HEKCULES STRANGLING. 808 HERDEB. Keynolds (1788), and one of his best works. It represents the god, still a child, choking with niiiaculous strength two serpents which have at- tacked him; while Alcmene and her attendants rush to his rescue and Juno appears above him in a cloud. The painting, which hangs in the Herjnitage Museum at tSaint Petersburg, was ordered by Catharine II. of Russia, who saw in the subject a symbol of her country's early strug- gles for life. HERCYN'IAN FOREST (Lat. hcrcynia sili'(i). A name variously applied by the ancient Mriters to portions of the central mountain sys- tem of Europe. Aristotle makes the Ister (or Danube) and the other great northern rivers take their rise in the Hercynian Forest. Cicsar, who estimates it at nine days' journey in breadth and sixty in length. conii)rehcnds under this name a great part of the mointain ranges in Germany north of the Danube ; while some identify it with the Bohemian Forest, and others with the Thur- ingian Forest. Some geographers apply the term to the comple.K of mountain ranges, mountain groups, and plateaus which stretch from West- phalia across Middle CJermany and along the nor- thern borders of Austria to the Carpathians. HERD, D.wiD (1732-1810). A Scotch col- lector of national ballads. He was born in the Parish of Marykirk. Kincardine, where his father had a farm, but early left the country for the town and became a well-known figure among the literary men of Edinburgh. His claim to remem- brance rests upon his Ancient and Modern Scot- tish Songs, Heroic Ballads, etc. (2 vols., 1776), of which a modern edition was published in Glasgow in 1869. HERDER, her'dcr, Bartholomaus (1774- 1839). A German publisher, born at Rottweil, in Wiirttemberg. In 1801 he opened a bookstore and printing-office in Jleersburg, on Lake Con- stance, but soon afterwards removed to the city of Constance, and in 1810 to Freiluirg, Baden, where he opened the Herdersche Universitiitslnich- handlung. He accompanied the Allies to Paris in 1814 as Imperial field printer in Metternich's suite, and on his return added to his printing business establishments for lithography, copper- engi-aving, and plastic art. The Catholic char- acter of the firm was develojjed under his sons and successors. Karl Raphael Herder and Ben- jamin Herder, and it became one of the best- known publishing houses of this Church in Ger- many, In 1888 Hermann Herder, a son of Ben- lamin and grandson of the founder, inherited the business, which became known as the Herdersche 'er!agshandlung. The firm also established an office at Saint Louis, lIo., U. S. A. Among the important works which the firm has published is 'Wetter und Welte's Kirchenlexikon oder Encylclo- piidie der katholischen Tlieologie (12 vols., 1847- 56; 2d ed. 1882-1001). HERDER, .ToHANN Gottfried vox (1744- 1803). An eminent German philosophical and critical writer, of the classical period, born at Mohrungen. He was the son of a schoolmaster and cantor. His frail health unfitted him for industrial life, and his first earnings were as copyist to Deacon Trescho, a voluminous but for- gotten author. Here he was neither appreciated nor justly treated, but he gained a knowledge of books and an easy style. He had begun inde- pendent composition wlien he awakened the inter- est of a Prussian surgeon, with whom he went to Konigsberg, where he hoped to have an operation performed on an eye, and then to study medicine. But for the latter his nerves proved too weak, and he turned to theology, getting a small scholarship and eking out a livelihood by teaching. He .soon won notice both as pedagogue and preacher, and became intimate with Kant, the philosopher, who, with Rousseau, was the guide of his future meta- physical si)eculations. In 1764 he accepted a call to the Cathedral School at Riga, where he main- tained his reputation, and would have remained had he not become involved in a literary contro- ver.sy with Klotz about Lessing, in the course of which he was led to protest that he had not written articles that univer.sal opinion, supported by circiunstantial evidence, held that he had. Thus he lost reputation, and resolved to recruit his health in the south of France in 1769, He returned to Germany in that year. He became tutor to the Prince of Holstein-Eutin, sharpened his critical genius in a fortnight with Lessing at Hamburg, found at Darmstadt his future con- genial mate in Karoline Flachsland. and accepted a call to the pastorate of Biickeburg. He went thither in 1771. after a long stay in Strassburg for optical treatment, during which he was a help- ful friend and critic of the young Goethe, He had printed the famous critical attacks on the arti- ficial literary spirit of his time, Fragmente iiber die neuere dentsche Litteratur (1767) and the Kritische Walder (1769), and a prize essay, Veher den Vrsjirung der Sprache (1772). He now began to gather material for the Ideen- zur Philosophie der fleschichte der Menschheit, his greatest work, though unfinished, puldished 1784- 91 (translated by Churchill), for Acl teste Vr- kunde des Mensclicngeschlechts (1774), an aes- thetic study of Genesis, and for the studies in popular poetry (]'olkslieder, 1778-79), the works that were to constitute his chief title to fame. In 1773 he married. In 1776 Goethe procured for him the posts of Court preaeher and member of the Upper C^onsistory at Veimar, where he found the environment best suited to his delicately or- ganized genius and laliored efl'ectively for Church reform, though he soon found himself in moral estrangement from Goethe and his associates. Jlany of Herder's important publications were completed in the period between 1778 and his journey to Italy in 1788. They consist of theo- logical, testhetic, philosophic, philologic, and po- litical studies, of Vom Geiste der Ehriiischen Poesie (1782), translated bv Marsh {Tlie Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, 1833), of a translation of The Cid (1805), and of Stimmen der Volker (Voices of the Peoples) (1778-80), in which he trans- lated the popular songs of many nations with a felicity and sympathy that preserve in wonderful degree the local color and feeling. Herder's orig- inal work in iesthetics, philosophy, literature, and philology has powerfully influenced German thought. He was possibly best as an interpreter of others: for he Iiad a truer perception of the relation of language to human nature and na- tional character than any other of his day. He was thouglit, if not a sy.stematic a most stimulat- ing thinker, perhaps more a seer than a scholar, yet by the scope of his intuitional perceptions he abounded in suggestions that have borne fruit in the modern correlation of the sciences. Herder's Works are in 60 vols. (1827-30). The literary portion has been best reedited by Suphan and
