[1] The tomb of Sir John Beauchamp (d. 1358) in old St Paul's was
commonly known, in error, as that of Duke Humphrey of Gloucester. "To
dine with Duke Humphrey" was to go hungry among the debtors and
beggars who frequented "Duke Humphrey's Walk" in the cathedral.
HALL, MARSHALL (1790-1857). English physiologist, was born on the 18th
of February 1790, at Basford, near Nottingham, where his father, Robert
Hall, was a cotton manufacturer. Having attended the Rev. J. Blanchard's
academy at Nottingham, he entered a chemist's shop at Newark, and in
1809 began to study medicine at Edinburgh University. In 1811 he was
elected senior president of the Royal Medical Society; the following
year he took the M.D. degree, and was immediately appointed resident
house physician to the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh. This appointment he
resigned after two years, when he visited Paris and its medical schools,
and, on a walking tour, those also of Berlin and Gottingen. In 1817,
when he settled at Nottingham, he published his _Diagnosis_, and in 1818
he wrote the _Mimoses_, a work on the affections denominated bilious,
nervous, &c. The next year he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society
of Edinburgh, and in 1825 he became physician to the Nottingham general
hospital. In 1826 he removed to London, and in the following year he
published his _Commentaries_ on the more important diseases of females.
In 1830 he issued his _Observations on Blood-letting, founded on
researches on the morbid and curative effects of loss of blood_, which
were acknowledged by the medical profession to be of vast practical
value, and in 1831 his _Experimental Essay on the Circulation of the
Blood in the Capillary Vessels_, in which he showed that the
blood-channels intermediate between arteries and veins serve the office
of bringing the fluid blood into contact with the material tissues of
the system. In the following year he read before the Royal Society a
paper "On the inverse ratio which subsists between Respiration and
Irritability in the Animal Kingdom." His most important work in
physiology was concerned with the theory of reflex action, embodied in a
paper "On the reflex Function of the Medulla Oblongata and the Medulla
Spinalis" (1832), which was supplemented in 1837 by another "On the True
Spinal Marrow, and the Excito-motor System of Nerves." The "reflex
function" excited great attention on the continent of Europe, though in
England some of his papers were refused publication by the Royal
Society. Hall thus became the authority on the multiform deranged states
of health referable to an abnormal condition of the nervous system, and
he gained a large practice. His "ready method" for resuscitation in
drowning and other forms of suspended respiration has been the means of
saving innumerable lives. He died at Brighton of a throat affection,
aggravated by lecturing, on the 11th of August 1857.
A list of his works and details of his "ready method," &c., are given
in his _Memoirs_ by his widow (London, 1861).
HALL, ROBERT (1764-1831), English Baptist divine, was born on the 2nd of
May 1764, at Arnesby near Leicester, where his father, Robert Hall
(1728-1791), a man whose cast of mind in some respects resembled closely
that of the son, was pastor of a Baptist congregation. Robert was the
youngest of a family of fourteen. While still at the dame's school his
passion for books absorbed the greater part of his time, and in the
summer it was his custom after school hours to retire to the churchyard
with a volume, which he continued to peruse there till nightfall, making
out the meaning of the more difficult words with the help of a pocket
dictionary. From his sixth to his eleventh year he attended the school
of Mr Simmons at Wigston, a village four miles from Arnesby. There his
precocity assumed the exceptional form of an intense interest in
metaphysics, partly perhaps on account of the restricted character of
his father's library; and before he was nine years of age he had read
and re-read Jonathan Edwards's _Treatise on the Will_ and Butler's
_Analogy_. This incessant study at such an early period of life seems,
however, to have had an injurious influence on his health. After he left
Mr Simmons's school his appearance was so sickly as to awaken fears of
the presence of phthisis. In order, therefore, to obtain the benefit of
a change of air, he stayed for some time in the house of a gentleman
near Kettering, who with an impropriety which Hall himself afterwards
referred to as "egregious," prevailed upon the boy of eleven to give
occasional addresses at prayer meetings. As his health seemed rapidly to
recover, he was sent to a school at Northampton conducted by the Rev.
