Chapter M: T. M (21)

The witch hazel is quite a distinct plant, _Hamamelis virginica_, of
the natural order Hamamalideae, the astringent bark of which is used
in medicine. It is a hardy deciduous shrub, native of North America,
which bears a profusion of rich yellow flowers in autumn and winter
when the plant is leafless.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] It has been supposed that the origin is to be found in O. Eng.
_haes_, a behest, connected with _hatan_ = Ger. _heissen_, to give
orders: the hazel-wand was the sceptre of authority of the shepherd
chieftain ([Greek: poimen laon]) of olden times, see _Grimm, Gesch.
d. deutsch. Sprache_, p. 1016, 1848. The root is _kas_-, cf. Lat.
_corulas, corylus_; and the original meaning is unknown.

[2] On the expression "hazel eyes," see _Notes and Queries_, 2nd ser.
xii. 337, and 3rd ser. iii. 18, 39.

[3] For derivations of the word see Latham's _Johnson's Dictionary_.

HAZLETON, a city of Luzerne county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., about 25 m. S. of Wilkes-Barre. Pop. (1890) 11,872; (1900) 14,230, of whom 2732 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 25,452. It is served by the Lehigh Valley, the Pennsylvania (for freight), and the Wilkes-Barre & Hazleton (electric) railways. The city is built on a broad tableland on Nescopeck or Buck Mountain, a spur of the Blue Mountains, about 1620 ft. above sea-level. It has a park and a number of handsome residences; and its agreeable climate and picturesque situation make it attractive as a summer resort. The city has a public library. Hazleton is near the centre of one of the richest coal regions (the Lehigh or "Eastern Middle Coal Field") of the state, and its principal industry is the mining and shipping of anthracite coal. It has silk mills, knitting mills, shirt factories, breweries, macaroni factories, lumber and planing mills, important iron works, a casket factory and a large electric power plant. The value of the city's factory products increased from $998,823 in 1900 to $2,185,876 in 1905, or 118.8%, only three other cities in the state having a population of 8000 or more in 1900 showing a greater rate of increase. There is a state hospital here for the treatment of persons injured in mines. Hazleton was settled in 1820, was laid out in 1836, was incorporated as a borough in 1856 and received a city charter in 1891. The local coal industry dates from 1837.

HAZLITT, WILLIAM (1778-1830), British literary critic and essayist, was born on the 10th of April 1778 at Maidstone, where his father, William Hazlitt, was minister of a Unitarian congregation. The father took the side of the Americans in their struggle with the mother-country, and during a residence at Bandon, Co. Cork, interested himself in the welfare of some American prisoners at Kinsale. In 1783 he migrated with his family to America, but in the winter of 1786-1787 returned to England, and settled at Wem in Shropshire, where he ministered to a small congregation. There his son William went to school, till in 1793 he was sent to the Hackney theological college in the hope that he would become a dissenting minister. For this career, however, he had no inclination, and returned, probably in 1794, to Wem, where he led a desultory life until 1802, and then decided to become a portrait painter. His elder brother John was already established as a miniature painter in London. The monotony of life at Wem was broken in January 1798 by the visit of Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Shrewsbury, where young Hazlitt went to hear him preach. Coleridge encouraged William Hazlitt's interest in metaphysics, and in the spring of the next year Hazlitt visited Coleridge at Nether Stowey and made the acquaintance of William Wordsworth. The circumstances of this early intercourse with Coleridge are related with inimitable skill in a paper in Hazlitt's _Literary Remains_ (1839). On visits to his brother in London he made many acquaintances, the most important being a friendship with Charles Lamb, said to have been founded on a remark of Lamb's interpolated in a discussion between Coleridge, Godwin and Holcroft, "Give me man as he is _not_ to be." He also formed an acquaintance with John Stoddart, whose sister Sarah he married in 1808. In October 1802 he went to Paris to copy portraits in the Louvre, and spent four happy months in Paris. When he returned to London he undertook commissions for portraits, but soon found he was not likely to excel in his art; his last portrait, one of Charles Lamb as a Venetian senator (now in the National Portrait Gallery), was executed in 1805. In that year he published his first book, _An Essay on the Principles of Human Action: being an argument in favour of the Natural Disinterestedness of the Human Mind_, which had occupied him at intervals for six or seven years. It attracted little attention, but remained a favourite with its author. Other works belonging to this period are: _Free Thoughts on Public Affairs_ (1806); _An Abridgment of the Light of Nature Revealed, by Abraham Tucker ..._ (1807); _The Eloquence of the British Senate ..._ (2 vols., 1807); _A Reply to Malthus, on his Essay on Population_ (1807); _A New and Improved Grammar of the English Tongue ..._ (1810).

