The churchyard at Eton is a triangular piece of ground, converging into
a sharp remote angle, bordered on one side by the Long Walk, and
screened from it by heavy iron railings. On the second side it is
skirted and overlooked by tall irregular houses, and on the third side
by the deep buttressed recesses of the chapel, venerable with ivy and
mouldering grey stone.
It is a strangely quiet place in the midst of bustling life; the
grumbling of waggons in the road, the hoarse calling of the jackdaws,
awkwardly fluttering about old red-tiled roofs, the cracked clanging of
the college clock, the voices of boys from the street, fall faintly on
the ear: besides, it has all the beauty of a deserted place, for it is
many years since it has been used for a burial-ground: the grass is long
and rank, the cypresses and yews grow luxuriantly out of unknown vaults,
and push through broken rails; the gravestones slant and crumble; moss
grows into the letters of forgotten names, and creepers embrace and
embower monumental urns; here and there are heaps of old carven,
crumbling stones; on early summer mornings a resident thrush stirs the
silence with flute-notes marvellously clear; and on winter evenings when
wet, boisterous winds roll steadily up, and the tall chapel windows
flame, the organ's voice is blown about the winding overgrown paths, and
the memorials of the dead.
Just inside the gate, visible from the road among the dark evergreens,
stands a tall, conspicuous altar-tomb, conspicuous more for the
miserable way in which a stately monument has been handled, than for its
present glories. It has been patched and slobbered up with grey stucco;
and the inscription scratched on the surface is three-quarters
obliterated. Let into the sides are the grey stone panels of the older
tomb, sculptured with quaint emblems of life and death, a mattock and an
uncouth heap of bones, an hourglass and a skull, a pot of roses and
lily-flowers--such is the monument of one of Eton's gentlest servants
and sons. "I ordain," runs the quaint conclusion of his will, "that at
the time of the next evensong after my departure (if conveniently it may
be), my body be laid in the church-yard of the town of Eton (if I chance
to die there), as near as may be [a strangely pathetic touch of love
from the childless philosopher, the friend of courtiers and divines], to
the body of my little godson, Jack Dickenson the elder; and this to be
done in plain and simple manner, without any sermon or ringing the bell,
or calling the people together; without any unseasonable commessation or
compotation, or other solemnity on such occasions usual; _for as in my
life I have done the church no service, so I will not that in my death
the church do me any honour_."
And the prophecy is fulfilled to the letter; in such a tomb he rests;
and by a strange irony of fate, the pompous title claiming so universal
and perennial a fame--the "ever-memorable"--is the only single fact
which is commonly mentioned about him--he has even been identified with
Sir Matthew Hale of just memory.
John Hales was neither an Etonian nor a Kingsman: he was of a
Somersetshire family; and was educated at Corpus Christi College,
Oxford, where he spent no less than six years before taking his degree
(in 1603), from the age of thirteen to the age of nineteen.
The Warden of Merton at that time was Sir Henry Savile, Queen
Elizabeth's Greek tutor, supposed the most learned savant of the time,
founder of the Savilian professorships for astronomy and geometry, a
severe, clear-headed student. It is recorded of him that he had a great
dislike for brilliant instinctive abilities, and only respected the slow
cumulative processes. "Give me the plodding student," he said: "if I
would look for wits, I would go to Newgate: there be the wits." He was
not popular among the rising young men in consequence; John Earle, the
author of the _Microcosmography_, that delightful gallery of characters
that puts Theophrastus into the shade, was the only man he ever
admitted, on his reputation as a wit, into the sacred society of Merton.
For such intellects as he desired, he made search in a way that was then
described as "hedge-beating."
Savile was attracted by Hales; he found in him a mind which, young as it
was, showed signs of profundity. Savile's choice is a great testimony to
the _depth_ of Hales' attainments; for his later reputation was acquired
more by his grace and originality of mind than for his breadth of
learning. Savile was then at work on his _Chrysostom_, printed privately
at Eton in the grave collegiate house in Weston's Yard, now the most
inconvenient residence of the Praecentor. Hales became a congenial
fellow-labourer, and in 1613 was moved to a fellowship at Eton, of which
College Savile had for seventeen years been Provost.
