Chadderton recommended him to the mastership of Tiverton school, which he accepted, but resigned on receiving an offer of the rectory of Halstead from Lady Drury. Sir Edmund Bacon took him in 1605 to the Spa, where he wrote the second "Century of Meditations." In 1607 he went to London, and preached before Henry, prince of Wales, who made him his chaplain. In 1612 he was presented to the living of Waltham in Essex; in 1616 he accompanied Lord Doncaster to France, and during his absence was made dean of Worcester by the king, whom in 1617 he attended into Scotland as royal chaplain. He went to the synod of Dort in 1618, where he preached a Latin sermon which was much talked of. The synod decreed him a gold medal in token of their respect. He was offered the see of Gloucester in 1624, but refused it, and in 1627 accepted that of Exeter. At this period he was suspected of puritan tendencies. He was a decided protestant; and it is he who answers the Romish question, "Where was your church before Luther?" by the counter-question, "Where was your face before it was washed lately?" In 1640 Hall wrote in defence of the divine right of episcopacy; and a remonstrance to parliament, which raised the Smectymnus controversy, in which Calamy and others took part. In 1641 he was translated to Norwich, but soon after sent to the Tower for protesting with other bishops against the laws made in their forced absence. They were impeached of high treason, but liberated on bail. Hall returned to Norwich; but in 1643 the parliament sequestrated his estates. He retired to Higham in Norfolk. There he died, September 8, 1656. Bishop Hall was one of the best men on the episcopal bench in his time. The work by which he will always be known is his "Contemplations," which, in spite of frequent faults of style, is a most valuable repository of sanctified wisdom.—B. H. C.
HALL, Richard, a Roman catholic writer, educated partly at Christ's college, Cambridge, and afterwards prosecuted his studies at Douay and in Italy. He obtained a professorship at Douay, where he died in 1604. He published some controversial works, and left a "Life of Bishop Fisher" in manuscript. Dr. Bailey, son of a bishop of Bangor, and a Roman catholic, having obtained a transcript of the Life of Fisher, sold it to a bookseller, by whom it was printed at London in 1655, under the editor's name. It is considered a work of considerable interest and value.—G. BL.
HALL, Robert, M.D., born at Haugh-head in Roxburghshire in 1763, received his first education at the grammar-school of Jedburgh, and afterwards studied medicine at the university of Edinburgh. He entered the navy, and was on service for several years; but at the conclusion of the war he relinquished his appointment, and after taking his degree in Edinburgh, repaired to London, where he lived for some years engaged in literary pursuits. Unfortunate in pecuniary matters, he was obliged again to enter the public service, and receiving the appointment of medical officer to the military division of the expedition sent to explore the course of the Niger, he left England for Africa. His health, however, suffered so much from the effects of an accident and the climate that he was compelled to return home, where he died in 1824.—W. B—d.