Hazlitt married in 1808. His domestic life was unhappy. His wife was an unromantic, business-like woman, while he himself was fitful and moody, and impatient of restraint. The dissolution of the ill-assorted union was nevertheless deferred for fourteen years, during which much of Hazlitt's best literary work had been produced. Mrs Hazlitt had inherited a small estate at Winterslow near Salisbury, and here the Hazlitts lived until 1812, when they removed to 19 York Street, Westminster, a house that was once Milton's. Hazlitt delivered in 1812 a course of lectures at the Russell Institution on the _Rise and Progress of Modern Philosophy_. He soon abandoned philosophy, however, to give his whole attention to journalism. He was parliamentary reporter and subsequently dramatic critic for the _Morning Chronicle_; he also contributed to the _Champion_ and _The Times_; but his closest connexion was with the _Examiner_, owned by John and Leigh Hunt. In conjunction with Leigh Hunt he undertook the series of articles called _The Round Table_, a collection of essays on literature, men and manners which were originally contributed to the _Examiner_. To this time belong his _View of the English Stage_ (1818), and _Lectures on the English Poets_ (1818), on the _English Comic Writers_ (1819), and on the _Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth_ (1821). By these works, together with his _Characters of Shakespeare's Plays_ (1817), and his _Table Talk; or Original Essays on Men and Manners_ (1821-1822), his reputation as a critic and essayist was established. Next to Coleridge, Hazlitt was perhaps the most powerful exponent of the dawning perception that Shakespeare's art was no less marvellous than his genius; and Hazlitt's criticism did not, like Coleridge's, remain in the condition of a series of brilliant but fitful glimpses of insight, but was elaborated with steady care. His lectures on the Elizabethan dramatists performed a similar service for the earlier, sweeter and simpler among them, such as Dekker, till then unduly eclipsed by later writers like Massinger, better playwrights but worse poets. Treating of the contemporary drama, he successfully vindicated for Edmund Kean, whose genius he recognized from the first, the high place which he has retained as an actor, and his enthusiasm for Mrs Siddons knew no bounds. His criticisms on the English comic writers and men of letters in general are masterpieces of ingenious and felicitous exposition, though rarely, like Coleridge's, penetrating to the inmost core of the subject. Moreover, at the time when the lectures were written, Hazlitt's views, orthodox as they may seem now, were novel enough.

