HOLT, Sir John (1642-1710), lord chief-justice of the Court of King’s Bench in the reigns of William III. and Anne, was born at Thame, Oxfordshire, December 30,1642. His father, Sir Thomas Holt, possessed a small patrimonial estate, but in order to supplement his income had adopted the profession of law, in which he was not very successful, although he became sergeant in 1677, and afterwards for his political services to the “Tories’’was rewarded with knighthood. After attending for some years the free school of the town of Abingdon, of which his father was recorder, young Holt in his sixteenth year entered Oriel College, Oxford. He is said to have spent a very dissipated youth, and even to have been in the habit of taking purses on the highway, but after entering Gray’s Inn about 1660 he completely renounced his old habits and applied himself with exemplary diligence to the study of law. He was called to the bar in 1663, and, although his youth hindered his immediate success, when once he had an opportunity of manifesting his talent he speedily acquired a lucrative practice. An ardent supporter of civil and religious liberty, he distinguished himself in the state trials which were then so common by the able and courageous manner in which he -supported the pleas of the defendants. In February 1666 he was appointed recorder of London, and on the 22d of April he was made king’s sergeant and received the honour of knighthood. His giving a decision adverse to the pretensions of the king to exercise martial law in time of peace led to his dismissal from the office of recorder, but he was continued in the office of king’s sergeant in order to prevent him from becoming counsel for accused persons. Having been one of the judges who acted as assessors to the peers ...

HÖLTY, Ludwig Heinrich Christoph (1748-1776), German poet, and one of the founders of the “Hainbund,” was born at Mariensee in Hanover, December 21, 1748. His father, who was a pastor, was three times married, and Holty was the eldest of his ten children. His second wife, Holty’s mother, died in 1758, and her children were tenderly brought up by the third wife, together with her own large family. In his ninth year, Hölty, till then a beautiful and lively child, was smitten with smallpox, and was for some time nearly blind. On his recovery, his features and disposition were altered, and he was through life plain, silent, and awkward. From an early age he was an inveterate lover of solitude and books. He was taught at home by his father, besides the ordinary school branches, Latin, French, and Hebrew, and at the age of sixteen was sent to the public school of Celle. On leaving Celle three years later, he went as a theological student to Göttingen, where, however, he devoted his leisure hours to the study of the English and Italian poets, and began his own literary career. The appearance of some of his verses in a Göttingen weekly paper, especially those on the death of Münchhausen, brought his name before the public, and he was shortly afterwards admitted as a member of the “German Society.” He now made the acquaintance of Bürger, Miller, Voss, Boie, the brothers Stolberg, and other poets, in conjunction with whom he formed in 1772 the famous poetical brotherhood known as the “Hainbund.” The next two years were spent by Hölty in this brilliant and enthusiastic company; and, with the assistance of a scholarship and a post in the philological seminary in Göttingen, he succeeded in making a scanty livelihood by teaching English and Greek and by making ...