through Holland, England, France and Italy. His knowledge of languages gained for him the appellation “the learned,” though he was as little a learned man as he was a poet. As a member of the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft he was called der Spielende (the player). Jointly with Johann Klaj (q.v.) he founded in 1644 at Nuremberg the order of the Pegnitzschäfer, a literary society, and among the members thereof he was known by the name of Strephon. He died at Nuremberg on the 22nd of September 1658. His writings in German and Latin fill fifty volumes, and a selection of his poems, interesting mostly for their form, is to be found in Müller’s Bibliothek deutscher Dichter des 17ten Jahrhunderts, vol. ix. (Leipzig, 1826).
His life was written by Widmann (Altdorf, 1707). See also Tittmann, Die Nürnberger Dichterschule (Göttingen, 1847); Hodermann, Eine vornehme Gesellschaft, nach Harsdörffers “Gesprächspielen” (Paderborn, 1890); T. Bischoff, “Georg Philipp Harsdörffer” in the Festschrift zur 250 jährigen Jubelfeier des Pegnesischen Blumenordens (Nuremberg, 1894); and Krapp, Die ästhetischen Tendenzen Harsdörffers (Berlin, 1904).
HARSHA, or Harshavardhana (fl. A.D. 606–648), an Indian king who ruled northern India as paramount monarch for over forty years. The events of his reign are related by Hsüan Tsang, the Chinese pilgrim, and by Bana, a Brahman author. He was the son of a raja of Thanesar, who gained prominence by successful wars against the Huns, and came to the throne in A.D. 606, though he was only crowned in 612. He devoted himself to a scheme of conquering the whole of India, and carried on wars for thirty years with success, until (A.D. 620) he came in contact with Pulakesin II., the greatest of the Chalukya dynasty, who made himself lord of the south, as Harsha was lord of the north. The Nerbudda river formed the boundary between the two empires. In the latter years of his reign Harsha’s sway over the whole basin of the Ganges from the Himalayas to the Nerbudda was undisputed. After thirty-seven years of war he set himself to emulate Asoka and became a patron of art and literature. He was the last native monarch who held paramount power in the north prior to the Mahommedan conquest; and was succeeded by an era of petty states.
See Bana, Sri-harsha-charita, trans. Cowell and Thomas (1897); Ettinghausen, Harsha Vardhana (Louvain, 1906).
HARSNETT, SAMUEL (1561–1631), English divine, archbishop of York, was born at Colchester in June 1561, and was educated at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where he was successively scholar, fellow and master (1605–1616). He was also vice-chancellor of the university in 1606 and 1614. His ecclesiastical career began somewhat unpromisingly, for he was censured by Archbishop Whitgift for Romanist tendencies in a sermon which he preached against predestination in 1584. After holding the living of Chigwell (1597–1605) he became chaplain to Bancroft (then bishop of London), and afterwards archdeacon of Essex (1603–1609), rector of Stisted and bishop of Chichester (1609–1619) and archbishop of York (1629). He died on the 25th of May 1631. Harsnett was no favourite with the Puritan community, and Charles I. ordered his Considerations for the better Settling of Church Government (1629) to be circulated among the bishops. His Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (1603) furnished Shakespeare with the names of the spirits mentioned by Edgar in King Lear.
HART, ALBERT BUSHNELL (1854–), American historian, was born at Clarksville, Mercer county, Pennsylvania, on the 1st of July 1854. He graduated at Harvard College in 1880, studied at Paris, Berlin and Freiburg, and received the degree of Ph.D. at Freiburg in 1883. He was instructor in history at Harvard in 1883–1887, assistant professor in 1887–1897, and became professor in 1897. Among his writings are: Introduction to the Study of Federal Government (1890), Formation of the Union (1892, in the Epochs of American History series), Practical Essays on American Government (1893), Studies in American Education (1895), Guide to the Study of American History (with Edward Channing, 1897), Salmon Portland Chase (1899, in the American Statesman series), Foundations of American Foreign Policy (1901), Actual Government (1903), Slavery and Abolition (1906, the volume in the American Nation series dealing with the period 1831–1841), National Ideals Historically Traced (1907), the 26th volume of the American Nation series, and many historical pamphlets and articles. In addition he edited American History told by Contemporaries (4 vols., 1898–1901), and Source Readers in American History (4 vols., 1901–1903), and two co-operative histories of the United States, the Epochs of American History series (3 small text-books), and, on a much larger scale, the American Nation series (27 vols., 1903–1907); he also edited the American Citizen series.