As an essayist Hazlitt is even more effective than as a critic. Being enabled to select his own subjects, he escapes dependence upon others either for his matter or his illustrations, and presents himself by turns as a metaphysician, a moralist, a humorist, a painter of manners and characteristics, but always, whatever his ostensible theme, deriving the essence of his commentary from himself. This combination of intense subjectivity with strict adherence to his subject is one of Hazlitt's most distinctive and creditable traits. Intellectual truthfulness is a passion with him. He steeps his topic in the hues of his own individuality, but never uses it as a means of self-display. The first reception of his admirable essays was by no means in accordance with their deserts. Hazlitt's political sympathies and antipathies were vehement, and he had taken the unfashionable side. _The Quarterly Review_ attacked him with deliberate malignity, stopped the sale of his writings for a time and blighted his credit with publishers. Hazlitt retaliated by his _Letter to William Gifford_ (1819), accusing the editor of deliberate misrepresentation. In downright abuse and hard-hitting, Hazlitt proved himself more than a match even for Gifford. By the writers in _Blackwood's Magazine_ Hazlitt was also scurrilously treated.[1] He had become estranged from his early friends, the Lake poets, by what he uncharitably but not unnaturally regarded as their political apostasy; and he had no scruples about recording his often very unfavourable opinions of his contemporaries. He displayed, moreover, an exasperating facility in grounding his criticisms on facts that his victims were unable to deny. His inequalities of temper separated him for a time even from Leigh Hunt and Charles Lamb, and on the whole the period of his most brilliant literary success was that when he was most soured and broken. Domestic troubles supervened; he had gone to live in Southampton Buildings in September 1819, and his marriage, long little more than nominal, was dissolved in consequence of the infatuated passion he had conceived for his landlord's daughter, Sarah Walker, a most ordinary person in the eyes of every one else. It is impossible to regard Hazlitt as a responsible agent while he continued subject to this influence. His own record of the transaction, published by himself under the title of _Liber Amoris, or the New Pygmalion_ (1823), is an unpleasant but remarkable psychological document. It consists of conversations between Hazlitt and Sarah Walker, drawn up in the spring of 1822, of a correspondence between Hazlitt and his friend P. G. Patmore between March and July, and an account of the rupture of his relations with Sarah. The business-like dissolution of his marriage under the law of Scotland is related with amazing naivete by the family biographer. Rid of his wife and cured of his mistress, he shortly afterwards astonished his friends by marrying a widow. "All I know," says his grandson, "is that Mrs Bridgewater became Mrs Hazlitt." They travelled on the continent for a year and then parted finally. Hazlitt's study of the Italian masters during this tour, described in a series of letters contributed to the _Morning Chronicle_, had a deep effect upon him, and perhaps conduced to that intimacy with the cynical old painter Northcote which, shortly after his return, engendered a curious but eminently readable volume of _The Conversations of James Northcote, R.A._ (1830). The respective shares of author and artist are not always easy to determine. During the recent agitations of his life he had been writing essays, collected in 1826 under the title of _The Plain Speaker: opinions on Books, Men and Things_ (1826). _The Spirit of the Age; or Contemporary Portraits_ (1825), a series of criticisms on the leading intellectual characters of the day, is in point of style perhaps the most splendid and copious of his compositions. It is eager and animated to impetuosity, though without any trace of carelessness or disorder. He now undertook a work which was to have crowned his literary reputation, but which can hardly be said to have even enhanced it--_The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte_ (4 vols., 1828-1830). The undertaking was at best premature, and was inevitably disfigured by partiality to Napoleon as the representative of the popular cause, excusable in a Liberal politician writing in the days of the Holy Alliance. Owing to the failure of his publishers Hazlitt received no recompense for this laborious work. Pecuniary anxieties and disappointments may have contributed to hasten his death, which took place on the 18th of September 1830. Charles Lamb was with him to the last.

Hazlitt had many serious defects of temper. His consistency was gained at the expense of refusing to revise his early impressions and prejudices. His estimate of a man's work was too apt to be decided by sympathy or the reverse with his politics. For Scott, however, he had a great admiration, although they were far enough apart in politics. He was a compound of intellect and passion, and the refinement of his critical analysis is associated with vehement eloquence and glowing imagery. He was essentially a critic, a dissector and, as Bulwer justly remarks, a much better judge of men of thought than of men of action. The paradoxes with which his works abound never spring from affectation; they are in general the sallies of a mind so agile and ardent as to overrun its own goal. His style is perfectly natural, and yet admirably calculated for effect. His diction, always rich and masculine, seems to kindle as he proceeds; and when thoroughly animated by his subject, he advances with a succession of energetic, hard-hitting sentences, each carrying his argument a step further, like a champion dealing out blows as he presses upon the enemy. Although, however, his grasp upon his subject is strenuous, his insight into it is rarely profound. He can amply satisfy men of taste and culture; he cannot, like Coleridge or Burke, dissatisfy them with themselves by showing them how much they would have missed without him. He is a critic who exhibits, rather than reveals, the beauties of an author. But all shortcomings are forgotten in the genuineness and fervour of the writer's self-portraiture. The intensity of his personal convictions causes all he wrote to appear in a manner autobiographic. Other men have been said to speak like books, Hazlitt's books speak like men. To read his works in connexion with Leigh Hunt's and Charles Lamb's is to be introduced into one of the most attractive of English literary circles, and this alone will long preserve them from oblivion.

