guiding- tltem seemed to meet in an intense focus where reason, imagination, and passion were blended together, and in whose light the theme he had been expounding stood revealed in such vivid truth and beauty as to capti vate for the moment every heart. But though stating truth chiefly in the form of reasoning, Le constantly exhibited it rather in its moral than in its theological aspects. His eloquence was indeed morally more than intellectually powerful ; and its moral purpose was besides achieved not so much by the direct inculcation of moral duties, or the detection and exposure of moral deformities, as by his unconscious exhibition of his own moral elevation and of the ardour and purity of his hopas and aims. Indeed in many of his sermons both the form and matter of his thought seemed to be determined rather by his own indivi dual interest in his subject than by the consideration of tha capacities and wants of his hearers. Though exhibiting a catholicity of spirit much in advance of his time, the range of his thought is completely included within the limits of traditional opinion. In treating of what he regarded as the cardinal truths of religion he is of course oratorically effective, but the dexterous and brilliant manner in which hs wields the old controversial weapons does not com pensate for their inherent inadequacy. He indulges too frequently in innuendoes against the moral character and motives of his opponents, and fails to sound the full depth of the speculative problems upon which he attempts to dogmatize. His sermons will always be esteemed by the student of English literature for their many passages of splendid and finished eloquence, but his theological writings as a whole are of course without that quaint interest attach ing to representations of truth which though now old and effete originally exhibited it with the freshness and vividness of a discovery ; while on the other hand they have no suffi cient colouring from modern tendencies to give to them a more than superficial value in relation to those phases of reli
gious thought which are predominant at the present time.
Sec Works of Robert Hull, A.M., with a Brief Memoir of his Life, by Olinthus Gregory, LL.D., and Observations on his Character as Preacher by John Foster, originally published in 6 vols. , London, 1832 ; Reminiscences of the Ecv. Robert Hall, A.M., by John Greene, London, 1832 ; Biographical Recollections of the Rev. Robert Hall, by J. W. Morris, 1848; Fifty Sermons of Robert Hall from Notes taken at the time of their Delivery, by the Rev. Thomas Giin- field, M. A. , 1843 ; Reminiscences of College Life in Bristol during t/io Ministry of the Rev. Robert Hall, A.M., by Frederick Trestrail, 1879.
HALLA. See Hala.
HALLAM, Henry, the celebrated English historian, was born at Windsor in the year 1777, some authorities make the date one year later, and he died at Pickhurst, Kent, on the 21st of January 1859. Notwithstanding his great fame and recent death very little seems to be known of the personal history of Hallam. He was the son of a dean of Bristol, and was educated at Eton, and afterwards went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1799. He was called to the bar by the Inner Temple, and afterwards became a bencher of that society, but he does not appear to have at any time attempted to obtain practice. Early in life he devoted himself to literary work, and became connected with the brilliant band of authors and politicians who then led the Whig party. A com- missionership of audits, obtained through that connexion, together with some private means, made him independent in point of worldly fortune, and enabled him to devote himself entirely to the studies of Ids life. He took no active part in practical politics, and was in fact unsuited by nature for the rough work of party polemics. But he was an active supporter of many popular movements particularly of that which ended in the abolition of the slave trade ; and he was throughout his entire life sincerely and profoundly attached to the political principles of the Whigs, both in their popular and in their aristocratic aspect. Hallam s earliest literary work was undertaken in connexion with the great organ of the Whig party, the Edinburgh Revieiv, where his review of Scott s Dryden attracted much notice. His first great work, The View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ayes, was produced in 1818, and was followed nine years later by the Constitutional History of England. In 1838-39 appeared the Iniroduc* tion to the Literature of Europe in the bth, Qth, and th Centuries. These are the three works on which the fame- of Hallam rests. They at once took a place in English literature which has never been seriously challenged. A volume of supplemental notes to his Middle Ages was pub lished in 1848. These facts and dates represent nearly all the events of Hallam s career. The strongest personal interest in his life was the affliction which befell him in the loss of his children, one after another. His eldest son, Arthur Henry Hallam, the "A. H. H." of Tennyson s In Memoriam, and by the testimony of his contemporaries a man of the most brilliant promise, died in 1833 at the age of twenty-two. Seventeen years later, his second son, Henry Fitzmaurice Hallam, was cut off like his brother at the very threshold of what might have been a great career. The premature death and high talents of these young men, and the association of one of them with the most popular poem of the age, have made Hallam s family afflictions better known than any other incidents of his life-. He survived wife, daughter, and sons by many years. In 1834 Hallam published The Remains in Prose and Verse of Arthur Henry Hallam, ivith a Sketch of his Life. In 1852 a selection of Literary Essays and Characters from the Literature of Europe was published. Hallam was a fellow of the Royal Society, and a trustee of the British Museum, and. enjoyed many other appropriate distinctions. In 1830 he received the gold medal for history, founded by George III.
The Middle Ages is described by Hallam himself as a series of historical dissertations, a comprehensive survey of the chief circumstances that can interest a philosophical inquirer during the period from the 5th to the 15th ceiir tury. The work consists of nine long chapters, each of which is a complete treatise in itself. The history of France, of Italy, of Spain, of Germany, and of the Greek and Saracenic empires, sketched in rapid and general terms, is the subject of five separate chapters. Others deal with the great institutional features of mediaeval society the development of the feudal system, of the ecclesiastical, system, and of the free political system of England. The last chapter sketches the general state of society, the growth of commerce, manners, and literature in the Middle Ages-. The book may be regarded as a general view of early modern history, preparatory to the more detailed treatment of special lines of inquiry carried out in his subsequent works, although Hallam s original intention was to continue the work on the scale on which it had been begun.
ject at the point at which it had been dropped in the Vieiv of the Middle Ages, viz., the accession of Henry VII.,[1] and carries it down to the accession of George III. Hallam stopped here for a characteristic reason, which it is impos sible not to respect and to regret. He was unwilling to excite the prejudices of modern politics which seemed to him to run back through the whole period of the reign of George III. As a matter of fact they ran back much further, as Hallam soon found. The sensitive impartiality which withheld him from touching perhaps the most interesting period in the history of the constitution did not
save him from the charge of partisanship. The Quarterly
- ↑ Lord Brougham, overlooking the constitutional chapter in the Middle Ages, censured Hallam for making an arbitrary beginning at this point, and proposed to write a more complete history himself.
