by the knightly order. With Sickingen Hutten also finally fell. He fled to Basel, where Erasmus refused to see him, both for fear of his loathsome diseases, and also because the beggared knight was sure to borrow money from him. A paper war consequently broke out between the two Humanists, which embittered Hutten’s last days, and stained the memory of Erasmus. From Basel Ulrich dragged himself to Mülhausen; and when the vengeance of Erasmus drove him thence, he went to Zurich. There the large heart of Zwingli welcomed him; he helped him with money, and found him a quiet refuge with the pastor of the little isle of Ufnau on the Zurich lake. There the frail and worn-out poet, writing swift satire to the end, died at the end of August or beginning of September 1523 at the age of thirty-five. He left behind him some debts due to compassionate friends; he did not even own a single book, and all his goods amounted to the clothes on his back, a bundle of letters, and that valiant pen which had fought so many a sharp battle, and had won for the poor knight-errant a sure place in the annals of literature.
Ulrich von Hutten is one of those men of genius at whom propriety is shocked, and whom the mean-spirited avoid. Yet through his short and buffeted life he was befriended, with wonderful charity and patience, by the chief leaders of the Humanist movement. For, in spite of his irritable vanity, his immoral life and habits, his odious diseases, his painful restlessness, Hutten had much in him that strong men could love. He passionately loved the truth, and was ever open to all good influences. He was a patriot, whose soul soared to ideal schemes and a grand utopian restoration of his country. In spite of all, his was a frank and noble nature; his faults chiefly the faults of genius ill-controlled, and of a life cast in the eventful changes of an age of novelty. A swarm of writings issued from his pen; at first the smooth elegance of his Latin prose and verse seemed strangely to miss his real character; he was the Cicero and Ovid of Germany before he became its Lucian.
His chief works were his Ars versificandi (1511); the Nemo (1518); a work on the Morbus Gallicus (1519); the volume of Steckelberg complaints against Duke Ulrich (including his four Ciceronian Orations, his Letters and the Phalarismus) also in 1519; the Vadismus (1520); and the controversy with Erasmus at the end of his life. Besides these were many admirable poems in Latin and German. It is not known with certainty how far Hutten was the parent of the celebrated Epistolae obscurorum virorum, that famous satire on monastic ignorance as represented by the theologians of Cologne with which the friends of Reuchlin defended him. At first the cloister-world, not discerning its irony, welcomed the work as a defence of their position; though their eyes were soon opened by the favour with which the learned world received it. The Epistolae were eagerly bought up; the first part (41 letters) appeared at the end of 1515; early in 1516 there was a second edition; later in 1516 a third, with an appendix of seven letters; in 1517 appeared the second part (62 letters), to which a fresh appendix of eight letters was subjoined soon after. In 1909 the Latin text of the Epistolae with an English translation was published by F. G. Stokes. Hutten, in a letter addressed to Robert Crocus, denied that he was the author of the book, but there is no doubt as to his connexion with it. Erasmus was of opinion that there were three authors, of whom Crotus Rubianus was the originator of the idea, and Hutten a chief contributor. D. F. Strauss, who dedicates to the subject a chapter of his admirable work on Hutten, concludes that he had no share in the first part, but that his hand is clearly visible in the second part, which he attributes in the main to him. To him is due the more serious and severe tone of that bitter portion of the satire. See W. Brecht, Die Verfasser der Epistolae obscurorum virorum (1904).
For a complete catalogue of the writings of Hutten, see E. Böcking’s Index Bibliographicus Huttenianus (1858). Böcking is also the editor of the complete edition of Hutten’s works (7 vols., 1859–1862). A selection of Hutten’s German writings, edited by G. Balke, appeared in 1891. Cp. S. Szamatolski, Huttens deutsche Schriften (1891). The best biography (though it is also somewhat of a political pamphlet) is that of D. F. Strauss (Ulrich von Hutten, 1857; 4th ed., 1878; English translation by G. Sturge, 1874), with which may be compared the older monographs by A. Wagenseil (1823), A. Bürck (1846) and J. Zeller (Paris, 1849). See also J. Deckert, Ulrich von Huttens Leben und Wirken. Eine historische Skizze (1901). (G. W. K.)
HUTTER, LEONHARD (1563–1616), German Lutheran
theologian, was born at Nellingen near Ulm in January 1563.