His son, WILLIAM HAZLITT (1811-1893), was born on the 26th of September 1811. The separation between his parents did not prevent him from being on affectionate terms with both of them. He early began to write for the _Morning Chronicle_, and in 1833 married Caroline Reynell. He was the author of many translations, chiefly from the French, and of some works on the law of bankruptcy. He was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1844, and became registrar in the court of bankruptcy. He held this position for more than thirty years, retiring two years before his death, which took place at Addlestone, Surrey, on the 23rd of February 1893.

Hazlitt's grandson, WILLIAM CAREW HAZLITT, the bibliographer, was born on the 22nd of August 1834. He was educated at the Merchant Taylors' school and was called to the bar of the Inner Temple in 1861. Among his many publications may be noted his invaluable _Handbook to the Popular, Poetical and Dramatic Literature of Great Britain, from the Invention of Printing to the Restoration_ (1867), supplemented in 1876, 1882, 1887 and 1889, a _General Index_ by J. G. Gray appearing in 1893. He published further contributions to the subject in _Bibliographical Collections and Notes on Early English Literature made during the years 1893-1903_ (1903), and a _Manual for the Collector and Amateur of Old English Plays ..._ (1892). He was the chief editor of the useful 1871 edition of Warton's _History of English Poetry_, and compiled the _Catalogue of the Huth Library_ (1880).

The list of the first William Hazlitt's works also includes:
_Political Essays, with Sketches of Public Characters_ (1819);
_Sketches of the Principal Picture Galleries in England ..._ (1824);
_Characteristics; in the Manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims_ (1823);
_Select Poets of Great Britain: to which are prefixed Critical Notices
of each Author_ (1825); _Notes of a Journey through France and Italy
..._ (1826); _The Life of Titian; with Anecdotes of the Distinguished
Persons of his Time_ (1830), nominally by James Northcote; an article
on the "Fine Arts" contributed to the seventh edition of the
_Encyclopaedia Britannica_; and posthumous collections made by his
son.

A comprehensive edition of _The Collected Works of William Hazlitt_
(12 vols., 1902-1904) does not include the life of Napoleon. It
contains an introduction by W. E. Henley, and was issued under the
superintendence of A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover, and there are many
modern reprints of isolated works. The most copious source of
information respecting Hazlitt is the _Memoirs of William Hazlitt,
with Portions of his Correspondence_ (2 vols., 1867), by his grandson,
W. C. Hazlitt, a medley rather than a memoir, yet full of interest. A
slight but appropriate sketch had previously been prefixed by his son
to his _Literary Remains ..._ (2 vols., 1836), accompanied by
estimates of his intellectual character by Bulwer and by Talfourd, who
had been his fast friend. There is an excellent monograph on _William
Hazlitt_ (1902) by Mr Augustine Birrell, in the "English Men of
Letters" series, and one in French by J. Donady (Paris, 1907), who
also published a bibliography of his works. Valuable biographical
particulars have been preserved in Barry Cornwall's memoirs of Lamb;
in the _My Friends and Acquaintances_ (1854) of Mr P. G. Patmore,
Hazlitt's most intimate associate in his later years; in Crabb
Robinson's _Diary_, and in Lamb's correspondence. A full
bibliographical list of his writings, with a collection of the most
remarkable critical judgments upon them from all quarters, was
prepared by Alexander Ireland (1868). Further information on the
Hazlitt family is to be found in Mr W. C. Hazlitt's _Four Generations
of a Literary Family_ (2 vols., 1897). The chief interest of this
desultory book is the considerable extracts from the diary of Margaret
[Peggy] Hazlitt, which describes the Hazlitt experiences in America.
See also "William Hazlitt" in Sir L. Stephen's _Hours in a Library_
(ed. 1892, vol. ii.), and _Lamb and Hazlitt, further Letters and
Records hitherto unpublished_ (1900), by W. C. Hazlitt.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] For some quotations see Alexander Ireland's bibliography.

