Author: Hurwitz, Hyman
Biography:
HURWITZ, Hyman (1770-1844: ODNB)
Poetry is rare among Hurwitz’s published works and is consistently in Hebrew, with translations by other people. He was born in Posen (Poznan), in what was then Prussia but is now Poland, the son of Jacob Hurwitz; his mother’s name is not known. He emigrated to England about 1800 and became a schoolmaster in London, at first in Chelsea and then, after his partnership with Robert Farrer was dissolved in 1801, at his own establishment, an Academy for Jewish boys in Highgate. His sister ran a corresponding school for young ladies. S. T. Coleridge (q.v.) was a near neighbour from 1816 onwards. On 22 Oct. 1802 he married Hester Levy (d 1833) at the Great Synagogue; they had one daughter, Sarah (1808-88). He gave up the school when he was chosen as the first Professor of German and Hebrew at University College, London; his Introductory Lecture was delivered on 11 Nov. 1828. His publications include Hebrew grammars, a “defence of the Hebrew Scriptures” entitled Vindiciae Hebraicae (1820), and Hebrew Tales (1826). He died on 18 Jul. 1844 at home at 8 Artillery Place, Woolwich. Coleridge translated his best-known poem, the “dirge” for Princess Charlotte, but there was a rival translator, a Scot, Rev. William Smith (1768-1846), who produced another dual-language version of the dirge in Edinburgh in 1819 as The Lamentation of Israel (7 pages only) and the 1827 translation of Hurwitz’s elegy for George III, The Knell. Smith was born on 4 Apr. 1768 at Olrig, eldest son of Rev. Alexander Smith, the parish priest, and his wife Elizabeth Sinclair. He was educated at King’s College, Aberdeen (AM 1785), ordained in 1789, and presented to the living of Bower, where he served for the rest of his life. He was a popular preacher and a gifted linguist (one of his few other publications is Sacred Lessons and Exercises, in English and Gaelic [1810]). With his wife Ann Longmore Sinclair, whom he married at Bower on 16 Jan. 1813, he had at least ten children. He died at Bower on 3 Jun. 1846 and was buried there, as were his wife (d 1856) and seven of their children. (“Hurwitz, Hyman,” ODNB 14 Jan. 2023; William Howitt, The Northern Heights of London [1869], 397-8; The Era 21 Jul. 1844; ancestry.com 15 Jan. 2023; findmypast.com 15 Jan. 2023; Scotland’s People; History of Caithness online, caithness.org 15 Jan. 2023) HJ