A Fellow of Eton is now a synonym for a member of the Governing Body,
that is to say, a gentleman in some public position, who is willing to
give up a fraction of his time to the occasional consideration and
summary settlement of large educational problems. Twenty years ago a
Fellowship meant a handsome competence, light residence, a venerable
house, and a good living in the country. In Hales's time it meant a few
decent rooms, a small dividend, home-made bread and beer at stated
times, a constant attendance at the church service, and the sustaining
society of some six or seven earnest like-minded men, grave
students,--at least under Savile,--mostly celibates. To such the life
was dignified and attractive. Early rising, and a light breakfast. A
long, studious morning, with Matins, an afternoon dinner, a quiet talk
round the huge fire, or a stroll in the stately college garden with
perhaps some few promising boys from the school--then merely an adjunct
of the more reverend college, not an absorbing centre of life--more
quiet work and early to bed. Busy, congenial monotony! There is no
secret like that for a happy life!
After three years, this was broken into by a piece of vivid
experience--Hales accompanied Sir Dudley Carleton, Ambassador to
Holland, as his chaplain, and was despatched by him in 1618 to the Synod
of Dort.
It must be clearly borne in mind that theological and religious problems
then possessed a general interest for the civilised world, and for
Englishmen in particular, which it cannot be pretended that they possess
now. Political gossip has taken the place of theological discussion.
Then, contemporary writers thought fit to lament the time that common
folk wasted in such disputes; when the Trinitarian controversy could be
discussed on the benches of an alehouse, and apprentices neglect their
work to argue the question of prevenient grace, we feel that we are in
an atmosphere which if not religious, was at any rate theological.
Hales went to Dort a Calvinist--that, in those days, is equivalent to
saying that he had never given his theological position much attention.
What he heard there is uncertain, for a more unbusinesslike meeting was
never held; "ignorance, passion, animosity, injustice," said Lord
Clarendon, were its characteristics. There was no one to whose ruling
speakers deferred. No one knew what subject was to be discussed next,
often hardly what was under discussion. A third of the members
disappeared, after what an eye-witness called a "pondering speech" from
the President. Such a theological schooling is too severe for a
reflective mind. Hales came home what was called a Latitudinarian,
having, as he quaintly says, at the "well pressing" of St. John iii. 16,
by Episcopius (a divine, present at the Synod), "bid John Calvin
good-night." A Latitudinarian translated into modern English would be a
very broad churchman indeed. For it is evident that Haley's native
humour, which was very strong, prevented him from even considering
religious differences in a serious light; "theological scarecrows!" he
said, half bitterly, half humorously. When in later years he was found
reading one of Calvin's books, he said playfully, "Formerly I read it to
reform myself, but now I read it to reform him." And the delightful
comparison which he makes in one of his tracts is worth quoting, as
showing the natural bent of his mind to the ludicrous side of these
disputes; he compares the wound of sin and the supposed remedy of
confession, to Pliny's cure for the bite of a scorpion--to go and
whisper the fact into the ear of an ass.
Only once did he encounter the little restless, ubiquitous,
statesman-priest, who so grievously mistook and under-rated the forces
with which he had to deal, and the times in which he had fallen--Laud.
The whole incident is dramatic and entertaining in the highest degree.