HALL, Robert, the celebrated preacher, was born at Arnsby, Leicestershire, May 2, 1764, and was the youngest of fourteen children. His father, author of the Help to Zion's Travellers, was Baptist pastor in that village, a man of whom his son testifies that "the natural element of his mind was greatness." Hall as an infant was exceedingly delicate, and indeed retained an agonizing constitutional malady through life. His nurse, who carried about the feeble child, took him often to a neighbouring grave-yard; and under this odd affectionate tutor he first learned the alphabet from the inscriptions on the tombstones—the tributes of the "unlettered muse." The boy then got such schooling as the village could afford, and became inordinately fond of reading. By the time he was nine years old, he had read and re-read Butler's Analogy, and Edwards on the Will and on the Affections. After being at a boarding-school for a brief season, he was placed under Mr. Ryland of Northampton, and made considerable progress. At the age of fourteen he was admitted as a student at the Bristol institution in October, 1778. The students were expected to take their turn in preaching; but Hall's first attempt was a failure, and his second attempt a more decided failure. At that period he was rather vain of his precocious talents and his acquirements unexampled for his age; but he was so thoroughly subdued by these egregious failures, that he exclaimed after the second of them—"If this does not humble me, the devil must have me." In 1780 he was solemnly set apart to the preaching of the gospel in his father's church, and his first text was 2 Thess. i. 7, 8. Immediately afterwards he went to King's college, Aberdeen, where he studied both classics and mathematics, entered with ardour into metaphysical speculations, and formed a lasting friendship with a distinguished fellow-student, Sir James Macintosh. In November, 1783, he accepted an invitation to be co-pastor with Dr. Caleb Evans over the Baptist church, Broadmead, Bristol, and spent the college vacations in this pastoral work. He soon grew in popularity at Bristol, and in 1785 he was appointed classical tutor in the Bristol academy, an office which he held for about five years. Misunderstandings, based on trivial gossip, arose between Mr. Hall and his colleague, so that he resigned, and in 1790 commenced his ministrations at Cambridge. His eloquence soon extended his fame, and in 1798 the place of worship had to be enlarged. At Cambridge he devoted himself earnestly to study; reading, thinking, and conversation filled up the fragments of his time not devoted to the more characteristic studies of the pastorate. His theology had not been for some years either very consistent or well adjusted. Nay, reports had been in circulation as to his theological liberalism; and indeed his startling remarks and brilliant raillery on some points and persons seem to have given too much occasion to such suspicions. But after a severe illness his mind settled down into orthodoxy, the living piety of experience having moulded his evangelical creed. His famous sermon "On Modern Infidelity" was preached at Cambridge, and went through repeated editions. Chaste, powerful, and thorough, it struck a chord vibrating in English society, in consequence of the atrocities of the French revolution, and gave dignified and persuasive utterance to ideas which were floating through many minds—to terrors which were alarming many hearts. In 1804 the mind of the great preacher was unhinged—nervous excitements, morbid fancies, and unnatural hours of solitary study having preceded and induced the attack. He was restored in 1805, but former habits soon reassumed their sway, and again his mind sank under the mysterious malady. But convalescence came back, and he resigned his pastorate at Cambridge, which had lasted for fifteen years. Many of our readers must have read the letter of noble sympathy and high-toned thought and counsel, which Sir James Macintosh, then recorder of Bombay, sent to the sufferer after his second recovery. Shortly after, regaining confidence in himself, and brought nearer the Source of all strength by his dark and double prostration, he accepted an imitation to the pastoral charge of a small congregation in Harvey Lane, Leicester. The place of meeting was soon felt to be "too strait," and it was twice enlarged. Hall had been married in 1808, and domestic comfort gave him more uniform health and spirits. This period of his life was distinguished by growing popularity, and the extended acquaintanceship of good and great men of all creeds and parties. His sermons made deep impression on many, excited admiration in all. One day in the month he set apart for fasting and prayer, and felt this inner sabbath, this retirement from excitement, crowd, and controversy, to be very salutary. In 1826, when over sixty years of age, he returned to Bristol at the invitation of the church, and there he laboured till his death on the 21st of February, 1831. A deeper unction, pathos, spirituality, and searchingness, characterized his sermons toward the close of his life. The intellectual robed itself in holy beauties, and the imagination which had revelled among the things which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, was contented to follow the tracings and pencillings of the Divine Spirit.
It would be superfluous to praise Hall's pulpit oratory; physical debility alone prevented him from being among "the first three." His discourses were not the rhetorical delivery of premeditated thoughts, in which a ready recollection is the chief assistant. He had studied his theme, and filled his mind with it. He had revolved it in its various aspects, proofs, and applications; but he preached it from the free and direct workings of his soul, throwing out fresh thoughts, and dressing them in fitting phrase—choice words being always at command, and arranging themselves into clauses and sentences with classic felicity and power. He had great power of self-insulation; he became absorbed in his theme. He was not remarkable for profundity or originality in such a sense as Foster was; but he possessed a great gift of analysis and command of illustration. His mind wrought with