HEAD, SIR EDMUND WALKER, BART. (1805-1868), English colonial governor and writer on art, was the son of the Rev. Sir John Head, Bart., rector of Rayleigh, Essex. He was educated at Winchester school and Oriel College, Oxford, and taking his degree with first-class honours in classics, he became fellow of Merton College. On his father's death in 1838, he succeeded to the baronetcy as 8th baronet. His services as poor-law commissioner, to which post he was appointed in 1841 after five years as assistant-commissioner, procured for him in 1847 the office of lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick, whence he passed in 1854 to the governor-generalship of Canada, which he retained till 1861. The following year, having returned to England, Head was nominated a civil service commissioner. In 1857 he was sworn of the Privy Council, and in 1860 was decorated as K.C.B., while in the course of his career he received the degrees of D.C.L. at Oxford and LL.D. at Cambridge. He died in London on the 28th of January 1868, the baronetcy becoming extinct, as his only son had died in 1859.

Sir Edmund Head wrote the article "Painting" in the _Penny
Cyclopaedia_; _A Handbook of the Spanish and French Schools of
Painting_ (1845); _Shall and Will, or two Chapters on Future Auxiliary
Verbs_ (1856); and _Ballads and other Poems, Original and Translated_
(1868). He also edited F. T. Kugler's _Handbook of Painting of the_
_German, Flemish, Dutch, Spanish, and French Schools_ (1854) and the
_Essays on the Administrations of Great Britain_ (1864), written by
his lifelong friend, Sir George Cornewall Lewis. His translation from
the Icelandic of _Viga Glum's Saga_ appeared in 1866.

HEAD, SIR FRANCIS BOND, BART. (1793-1875), English soldier, traveller
and author, son of James Roper Head of the Hermitage, Higham, Kent,
was born there on the 1st of January 1793. He was educated at
Rochester grammar school and the Royal Military Academy, whence in
1811 he was commissioned to the Royal Engineers. He was for some years
stationed in the Mediterranean, and he served in the campaign of 1815,
being present at the battle of Waterloo. He went on half-pay in 1825,
when he accepted the charge of an association formed to work the gold
and silver mines of Rio de La Plata. In connexion with this enterprise
he made several rapid journeys across the Pampas and among the Andes,
his _Rough Notes_ of which, published in 1826, and written in a clear
and spirited style, obtained for him the name of "Galloping Head." On
his return in 1827, he became involved in a controversy with the
directors of his company, and in defence of his conduct he published
_Reports of the La Plata Mining Association_ (London, 1827). He was
soon afterwards restored to the active list of the army as a major
unattached, mainly owing to his efforts to introduce the South
American lasso into the British service for auxiliary draught. In 1830
he published a life of Bruce, the African traveller, and in 1834
_Bubbles from the Brunnens of Nassau, by an Old Man_. In 1835 he was
knighted, and in the following year created a baronet. In 1835 he was
appointed lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, and in this capacity he
had to deal with a political situation of great difficulty, being
called upon in 1837 to suppress a serious insurrection. Shortly
afterwards, in consequence of a dispute with the home government, he
resigned his post and returned to England, via New York (see
_Quarterly Review_, vols. 63-64). Thereafter he devoted himself to
writing, chiefly for the _Quarterly Review_, and to hunting. He rode
to hounds until he was seventy-five. In 1869 Sir Francis Head was made
a privy councillor. He died on the 20th of July 1875, at Duppas Hall,
Croydon.