Hales, for the edification of some weak-minded friends, wrote out his
views on schism, treating the whole subject with a humorous contempt for
Church authority. This little tract got privately printed, and a copy
fell into Laud's hands (as indeed, what dangerous matter did not?),
which he read and marked. He instantly sent for his recalcitrant
subaltern, to be rated and confuted and silenced. The matter is
exquisitely characteristic of Laud, both in the idea and in the method
of carrying it out. "Mr. Hales came," says Heylyn, "about nine o'clock
to Lambeth on a summer morning," with considerable heart-sinking no
doubt. The Archbishop had him out into the garden, giving orders that
they were on no account to be disturbed. The bell rang for prayers, to
which they went by the garden door into the chapel, and out again till
dinner was ready--hammer and tongs all the time: then they fell to
again, but Lord Conway and several other persons of distinction having
meantime arrived, the servants were obliged to go and warn the
disputants how the time was going. It was now about four in the
afternoon. "So in they came," says Heylyn, "high coloured and almost
panting for want of breath; enough to show that there had been some
heats between them not then fully cooled." The two little cassocked
figures (both were very small men), with their fresh complexions, set
off by tiny mustachios and imperials such as churchmen then wore, pacing
up and down under the high elms of the garden, and arguing to the verge
of exhaustion, form a wonderful picture.
Hales afterwards confessed that the interview had been dreadful. "He had
been ferreted," he said, "from one hole to another, till there was none
left to afford him any further shelter; that he was now resolved to be
orthodox, and declare himself a true son of the Church of England both
for doctrine and discipline."
Laud evidently saw the mettle of the man with whom he had to deal, and
what a very dangerous, rational opponent he was, so he made him his own
chaplain, and got the king to offer him a canonry at Windsor in such a
way that refusal, much to Hales's distaste, was out of the question thus
binding him to silence in a manner that would make further speech
ungracious. "And so," said Hales, quietly grumbling at his wealthy loss
of independence, "I had a hundred and fifty more pounds a year than I
cared to spend."
During all these years Hales was a member of the celebrated Mermaid
Club, so called from the tavern of that name in Friday Street. Thither
Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Donne, and many more repaired. There he
must have seen the coarse, vivacious figure of Ben Jonson, the presiding
genius of the place, drinking his huge potations of canary, and warming
out of his native melancholy into wit and eloquence, merging at last
into angry self-laudation, and then into drunken silence, till at last
he tumbled home with his unwieldy body, rolling feet, and big, scorbutic
face, to sleep and sweat and write far into the night; a figure
strangely similar down to the smallest characteristics, in his gloom,
his greediness, his disputatious talk, to the great Samuel of that ilk,
in all but the stern religious fibre that is somehow the charm of the
latter.
It was in London, at one of these convivial gatherings, that Suckling,
Davenant, Endymion Porter, Ben Jonson, and Hales were talking together;
Jonson, as was his wont, railing surlily at Shakespeare's fame,
considering him to be much overrated,--"wanting art," as he told
Drummond at Hawthornden.
Suckling took up the cudgels with great warmth, and the dispute
proceeded; Hales in the background, sitting meekly, with the dry smile
which he affected--deliberately dumb, not from want of enthusiasm or
knowledge, but of choice. Ben Jonson, irritated at last beyond the
bounds of patience, as men of his stamp are wont to be, by a silent
humorous listener, turned on him suddenly and began to taunt him with "a
want of Learning, and Ignorance of the Ancients." Hales at last emerged
from his shell, and told Jonson, with considerable warmth, that if Mr.
Shakespeare had not read the ancients, he had likewise not stolen
anything from them--"a fault," adds the biographer, "the other made no
conscience of--and that if he would produce any one topic finely treated
of by any of them, he would undertake to show something upon the same
subject, at least as well written by Shakespeare."
This is an extraordinary instance of perspicuity of literary judgment;
that Hales should draw a favourable comparison between Shakespeare and
his contemporaries, would not be surprising; but to find him, classicist
as he was, deliberately putting Shakespeare above all writers of any
date is a very notable proof of critical acumen.
