Welsh Laws).
See Sir John Rhys and Brynmor-Jones, The Welsh People (London, 1900); and Aneurin Owen, Ancient Laws and Institutions of Wales (London, 1841).
HOWELL, JAMES (c. 1594-1666), British author, who came of an old Welsh family, was born probably at Abernant, in Carmarthenshire, where his father was rector. From the free grammar school at Hereford he went to Jesus College, Oxford, and took his degree of B.A. in 1613. About 1616 he was steward in Sir Robert Mansell’s glass-works in Broad Street, and was commissioned to go abroad to procure the services of expert workmen. It was not till 1622 that he returned, having visited Holland, France, Spain and Italy. With the intention of utilizing to better purpose his knowledge of continental languages and methods, he left the glass business and applied for a diplomatic post. Failing to obtain this, he was for a short time tutor in a nobleman’s family. At the close of 1622 he was sent on a special mission to Madrid to obtain redress for the seizure of an English vessel, but, owing to the presence at the Spanish court of Prince Charles and the duke of Buckingham to arrange a marriage between the prince and the infanta of Spain, the negotiations had to be broken off. He made many friends among the prince’s retinue, and, after his return in 1624, applied for employment to the duke of Buckingham, but without success. In 1626 he became secretary to Lord Scrope, Lord President of the North at York, and retained the office under Scrope’s successor, Thomas Wentworth. In 1627 he was elected M.P. for Richmond; in 1632 he was sent as secretary to the embassy of the earl of Leicester to Denmark; and in 1642 the king appointed him one of the clerks of the privy council. In 1643 he was committed to the Fleet prison by the parliament, according to his own account, on suspicion of royalist leanings, or, as Anthony à Wood says, for debt. Whatever the reason, he remained in prison until 1651. He had acquired considerable fame by his allegorical Δενδρολογία: Dodona’s Grove, or the Vocall Forest, published in 1640, and his Instructions for Forreine Travell (1642), which has been described as the first continental handbook; and now he was driven to maintain himself by his pen. He edited and supplemented (1650) Cotgrave’s French and English dictionary, compiled Lexicon Tetraglotton, or an English, French, Italian and Spanish Dictionary (London, 1660), translated various works from Italian and Spanish, wrote a life of Louis XIII. and issued a number of political pamphlets, varying the point of view somewhat to suit the changes of the time. Among these tracts may be mentioned a rather malicious Perfect Description of the People and Country of Scotland, which was revived by John Wilkes and printed in the North Briton during the agitation directed against Lord Bute. In 1660 he asked for the place of clerk of the privy council; and, though this was not granted him, the post of historiographer royal was created for him. In 1661 he applied for the office of tutor in foreign languages to the infanta Catherine of Braganza, and in 1662 published an English Grammar translated into Spanish. He was buried in the Temple Church on the 3rd of November 1666, having realized to the last his favourite motto, “Senesco non segnesco.”
All Howell’s writings are imbued with a certain simplicity and quaintness. His elaborate allegories are forgotten; his linguistic labours, of value in their time, are now superseded; but his Letters, the Epistolae Ho-elianae (four volumes issued in 1645, 1647, 1650 and 1655), are still models of their kind. Their dates are often fictitious, and they are, in nearly every case, evidently written for publication. Thackeray said that the Letters was one of his bedside books. He classes it with Montaigne and says he scarcely ever tired of “the artless prattle” of the “priggish little clerk of King Charles’s council.”
The Epistolae have been frequently edited, notably by J. Jacobs in 1890, with a commentary (1891), and Agnes Repplier (1907).
HOWELLS, WILLIAM DEAN (1837- ), American novelist, was born at Martin’s Ferry, Ohio, on the 1st of March 1837. His father, William Cooper Howells, a printer-journalist, moved in 1840 to Hamilton, Ohio, and here the boy’s early life was spent successively as type-setter, reporter and editor in the offices of various newspapers. In the midst of routine work he contrived to familiarize himself with a wide range of authors in several modern tongues, and to drill himself thoroughly in the use of good English. In 1860, as assistant editor of the leading Republican newspaper in Ohio, he wrote—in connexion with the Presidential contest—the campaign life of Lincoln; and in the same year he was appointed consul at Venice, where he remained till 1865. On his return to America he joined the staff of the Atlantic Monthly, and from 1872 to 1881 he was its editor-in-chief. Since 1885 he has lived in New York. For a time he conducted for Harper’s Magazine the department called “The Editor’s Study,” and in December 1900 he revived for the same periodical the department of “The Easy Chair,” which had lapsed with the death of George William Curtis. Of Mr Howells’s many novels, the following may be mentioned as specially noteworthy: Their Wedding Journey (1872); The Lady of the Aroostook (1879); A Modern Instance (1882); The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885); The Minister’s Charge (1886); A Hazard of New Fortunes (1889); The Quality of Mercy (1892); The Landlord at Lion’s Head (1897). He also published Poems (1873 and 1886); Stops of Various Quills (1895), a book of verse; books of travel; several amusing farces; and volumes of essays and literary criticism, among others, Literary Friends and Acquaintance (1901), which contains much autobiographical matter, Literature and Life (1902), and English Films (1905).
Howells is by general consent the foremost representative of the realistic school of indigenous American fiction. From the outset his aim was to portray life with entire fidelity in all its commonplaceness, and yet to charm the reader into a liking for this commonplaceness and into reverence for what it conceals. Though in his earliest novels his method was not consistently realistic—he is at times almost as personal and as whimsical as Thackeray—yet his vivid impressionism and his choice of subjects, as well as an occasional explicit protest that “dulness is dear to him,” already revealed unmistakably his realistic bias. In A Modern Instance (1882) he gained complete command of his method, and began a series of studies of American life that are remarkable for their loyalty to fact, their truth of tone, and their power to reveal, despite their strictly objective method, both the inner springs of American character and the sociological forces that are shaping American civilization. He refuses to over-sophisticate or to over-intellectualize his characters, and he is very sparing in his use of psychological analysis. He insists on seeing and portraying American life as it exists in and for itself, under its own skies and with its own atmosphere; he does not scrutinize it with foreign comparisons in mind, and thus try to find and to throw into relief unsuspected configurations of surface. He keeps his dialogue toned down to almost the pitch of everyday conversation, although he has shown in his comedy sketches how easy a master he is of adroit and witty talk.