VON HOLST, THEODOR (1810–1844), historical painter, the son of a teacher of music of Livonian descent, was born in London on 3 Sept. 1810. At an early age he was admitted a student at the Royal Academy, where he attracted the notice of Sir Thomas Lawrence, who bought some of his drawings. But the artist who influenced him most was Fuseli, whose pupil he became and whose peculiarities he copied and exaggerated. He sent his first picture to the Royal Academy in 1827, and continued to exhibit there and at the British Institution till the year of his death. His subjects were either taken from literature, Dante, Shakespeare, Scott, and especially Goethe, or inventions of his own with melodramatic titles. His principal works were ‘The Drinking Scene in Faust,’ ‘The Apparition to the second Lord Lyttelton,’ and ‘The Raising of Jairus's daughter’ (engraved), for which the directors of the British Institution awarded him a prize of fifty guineas in 1841. He was gifted with a talent for drawing and a fine sense of colour, but it was the universal opinion of critics that he was spoilt by ill-advised adulation, and that his powers were wasted on the gloomy and romantic subjects which he chose to paint. He illustrated an edition of ‘Frankenstein,’ by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, published in 1831. He died at 2 Percy Street, Bedford Square, on 12 Feb. 1844.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Athenæum, 1844, pp. 321, 701; Art Union, 1844, p. 87.]
VORTIGERN (fl. 450), though the subject of many weird legends, may safely be regarded as an historical figure, the ruler of South-eastern Britain at the time of the first English settlement. According to Gildas, the piteous appeal to Ætius in 446 was followed by a British victory over the barbarians of the north; soon, however, it was rumoured that the latter were again about to attack the province, and the Britons were in despair. It was then decided by the ‘haughty tyrant’ and his ‘counsellors’ to invite the aid of the Saxons, who came in three keels and, ‘iubente infausto tyranno,’ settled in the eastern part of the island. The Picts and Scots defeated, the newcomers turned upon the Britons and devastated the whole country. In this account, the earliest extant, of the circumstances which led to the English settlement, the name of the British ‘tyrant’ is withheld (though two of the manuscripts repair the omission), after a fashion not uncommon in Gildas. Nevertheless there seems no reason to doubt that the narrative, written within a century after the supposed date of the landing, is on the whole trustworthy, and, further, that Bede is right in giving the name as ‘Uurtigernus.’ This form, denoting in the British tongue ‘supreme lord’ (Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, pp. 154, 650), and having an Irish representative, ‘Fortchernn’ (Rhys, Celtic Philology, 2nd ed. p. 33), presents no difficulties on the score of philology, and must indeed have come down to Bede's time from an earlier age, possibly as an early addition to the text of Gildas. In old Welsh it soon became ‘Guorthigirn,’ the form found in Nennius (Harleian MS.), which in turn yielded the mediæval and modern Gwrtheyrn. In English it was altered to ‘Wyrtgeorn,’ as found in the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,’ until Geoffrey of Monmouth and his contemporaries revived the older form as ‘Vortegirnus’ and ‘Vortigernus.’
Bede has nothing beyond the name to add to the account which Gildas gives of Vortigern. In the ‘Historia Britonum’ ascribed to Nennius there are, on the other hand, much legendary detail and an evident intention to represent Vortigern as the villain in the tragedy of British ruin. He receives the Saxons, who are exiles from their country, with favour, gives them Thanet to settle in, promises them food and clothes if they will fight his foes for him, and, when they are already a greater burden than the country can sustain, encourages them to bring over more of their kinsmen. He falls violently in love with Hengist's daughter, who comes over with the second detachment, and, in order to win her hand, gives the Saxons the kingdom of Kent. Next is interposed the story of Vortigern's incestuous marriage, the fruit of which he seeks to father upon Germanus. He is then driven from his kingdom and seeks to build himself a fortress in the wilds of Eryri in North Wales. The ‘magi’ of his court say the walls must be sprinkled with the blood of a child without a father; such a one is found, but proves to be Ambrosius or Emrys Wledig, who deprives Vortigern of the kingdom of the west and forces him to take refuge in the north. Meanwhile his son Guorthemir holds the east and wages war successfully against the English, who leave the island. On the death of Guorthemir