Neither did the combat end here. The enemies of Shakespeare would not
give in: so it came to a trial of skill. The place agreed on for these
literary jousts was Hales's rooms at Eton; a number of books were sent
down, and on the appointed day Lord Falkland and Suckling, and several
other persons of wit and quality came down; the books were opened, and
Shakespeare was arraigned before antiquity, and unanimously (except for
Sir John) awarded the palm. We may be sure it would have been different
if old Ben Jonson had been present; there would have been less unanimity
and more heat; but he was much troubled with symptoms of an old,
recurrent paralysis, of which he had only partly got the better, and he
was melancholic and therefore kept away. Still it is a scene to think of
with envy--little Lord Falkland with his untuneable voice, brisk wit,
and sweet manner, moderating the assembly; the summer afternoon, the
stately collegiate room, overlooking the studious garden, girdled about
by the broad and even-flowing Thames, among sedge and osier-beds, and
haunted by no human presence. This period was probably the happiest
time of Hales's life; he was at the height of his social reputation.
He was a man of an inveterately companionable disposition. He disliked
being alone, except for study--in congenial company a sympathetic
talker; once a year for a short time he used to resort to London for the
polite conversation which he so much enjoyed, and when the Court was at
Windsor he was greatly in request, being not only a good talker, but a
better listener, as his biographer says; not only divines and scholars
resorting to the rooms of this _bibliotheca ambulans_, as Provost Wotton
called him, but courtiers, sprightly wits, and gay sparks from the
castle. This it was that earned him his soubriquet. He was familiar
with, or corresponded with, all the ablest men of the day, counting as
he did, Davenant, Suckling, Ben Jonson, and Lord Falkland, and all that
brilliant circle, among his intimate friends.
He was made Canon of Windsor in 1639. In two years the whole pleasant
life breaks up before our eyes, never to be restored. Laud's death
showed him that as his chaplain, he was in a dangerous position.
Besides, the event itself was a frightful shock to him. He left his
lodging in college, and went for a quarter of a year in utter secrecy to
a private house at Eton, next door to the old Christopher Inn, the
house of Mrs. Dickenson to whose lad he was godfather. Search was made
for him unsuccessfully, though he says that his hiding place was so
close that if he had eaten garlic he could have been nosed out. Here he
subsisted for three months entirely on bread and beer (strange diet),
fasting--as he appears to have done from mistaken medical notions--from
Tuesday night to Thursday night. The reason for this retirement was the
fear that certain documents and keys, entrusted to him as Bursar, should
fall into the adversary's hands--for it is probable that at first he
shared the belief with other enthusiastic royalists that the troubles
would speedily blow over. He was, of course, ejected from fellowship and
canonry, refusing with some spirit a proposal made to him by Mr.
Penwarren, who succeeded him, that he should retain half--"All or none
is mine,"--though he was reduced to the greatest poverty. He sold his
library, which was large and valuable, for L700, devoting a large
proportion to others suffering from deprivation. The account of his
conversation with Faringdon, an intimate friend, is absolutely
heartrending.
Mr. Faringdon coming to see Hales some few months before his death found
him in very mean lodgings at Eton, but in a temper gravely cheerful, and
well becoming a good man under such circumstances. After a slight and
homely dinner, suitable to their situation, some discourse passed
between them concerning their old friends and the black and dismal
aspect of the times; and at last Hales asked Faringdon to walk out with
him to the churchyard. There this unhappy man's necessities pressed him
to tell his friend that he had been forced to sell his whole library,
save a few volumes which he had given away, and six or eight little
books of devotion which lay in his chamber; and that for money, he had
no more than what he then showed him, which was about seven or eight
shillings; and "besides" says he, "I doubt I am indebted for my
lodgings." Faringdon had not imagined that it had been so very low with
Hales and presently offered him fifty pounds, in part payment of the
many sums he and his wife had received of him in their great
necessities. But Hales replied, "No, you don't owe me a penny, or if you
do, I here forgive you, for you shall never pay me a penny, but if you
know any other friend that hath too full a purse and will spare me some
of it I will not refuse that."
For a few months he went as nominal chaplain and tutor to the children
of a lady living at Richings Park, near West Drayton, where there was a
little college of deprived priests, among them being Bishop King of
Chichester. But when this society was declared treasonous, he retired
again to Eton to the same faithful friends, the Dickensons, the house
being called his own lest the accusation of harbouring malignants should
fall on the real owner.