Head was the author of a considerable number of works, chiefly of
travel, written in a clever, amusing and graphic fashion, and
displaying both acute observation and genial humour. His principal
works, beside those mentioned above, and a narrative of his Canadian
administration (1839), were _The Emigrant_ (1846); _Highways and
Dryways, the Britannia and Conway Tubular Bridges_ (1849); _Stokers
and Pokers_, a sketch of the working of a railway line (1849); _The
Defenceless State of Great Britain_ (1850); _A Faggot of French
Sticks_ (1852); _A Fortnight in Ireland_ (1852); _Descriptive Essays_
(1856); comments on Kinglake's _Crimean War_ (1853); _The Horse and
his Rider_ (1860); _The Royal Engineer_ (1870); and a sketch of the
life of Sir John Burgoyne (1872).

His brother, SIR GEORGE HEAD (1782-1855), was educated at the Charterhouse. In 1808 he received an appointment in the commissariat of the British army in the Peninsula, where he was a witness of many exciting scenes and important battles, of which he gave an interesting account in "Memoirs of an Assistant Commissary-General" attached to the second volume of his _Home Tour_, published in 1837. In 1814 he was sent to America to take charge of the commissariat in a naval establishment on the Canadian lakes, and he subsequently held appointments at Halifax and Nova Scotia. Some of his Canadian experiences were narrated by him in _Forest Scenery and Incidents in the Wilds of North America_ (1829). In 1831 he was knighted.

He published in 1835 _A Home Tour through the Manufacturing Districts
of England_, and in 1837 a sequel to it, entitled _A Home Tour through
various parts of the United Kingdom_. Both works are amusing and
instructive, but his _Rome, a Tour of many Days_, published in 1849,
is somewhat dull and tedious. He also translated _Historical Memoirs
of Cardinal Pacca_ (1850), and the _Metamorphoses of Apuleius_ (1851).

HEAD (in O. Eng. _heafod_; the word is common to Teutonic languages; cf. Dutch _hoofd_, Ger. _Haupt_, generally taken to be in origin connected with Lat. _caput_, Gr. [Greek: kephale]), the upper portion of the body in man, consisting of the skull with its integuments and contents, &c., connected with the trunk by the neck (see ANATOMY, SKULL and BRAIN); also the anterior or fore part of other animals. The word is used in a large number of transferred and figurative senses, generally with reference to the position of the head as the uppermost part, hence the leading, chief portion of anything.

HEAD-HUNTING, or HEAD-SNAPPING, as the Dutch call it, a custom once prevalent among all Malay races and surviving even to-day among the Dyaks (q.v.) of Borneo and elsewhere. Martin de Rada, provincial of the Augustinians, reported its existence in Luzon (Philippine Islands) as early as 1577. The practice is believed to have had its origin in religious motives, the worship of skulls being universal among the Malays. Severe repressive measures have led to its decrease. Among the Igorrotes all that remains is the dance, accompanied by singing, around the bare pole on which the head was formerly fixed. With the Ilongotes a bridegroom must bring his bride a number of heads, those of Christians being preferred. The chief examples of head-hunters are the Was, a hill-tribe on the north-eastern frontier of India, and the Nagas and Kukis of Assam.

See Bock, _Headhunters of Borneo_ (1881); W. H. Furness, _Home Life of
Borneo Head-hunters_ (Philadelphia, 1902); T. C. Hodson, "Head-hunting
in Assam," in _Folk-Lore_, xx. 2. 132.

HEALTH, a condition of physical soundness or well-being, in which an organism discharges its functions efficiently; also in a transferred sense a state of moral or intellectual well-being (see HYGIENE, THERAPEUTICS and PUBLIC HEALTH). "Health" represents the O. Eng. _haelth_, the condition or state of being _hal_, safe or sound. This word took in northern dialects the form "hale," in southern or midland English _hole_, hence "whole," with the addition of an initial _w_, as in "whoop," and in the pronunciation of "one." "Hail," properly an exclamation of greeting, good health to you, hence, to greet, to call out to, is directly Scandinavian in origin, from Old Norwegian _heill_, cognate with the O. Eng. _hal_, used also in this sense. "To heal" (O. Eng. _haelan_), to make in sound health, to cure, is also cognate.