From 1581 he studied at the universities of Strassburg, Leipzig,
Heidelberg and Jena. In 1594 he began to give theological
lectures at Jena, and in 1596 accepted a call as professor of
theology at Wittenberg, where he died on the 23rd of October
1616. Hutter was a stern champion of Lutheran orthodoxy,
as set down in the confessions and embodied in his own
Compendium locorum theologicorum (1610; reprinted 1863),
being so faithful to his master as to win the title of “Luther
redonatus.”
In reply to Rudolf Hospinian’s Concordia discors (1607), he wrote a work, rich in historical material but one-sided in its apologetics, Concordia concors (1614), defending the formula of Concord, which he regarded as inspired. His Irenicum vere christianum is directed against David Pareus (1548–1622), professor primarius at Heidelberg, who in Irenicum sive de unione et synodo Evangelicorum (1614) had pleaded for a reconciliation of Lutheranism and Calvinism; his Calvinista aulopoliticus (1610) was written against the “damnable Calvinism” which was becoming prevalent in Holstein and Brandenburg. Another work, based on the formula of Concord, was entitled Loci communes theologici.
HUTTON, CHARLES (1737–1823), English mathematician,
was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne on the 14th of August 1737.
He was educated in a school at Jesmond, kept by Mr Ivison,
a clergyman of the church of England. There is reason to believe,
on the evidence of two pay-bills, that for a short time in 1755
and 1756 Hutton worked in Old Long Benton colliery; at any
rate, on Ivison’s promotion to a living, Hutton succeeded to
the Jesmond school, whence, in consequence of increasing pupils,
he removed to Stote’s Hall. While he taught during the day
at Stote’s Hall, he studied mathematics in the evening at a
school in Newcastle. In 1760 he married, and began tuition
on a larger scale in Newcastle, where he had among his pupils
John Scott, afterwards Lord Eldon, chancellor of England.
In 1764 he published his first work, The Schoolmaster’s Guide,
or a Complete System of Practical Arithmetic, which in 1770
was followed by his Treatise on Mensuration both in Theory and
Practice. In 1772 appeared a tract on The Principles of Bridges,
suggested by the destruction of Newcastle bridge by a high
flood on the 17th of November 1771. In 1773 he was appointed
professor of mathematics at the Royal Military Academy,
Woolwich, and in the following year he was elected F.R.S. and
reported on Nevil Maskelyne’s determination of the mean density
and mass of the earth from measurements taken in 1774–1776 at
Mount Schiehallion in Perthshire. This account appeared in the
Philosophical Transactions for 1778, was afterwards reprinted
in the second volume of his Tracts on Mathematical and Philosophical
Subjects, and procured for Hutton the degree of LL.D.
from the university of Edinburgh. He was elected foreign
secretary to the Royal Society in 1779, but his resignation in
1783 was brought about by the president Sir Joseph Banks,
whose behaviour to the mathematical section of the society
was somewhat high-handed (see Kippis’s Observations on the
late Contests in the Royal Society, London, 1784). After his
Tables of the Products and Powers of Numbers, 1781, and his
Mathematical Tables, 1785, he issued, for the use of the Royal
Military Academy, in 1787 Elements of Conic Sections, and in 1798
his Course of Mathematics. His Mathematical and Philosophical
Dictionary, a valuable contribution to scientific biography,
was published in 1795 (2nd ed., 1815), and the four volumes of
Recreations in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, mostly a
translation from the French, in 1803. One of the most laborious
of his works was the abridgment, in conjunction with G. Shaw
and R. Pearson, of the Philosophical Transactions. This undertaking,
the mathematical and scientific parts of which fell to
Hutton’s share, was completed in 1809, and filled eighteen
volumes quarto. His name first appears in the Ladies’ Diary
(a poetical and mathematical almanac which was begun in
1704, and lasted till 1871) in 1764; ten years later he was
appointed editor of the almanac, a post which he retained till
1817. Previously he had begun a small periodical, Miscellanea
Mathematica, which extended only to thirteen numbers; subsequently
he published in five volumes The Diarian Miscellany,
which contained large extracts from the Diary. He resigned
his professorship in 1807, and died on the 27th of January 1823.
See John Bruce, Charles Hutton (Newcastle, 1823).
