doctor of laws in 1710. Between 1713 and 1721 he acted as secretary to the Royal Society, and early in 1720 he succeeded Flamsteed as astronomer-royal. Although in his sixty-fourth year, he undertook to observe the moon through an entire revolution of her nodes (eighteen years), and actually carried out his purpose. He died on the 14th of January 1742. His tomb is in the old graveyard of St Margaret’s church, Lee, Kent.
Halley’s most notable scientific achievements were—his detection of the “long inequality” of Jupiter and Saturn, and of the acceleration of the moon’s mean motion (1693), his discovery of the proper motions of the fixed stars (1718), his theory of variation (1683), including the hypothesis of four magnetic poles, revived by C. Hansteen in 1819, and his suggestion of the magnetic origin of the aurora borealis; his calculation of the orbit of the 1682 comet (the first ever attempted), coupled with a prediction of its return, strikingly verified in 1759; and his indication (first in 1679, and again in 1716, Phil. Trans., No. 348) of a method extensively used in the 18th and 19th centuries for determining the solar parallax by means of the transits of Venus.
His principal works are Catalogus stellarum australium (London, 1679), the substance of which was embodied in vol. iii. of Flamsteed’s Historia coelestis (1725); Synopsis astronomiae cometicae (Oxford, 1705); Astronomical Tables (London, 1752); also eighty-one miscellaneous papers of considerable interest, scattered through the Philosophical Transactions. To these should be added his version from the Arabic (which language he acquired for the purpose) of the treatise of Apollonius De sectione rationis, with a restoration of his two lost books De sectione spatii, both published at Oxford in 1706; also his fine edition of the Conics of Apollonius, with the treatise by Serenus De sectione cylindri et coni (Oxford, 1710, folio). His edition of the Spherics of Menelaus was published by his friend Dr Costard in 1758. See also Biographia Britannica, vol. iv. (1757); Gent. Mag. xvii. 455, 503; A. Wood, Athenae Oxon. (Bliss), iv. 536; J. Aubrey, Lives, ii. 365; F. Baily, Account of Flamsteed; Sir D. Brewster, Life of Newton; R. Grant, History of Astronomy, p. 477 and passim; A. J. Rudolph, Bulletin of Bibliography, No. 14 (Boston, 1904); E. F. McPike, “Bibliography of Halley’s Comet,” Smithsonian Misc. Collections, vol. xlviii. pt. i. (1905); Notes and Queries, 9th series, vols. x. xi. xii., 10th series, vol. ii. (E. F. McPike). A collection of manuscripts regarding Halley is preserved among the Rigaud papers in the Bodleian library, Oxford; and many of his unpublished letters exist at the Record Office and in the library of the Royal Society. (A. M. C.)
HALLGRÍMSSON, JÓNAS (1807–1844), the chief lyrical poet
of Iceland, was born in 1807 at Steinsstaðir in Eyjafjarðarsýsla
in the north of that island, and educated at the famous school
of Bessastaðr. In 1832 he went to the university of Copenhagen,
and shortly afterwards turned his attention to the natural
sciences, especially geology. Having obtained pecuniary assistance
from the Danish government, he travelled through all
Iceland for scientific purposes in the years 1837–1842, and made
many interesting geological observations. Most of his writings
on geology are in Danish. His renown was, however, not
acquired by his writings in that language, but by his Icelandic
poems and short stories. He was well read in German literature,
Heine and Schiller being his favourites, and the study of the
German masters and the old classical writers of Iceland opened
his eyes to the corrupt state of Icelandic poetry and showed him
the way to make it better. The misuse of the Eddic metaphors
made the lyrical and epical poetry of the day hardly intelligible,
and, to make matters worse, the language of the poets was mixed
up with words of German and Danish origin. The great Danish
philologist and friend of Iceland, Rasmus Rask, and the poet
Bjarni Thórarensen had done much to purify the language,
but Jónas Hallgrímsson completed their work by his poems and
tales, in a purer language than ever had been written in Iceland
since the days of Snorri Sturlason. The excesses of Icelandic
poetry were specially seen in the so-called rímur, ballads of
heroes, &c., which were fiercely attacked by Jónas Hallgrímsson,
who at last succeeded in converting the educated to his view.