A charming contemporary description of him at this date is left by John
Aubrey, the antiquary, who went to see him.
"I saw him, a prettie little man, sanguin [_i.e._, fresh-coloured], of a
chearful countenance, very gentele and courteous. I was received by him
with much humanity; he was in a kind of violet-coloured cloth gowne with
buttons and loopes (he wore not a black gowne), and he was reading
Thomas a Kempis. It was within a year before he deceased. He loved
Canarie, but moderately, to refresh his spirits; he had a bountiful
mind."
At last the end came very quietly. He was in his seventy-third year,
"weary of this uncharitable world," as he said. Only a fortnight ill,
and then dying so quietly that Mr. Montague, who had been talking to
him, left the room for half-an-hour and found him dead on his return.
He was one of those great men who have a genuine dislike of publicity.
He could not be induced to publish anything in his lifetime except a
Latin funeral oration--not that it mattered, as one of his
contemporaries hinted, "for he was so communicative that his chair was a
pulpit and his chamber a church." In fact it became so much a matter of
habit that his friends should propound questions on which he should
discourse, that he is recorded to have made a laughing refusal; "he sets
up tops," he said, in his allusive way "and I am to whip them for him."
But it is plain that he had a genuine contempt for his own written
style: he says that on the one side he errs by being "overfamiliar and
subrustic;" on the other as "sour and satyrical." He evidently had the
ironical quality in great perfection; his writings and recorded
conversation abound in quaint little unexpected turns and capricious
illustrations; he had one of those figurative minds that love to express
one idea in the terms of another, and see unexpected and felicitous
connections. His sermons are strange compositions; they straggle on
through page after page of thickly printed octavos, "he being a great
preacher according to the taste of those times," says an antique critic
of them, going on to object that they keep the reader in a "continued
twitter throughout." He must have been very light of heart who could
have "twittered" continuously through the good hour that the very
shortest of them must have taken to deliver. Quotations from Homer,
mystically interpreted, strange mythological stories, well worn
classical jests; perhaps the sense of humour was as different among the
men of that era from ours as their sense of theology undoubtedly
was--more discursive if not deeper!
It has struck more than one writer about John Hales, that the following
is a curious trait: he was a remarkably good man of business: he was
bursar of Eton for many years, and his precise, formal signature may
still be seen in the audit books, and it is told of him that he was
accustomed to throw into the river at the bottom of the college garden
any base or counterfeit coin that he chanced to receive on behalf of the
college, paying the loss out of his own pocket.
Pure-minded, simple-hearted little man, reading Thomas-a-Kempis in his
violet gown; poor, degraded, but not dishonoured; what a strong, grave
protest your quiet, exiled life, self-contained and serious, is, against
the crude follies, the boisterous energies of the revolution seething
and mantling all about you! the clear-sighted soul can adopt no party
cries, swears allegiance to no frantic school; enlightened, at the mercy
of no tendency or prejudice, it resigns all that gave dignity to blessed
quiet, and takes the peace without the pomp; with unobstrusive,
unpretentious hopes and prospects shattered in the general wreck, the
true life-philosopher still finds his treasures in the old books, the
eternal thoughts and the kindly offices of retired life. This is a
gentle figure that Eton's sons may well be glad to connect with her
single street, her gliding waters and her immemorial groves; though as
yet the reverence of antiquity sate lightly upon her, though she was
not yet in the forefront of the loud educational world, yet in her
sequestered peace there was a cloistral stateliness that she somewhat
misses now. Not that we grudge her the glory of a nobler mission, a
wider field of action, a more extended influence, in days when the race
and battle are more than ever for the fleet and strong. But we lament
over the nooks that the ancient years so jealously guarded and fenced
about from the world and its incisive voice, where among some indolence
and some luxury and much littleness the storage of great forces was
accomplished, and the tones of a sacred voice not rarely heard. Ah! it
is an ideal that this century has lost the knack of sympathising with!
Perhaps she is but creating the necessity for its imperious recall.