HART, CHARLES (d. 1683), English actor, grandson of Shakespeare’s sister Joan, is first heard of as playing women’s parts at the Blackfriars’ theatre as an apprentice of Richard Robinson. In the Civil War he was a lieutenant of horse in Prince Rupert’s regiment, and after the king’s defeat he played surreptitiously at the Cockpit and at Holland House and other noblemen’s residences. After the Restoration he is known to have been in 1660 the original Dorante in The Mistaken Beauty, adapted from Corneille’s Le Menteur. In 1663 he went to the Theatre Royal in Killigrew’s company, with which he remained until 1682, taking leading parts in Dryden’s, Jonson’s and Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays. He is highly spoken of by contemporaries in such Shakespearian parts as Othello and Brutus. He is often mentioned by Pepys. Betterton praised him, and would not himself play the part of Hotspur until after Hart’s retirement. He died in 1683 and was buried on the 20th of August. Hart is said to have been the first lover of Nell Gwyn, and to have trained her for the stage.
HART, ERNEST ABRAHAM (1835–1898), English medical
journalist, was born in London on the 26th of June 1835, the son
of a Jewish dentist. He was educated at the City of London
school, and became a student at St George’s hospital. In 1856
he became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, making
a specialty of diseases of the eye. He was appointed ophthalmic
surgeon at St Mary’s hospital at the age of 28, and occupied
various other posts, introducing into ophthalmic practice some
modifications since widely adopted. His name, too, is associated
with a method of treating popliteal aneurism, which he was the
first to use in Great Britain. His real life-work, however, was
as a medical journalist, beginning with the Lancet in 1857.
He was appointed editor of the British Medical Journal in 1866.
He took a leading part in the exposures which led to the inquiry
into the state of London workhouse infirmaries, and to the reform
of the treatment of sick poor throughout England, and the
Infant Life Protection Act of 1872, aimed at the evils of baby-farming,
was largely due to his efforts. The record of his public
work covers nearly the whole field of sanitary legislation during
the last thrirty years of his life. He had a hand in the amendments
of the Public Health and of the Medical Acts; in the
measures relating to notification of infectious disease, to vaccination,
to the registration of plumbers; in the improvement of
factory legislation; in the remedy of legitimate grievances of
Army and Navy medical officers; in the removal of abuses and
deficiencies in crowded barrack schools; in denouncing the
sanitary shortcomings of the Indian government, particularly in
regard to the prevention of cholera. His work on behalf of the
British Medical Association is shown by the increase from
2000 to 19,000 in the number of members, and the growth of the
British Medical Journal from 20 to 64 pages, during his editorship.
From 1872 to 1897 he was chairman of the Association’s
Parliamentary Bill Committee. He died on the 7th of January
1898. For his second wife he married Alice Marion Rowland,
who had herself studied medicine in London and Paris, and was no less interested than her husband in philanthropic reform. She was most active in her encouragement of Irish cottage industries, and was the founder of the Donegal Industrial Fund.
HART, SIR ROBERT, Bart. (1835- ), Anglo-Chinese statesman, was born at Milltown, Co. Armagh, on the 20th of February 1835. He was educated at Taunton, Dublin and Belfast, and graduated at Queen’s College, Belfast, in 1853. In the following year he received an appointmemnt as student-interpreter