Most of the principal poems, tales and essays of Jónas Hallgrímsson
appeared in the periodical Fjölnir, which he began
publishing at Copenhagen in 1835, together with Konráð Gíslason,
a well-known philologist, and the patriotic Thómas Saemundsson.
Fjölnir had in the beginning a hard struggle against old
prejudices, but as the years went by its influence became
enormous; and when it at last ceased, its programme and spirit
still lived in Ný Félagsrit and other patriotic periodicals which
took its place. Jónas Hallgrímsson, who died in 1844, is the
father of a separate school in Icelandic lyric poetry. He introduced
foreign thoughts and metres, but at the same time revived
the metres of the Icelandic classical poets. Although his poetical
works are all comprised in one small volume, he strikes every
string of the old harp of Iceland.
(S. Bl.)
HALLIDAY, ANDREW [Andrew Halliday Duff] (1830–1877),
British journalist and dramatist, was born at Marnoch,
Banffshire, in 1830. He was educated at Marischal College,
Aberdeen, and in 1849 he came to London, and discarding the
name of Duff, devoted himself to literature. His first engagement
was with the daily papers, and his work having attracted the
notice of Thackeray, he was invited to write for the Cornhill
Magazine. From 1861 he contributed largely to All the Year
Round, and many of his articles were republished in collected
form. He was also the author, alone and with others, of a great
number of farces, burlesques and melodramas and a peculiarly
successful adapter of popular novels for the stage. Of these
Little Em’ly (1869), his adaptation of David Copperfield, was
warmly approved by Dickens himself, and enjoyed a long run
at Drury Lane. Halliday died in London on the 10th of April
1877.
HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS, JAMES ORCHARD (1820–1889), English Shakespearian scholar, son of Thomas Halliwell, was born in London, on the 21st of June 1820. He was educated privately and at Jesus College, Cambridge. He devoted himself to antiquarian research, particularly in early English literature. In 1839 he edited Sir John Mandeville’s Travels; in 1842 published an Account of the European MSS. in the Chetham Library, besides a newly discovered metrical romance of the 15th century (Torrent of Portugal). He became best known, however, as a Shakespearian editor and collector. In 1848 he brought out his Life of Shakespeare, which passed through several editions; in 1853–1865 a sumptuous edition, limited to 150 copies, of Shakespeare in folio, with full critical notes; in 1863 a Calendar of the Records at Stratford-on-Avon; in 1864 a History of New Place. After 1870 he entirely gave up textual criticism, and devoted his attention to elucidating the particulars of Shakespeare’s life. He collated all the available facts and documents in relation to it, and exhausted the information to be found in local records in his Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare. He was mainly instrumental in the purchase of New Place for the corporation of Stratford-on-Avon, and in the formation there of the Shakespeare museum. His publications in all numbered more than sixty volumes. He assumed the name of Phillipps in 1872, under the will of the grandfather of his first wife, a daughter of Sir Thomas Phillipps the antiquary. He took an active interest in the Camden Society, the Percy Society and the Shakespeare Society, for which he edited many early English and Elizabethan works. From 1845 Halliwell was excluded from the library of the British Museum on account of the suspicion attaching to his possession of some manuscripts which had been removed from the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. He published privately an explanation of the matter in 1845. His house, Hollingbury Copse, near Brighton, was full of rare and curious works, and he generously gave many of them to the Chetham library, Manchester, to the town library of Penzance, to the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, and to the library of Edinburgh university. He died on the 3rd of January 1889.
HALLOWE’EN, or All Hallows Eve, the name given to the 31st of October as the vigil of Hallowmas or All Saints’ Day. Though now known as little else but the eve of the Christian festival, Hallowe’en and its formerly attendant ceremonies long antedate Christianity. The two chief characteristics of ancient Hallowe’en were the lighting of bonfires and the belief that of all nights in the year this is the one during which ghosts and witches are most likely to wander abroad. Now on or about the 1st of November the Druids held their great autumn festival and lighted fires in honour of the Sun-god in thanksgiving for the harvest. Further, it was a Druidic belief that on the eve of
