Author Description

Biographical Notice.1 Like many others whose pens have been employed in authorship, the subject of this notice, Ernst Theodor Wilhelm2 Hoffmann, led a very chequered life, the various facts and incidents of which throw a good deal of light upon his writings. Hoffmann was born at Konigsberg in Prussia on the 24th January, 1776.3 His parents were very ill-assorted, and led such an unhappy life that they parted in young Ernst's third year. His father, who was in the legal profession, was a man of considerable talent and of acute intellect, but irregular and wild in his habits and given to reprehensible practices. His mother, on the contrary, the daughter of Consistorialrath Dorffer, had been trained up on the strictest moral principles, and to habits of orderliness and propriety; and to her regard for outward conformity to old-established forms and conventional routine was added a weak and ailing condition of body, which made her for the most part a confirmed invalid. When, in 1782, the elder Hoffmann was promoted to the dignity of judge and transferred to a criminal court at Insterburg (Prussia), Ernst was taken into the house of his maternal grandmother; and his father appears never to have troubled himself further either about him or his elder brother, who afterwards took to evil ways. The brothers in all probability never met again, though an unfinished letter, dated 10th July, 1817, found amongst Hoffmann's papers after his death, was evidently written to his brother in reply to one received from him requesting pecuniary assistance...