_Drinking of Healths_.--The custom of drinking "health" to the living is most probably derived from the ancient religious rite of drinking to the gods and the dead. The Greeks and Romans at meals poured out libations to their gods, and at ceremonial banquets drank to them and to the dead. The Norsemen drank the "minni" of Thor, Odin and Freya, and of their kings at their funeral feasts. With the advent of Christianity the pagan custom survived among the Scandinavian and Teutonic peoples. Such festal formulae as "God's minne!" "A bowl to God in Heaven!" occur, and Christ, the Virgin and the Saints were invoked, instead of heathen gods and heroes. The Norse "minne" was at once love, memory and thought of the absent one, and it survived in medieval and later England in the "minnying" or "mynde" days, on which the memory of the dead was celebrated by services and feasting. Intimately associated with these quasi-sacrificial drinking customs must have ever been the drinking to the health of living men. The Greeks drank to one another and the Romans adopted the custom. The Goths pledged each other with the cry "Hails!" a greeting which had its counterpart in the Anglo-Saxon "waes hael" (see WASSAIL). Most modern drinking-usages have had their equivalents in classic times. Thus the Greek practice of drinking to the Nine Muses as three times three survives to-day in England and elsewhere. The Roman gallants drank as many glasses to their mistresses as there were letters in each one's name. Thus Martial:

"Six cups to Naevia's health go quickly round,
And be with seven the fair Justina's crown'd."

The English drinking phrase--a "toast," to "toast" anyone--not older than the 17th century, had reference at first to this custom of drinking to the ladies. A toast was at first invariably a woman, and the origin of the phrase is curious. In Stuart days there appears to have been a time-honoured custom of putting a piece of toast in the wine-cup before drinking, from a fanciful notion that it gave the liquor a better flavour. In the _Tatler_ No. 24 the connexion between this sippet of toast and the fair one pledged is explained as follows: "It happened that on a publick day" (speaking of Bath in Charles II.'s reign) "a celebrated beauty of those times was in the cross bath, and one of the crowd of her admirers took a glass of the water in which the fair one stood, and drank her health to the company. There was in the place a gay fellow, half fuddled, who offered to jump in, and swore, though he liked not the liquor, he would have the toast. He was opposed in his resolution; yet this whim gave foundation to the present honour which is done to the lady we mention in our liquor, who has ever since been called a toast." Skeat adds (_Etym. Dict._, 1908), "whether the story be true or not, it may be seen that a 'toast,' i.e. a health, easily took its name from being the usual accompaniment to liquor, especially in loving cups," &c.

