Ernst Theodor Wilhelm, a German writer and artist of brilliant but wild and unregulated genius, was born at Königsberg in Prussia, Jan. 24, 1776. His misfortunes may be considered to have begun in his early childhood, for, when he was a mere infant, his father—a man of talent and high social standing, but of bad temper, and perhaps bad habits—separated himself from his wife, and never again took the least interest in her or any of her children. The charge of Young Hoffmann's education was undertaken by his uncle, a rigid methodical man, who lived by rule and square, and who wasted many hours in trying to train his frolicsome nephew to a clockwork life like his own. At a fitting age he was sent to the public school of Königsberg, where he displayed little aptitude for the classics, but much for music and drawing. From the school he passed to the university, where he listened to the lectures of Kant without understanding or profiting by them. Yet he brought hard at his law studies, occupying his spare time in giving lessons in his favourite arts of music and drawing; and, after graduation, was appointed assessor of the court of Posen. In the gay society of this town, where his time was only half-occupied, he contracted those habits of dissipation which afterwards brought about his ruin. The abundant field for satire tempted him to use too freely that dangerous gift, and he found it convenient to retire for a time to Plozk, which, two years later, he was allowed to exchange for Warsaw. In the Polish capital he turned to profitable account his taste for music, and was beginning to prosper in the world, when the arrival of Napoleon and his legions once more threw him upon his wits. Failing in his attempt to support himself by any of the forms of art of which he was master, he became a stage director; and, when that resource failed, a miscellaneous writer. It was now that he began that series of essays after collected and published under the title of Fantasie-Stücke in Callo's Manier (Fancy-Pieces in the manner of Jacques Callot). The brilliancy and originality of these fancy pieces, which turned chiefly on music, soon made Hoffmann's name known, and procured him abundance of literary and other employment; but his life was still uncertain and chequered by the strangest vicissitudes, arising out of the French war, which in these years was devastating Germany. When peace was restored to that country on the overthrow of Napoleon, Hoffmann was reinstated in his legal appointments, and soon after published his Elixiere des Teufels, a two-volume novel, which enhanced his rapidly growing fame. But his success turned his head. He had always been vain, and now he became transcendently so; and as he had no sympathy with the dull conventions of society, he made himself a host of enemies by fierce and frequent defiance of them. In disgust he retired to the wine-house, where, in the company of outcasts like himself, he sought to drown his cares in the wildest orgies. "Strangers," says his most eloquent biographer, "came to Berlin to see him in the tavern." The tavern was his study, his pulpit, and his throne. Here his wit flashed and flamed like an aurora borealis, and the table was forever in a roar; and thus, amid tobacco smoke and over coarse earthly liquor, was Hoffmann wasting faculties which might have seasoned the nectar of the gods." In 1817 he published his Nacht-Stücke (Night-Pieces); and between 1819 and 1821, his Serapions-Brüder, comprising most of his minor tales and fugitive pieces. In 1820 and the following year appeared his Lebens-Ausichten des Kater Murr (Tom-Cat Murr's Philosophy of Life), his masterpiece, but which he did not live to finish. He died of a sort of paralysis, Jan. 24, 1822.

Hoffmann's natural powers were all but of the highest order, and, had they been under due control and guidance, might have done great things. He thought he had found his sphere in the poetry of art, which he loved with a deep though hardly with a pure love, as a source of refined enjoyment rather than as a fountain of beauty. Failing to find in it the heavenly peace which he longed for, he prostituted it to the purposes of an earthly excitement. Hence it is that his philosophy degenerates into bombast, and his magnanimity into levity; and his character equally with his writings became tawdry, false, and theatrical. His humour and his fancy, naturally racy and rich, became forced and grotesque; and all his other fine gifts were stultified besides by the incredible rapidity with which, for the most part, he was compelled to write. See Hoffmann's Life and Remains, published shortly after his death; and Carlyle's Miscellanies, vol. iii., p. 362.

Hoffmann, Frederick, a celebrated physician of the University of Halle in Saxony, was born in that city in 1660. He received his early education in his native town, and made great progress in the mathematics, to which he partly ascribed the success which followed his medical studies. At the age of fifteen he lost both his father and his mother during the prevalence of an epidemical distemper. In 1680 he established himself at Erfurt, there to study chemistry under Gaspar Cramer; and the following year he received the degree of doctor of physic at Jena. In 1682 he published an essay De Cinamari Antimonii, which was reprinted at Leyden in 1685, 12mo, and laid the foundation of his reputation as an able chemist, which he afterwards increased by professing chemistry in the schools of Jena. It is to him we are indebted for the preparation known by the name of the Anodyne Liquor of Hoffmann, which is considered still as a useful sedative. Frederick III., Elector of Brandenburg, having founded the university of Halle in 1693, Hoffmann was appointed primarius professor, and alone prepared the statutes of the faculty of medicine. His fame soon spread throughout all Germany, and thence into foreign parts; and several learned bodies, including the academies of Berlin and Petersburg, and the Royal Society of London, enrolled him among their members. During his residence at Halle he divided his time between instruction, practice, and study; but more than once he interrupted his pursuits by visits to the different courts of Germany where his professional successes procured him honours, titles, and rewards. He was solicited by the king of Prussia to fix his residence at Berlin; but he preferred remaining in his native country, where he died on the 12th of November 1742. At the age of sixty Hoffmann undertook his great work entitled Medicina Rationalis Systematica, Halle, 1730, in 9 vols. 4to, of which Bruhier d'Ablaincourt has given a translation, under the title of Médecine Raisonnée d'Hoff-

mann, 1739, in 9 vols. 12mo. The same physician has also translated from the Latin of Hoffmann a Treatise on Fevers, Paris, 1746, in 3 vols. 12mo; the Politics of Medicine, ibid., 1751, in 12mo; and Observations on the Cure of Gout and Rheumatism. A complete edition of his works has been published, with a life of the author, under the title of Hoffmanni Opera omnia Medico-physica cum Supplementis, Geneva, 1740, 1755, 11 parts, in folio. The writings of Hoffmann contain a great mass of practical matter of considerable value, partly compiled from preceding writers, and partly the result of his own observation; but they are also deformed by trifling remarks, hypothetical conjectures, and frequent prolixity and repetition in the details. As a theorist, his suggestions proved of great importance, and contributed to introduce that revolution in the science of medicine which subsequent observation has extended and confirmed. His doctrine of atony and spasm in the living solid, according to which all internal disorders were referred to some preternatural affection of the nervous system, rather than to the morbid derangements of the fluids, first turned the attention of physicians from the mere mechanical and chemical operations of the body, to those of the primary moving powers of the living system. Hoffmann pursued with considerable ardour the study of practical chemistry, and improved the department of pharmacy by the addition of some mineral preparations. But, upon the whole, his practice was cautious, especially in his latter years; and he trusted much to vegetable simples. "I affirm solemnly," said he, "that, though in my youth I ran much after chemical remedies, yet in my age I became convinced that very few remedies, well selected, and derived from substances in appearance the most worthless, afford more prompt and efficacious relief to the sick than the rarest and most elaborate chemical preparations."