Health drinking had by the beginning of the 17th century become a very ceremonious business in England. At Christmas 1623 the members of the Middle Temple, according to one of the Harleian MSS. quoted in _The Life of Sir Simonds D'Ewes_, drank to the health of the princess Elizabeth, who, with her husband the king of Bohemia, was then suffering great misfortunes, and stood up, one after the other, cup in one hand, sword in the other, and pledged her, swearing to die in her service. Toasts were often drunk solemnly on bended knees; according to one authority, Samuel Ward of Ipswich, in his _Woe to Drunkards_ (1622), on bare knees. In 1668 at Sir George Carteret's at Cranbourne the health of the duke of York was drunk by all in turn, each on his knees, the king, who was a guest, doing the like. A Scotch custom, still surviving, was to drink a toast with one foot on the table and one on the chair. Healths, too, were drunk in a definite order. Braithwaite says: "These cups proceed either in order or out of order. In order when no person transgresseth or drinkes out of course, but the cup goes round according to their manner of sitting: and this we call a health-cup, because in our wishing or confirming of any one's health, bare headed and standing, it is performed by all the company" (_Laws of Drinking_, 1617). Francis Douce's MSS. notes say: "It was the custom in Beaumont and Fletcher's time for the young gallants to stab themselves in the arms or elsewhere, in order to drink the health of their mistresses." Pepys, in his _Diary_ for the 19th of June 1663, writes: "To the Rhenish wine house, where Mr Moore showed us the French manner when a health is drunk, to bow to him that drunk to you, and then apply yourself to him, whose lady's health is drunk, and then to the person that you drink to, which I never knew before; but it seems it is now the fashion." A Frenchman visiting England in Charles II.'s time speaks of the custom of drinking but half your cup, which is then filled up again and presented to him or her to whose health you drank. England's divided loyalty in the 18th century bequeathed to modern times a custom which possibly yet survives. At dinners to royalties, until the accession of Edward VII., finger-glasses were not placed on the table, because in early Georgian days those who were secretly Jacobites passed their wine-glasses over the finger-bowls before drinking the loyal toasts, in allusion to the royal exiles "over the water," thus salving their consciences. Lord Cockburn (1779-1854), in his _Memorials of his Time_ (1856), states that in his day the drinking of toasts had become a perfect social tyranny; "every glass during dinner had to be dedicated to some one. It was thought sottish and rude to take wine without this, as if forsooth there was nobody present worth drinking with. I was present about 1803 when the late duke of Buccleuch took a glass of sherry by himself at the table of Charles Hope, then lord advocate, and this was noticed afterwards as a piece of direct contempt." In Germany to-day it is an insult to refuse to drink with any one; and at one time in the west of America a man took his life in his hands by declining to pledge another. All this is a survival of that very early and universal belief that drinking to one another was a proof of fair play, whether it be in a simple bargain or in matters of life and death. The ceremony surrounding the Loving Cup to-day is reminiscent of the perils of those times when every man's hand was raised against his fellow. This cup, known at the universities as the Grace Cup, was originated, says Miss Strickland in her _Lives of the Queens of Scotland_, by Margaret Atheling, wife of Malcolm Canmore, who, in order to induce the Scots to remain at table for grace had a cup of the choicest wine handed round immediately after it had been said. The modern "loving cup" sometimes has a cover, and in this case each guest rises and bows to his immediate neighbour on the right, who, also rising, removes and holds the cover with his right hand while the other drinks; the little comedy is a survival of the days when he who drank was glad to have the assurance that the right or dagger hand of his neighbour was occupied in holding the lid of the chalice. When there is no cover it is a common custom for both the left- and the right-hand neighbour to rise while the loving cup is drunk, with the similar object of protecting the drinker from attack. The Stirrup Cup is probably the Roman _poculum boni genii_, the last glass drunk at the banquet to a general "good night."

See Chambers, _Book of Days_; Valpy, _History of Toasting_ (1881); F.
W. Hackwood, _Inns, Ales, and Drinking Customs_ (London, 1909).

HEALY, GEORGE PETER ALEXANDER (1808-1894), American painter, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 15th of July 1808. Going to Europe in 1835 Healy studied under Baron Gros in Paris and in Rome. He received a third-class medal in Paris in 1840, and one of the second class in 1855, when he exhibited his "Franklin urging the claims of the American Colonies before Louis XVI." Among his portraits of eminent men are those of Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Guyot, Seward, Louis Philippe, and the presidents of the United States from John Quincy Adams to Grant--this series being painted for the Corcoran Gallery, Washington. His large group, "Webster replying to Hayne," containing 150 portraits, is in Faneuil Hall, Boston, Mass. He was one of the most prolific and popular painters of his day. He died in Chicago, Illinois, on the 24th of June 1894.

HEANOR, an urban district in the Ilkeston parliamentary division of Derbyshire, England, 10 m. N.W. of Nottingham, on the Great Northern and Midland railways. Pop. (1901) 16,249. Large hosiery works employ many of the inhabitants, and collieries are worked in the parish. The urban district includes Codnor-cum-Loscoe. Shipley Hall, to the south of Heanor, is a mansion built on a hill, amidst fine gardens. The ruin of the ancient moated castle of Codnor stands, overlooking the vale of the Erewash, on land which was once Codnor Park, and is now the site of large ironworks.