John Ryland, where he remained a year and a half, and "made great
progress in Latin and Greek." On leaving school he for some time studied
divinity under the direction of his father, and in October 1778 he
entered the Bristol academy for the preparation of students for the
Baptist ministry. Here the self-possession which had enabled him in his
twelfth year to address unfalteringly various audiences of grown-up
people seems to have strangely forsaken him; for when, in accordance
with the arrangements of the academy, his turn came to deliver an
address in the vestry of Broadmead chapel, he broke down on two
separate occasions and was unable to finish his discourse. On the 13th
of August 1780 he was set apart to the ministry, but he still continued
his studies at the academy; and in 1781, in accordance with the
provisions of an exhibition which he held, he entered King's College,
Aberdeen, where he took the degree of master of arts in March 1785. At
the university he was without a rival of his own standing in any of the
classes, distinguishing himself alike in classics, philosophy and
mathematics. He there formed the acquaintance of Mackintosh (afterwards
Sir James), who, though a year his junior in age, was a year his senior
as a student. While they remained at Aberdeen the two were inseparable,
reading together the best Greek authors, especially Plato, and
discussing, either during their walks by the sea-shore and the banks of
the Don or in their rooms until early morning, the most perplexed
questions in philosophy and religion.
During the vacation between his last two sessions at Aberdeen, Hall
acted as assistant pastor to Dr Evans at Broadmead chapel, Bristol, and
three months after leaving the university he was appointed classical
tutor in the Bristol academy, an office which he held for more than five
years. Even at this period his extraordinary eloquence had excited an
interest beyond the bounds of the denomination to which he belonged, and
when he preached the chapel was generally crowded to excess, the
audience including many persons of intellectual tastes. Suspicions in
regard to his orthodoxy having in 1789 led to a misunderstanding with
his colleague and a part of the congregation, he in July 1790 accepted
an invitation to make trial of a congregation at Cambridge, of which he
became pastor in July of the following year. From a statement of his
opinions contained in a letter to the congregation which he left, it
would appear that, while a firm believer in the proper divinity of
Christ, he had at this time disowned the cardinal principles of
Calvinism--the federal headship of Adam, and the doctrine of absolute
election and reprobation; and that he was so far a materialist as to
"hold that man's thinking powers and faculties are the result of a
certain organization of matter, and that after death he ceases to be
conscious till the resurrection." It was during his Cambridge ministry,
which extended over a period of fifteen years, that his oratory was most
brilliant and most immediately powerful. At Cambridge the intellectual
character of a large part of the audience supplied a stimulus which was
wanting at Leicester and Bristol.
His first published compositions had a political origin. In 1791
appeared _Christianity consistent with the Love of Freedom_, in which he
defended the political conduct of dissenters against the attacks of the
Rev. John Clayton, minister of Weighhouse, and gave eloquent expression
to his hopes of great political and social ameliorations as destined to
result nearly or remotely from the subversion of old ideas and
institutions in the maelstrom of the French Revolution. In 1793 he
expounded his political sentiments in a powerful and more extended
pamphlet entitled an _Apology for the Freedom of the Press_. On account,
however, of certain asperities into which the warmth of his feelings had
betrayed him, and his conviction that he had treated his subject in too
superficial a manner, he refused to permit the publication of the
pamphlet beyond the third edition, until the references of political
opponents and the circulation of copies without his sanction induced him
in 1821 to prepare a new edition, from which he omitted the attack on
Bishop Horsley, and to which he prefixed an advertisement stating that
his political opinions had undergone no substantial change. His other
publications while at Cambridge were three sermons--_On Modern
Infidelity_ (1801), _Reflections on War_ (1802), and _Sentiments proper
to the present Crisis_ (1803). He began, however, to suffer from mental
derangement in November 1804. He recovered so speedily that he was able
to resume his duties in April 1805, but a recurrence of the malady
rendered it advisable for him on his second recovery to resign his
pastoral office in March 1806.
On leaving Cambridge he paid a visit to his relatives in Leicestershire,
and then for some time resided at Enderby, preaching occasionally in
some of the neighbouring villages. Latterly he ministered to a small
congregation in Harvey Lane, Leicester, from whom at the close of 1806
he accepted a call to be their stated pastor. In the autumn of 1807 he
changed his residence from Enderby to Leicester, and in 1808 he married
the servant of a brother minister. His proposal of marriage had been
made after an almost momentary acquaintance, and, according to the
traditionary account, in very abrupt and peculiar terms; but, judging
from his subsequent domestic life, his choice did sufficient credit to
his penetration and sagacity. His writings at Leicester embraced various
tracts printed for private circulation; a number of contributions to the
_Eclectic Review_, among which may be mentioned his articles on
"Foster's Essays" and on "Zeal without Innovation"; several sermons,
including those _On the Advantages of Knowledge to the Lower Classes_
(1810), _On the Death of the Princess Charlotte_ (1817), and _On the
Death of Dr Ryland_ (1825); and his pamphlet on _Terms of Communion_, in
which he advocated intercommunion with all those who acknowledged the
"essentials" of Christianity. In 1819 he published an edition in one
volume of his sermons formerly printed. On the death of Dr Ryland, Hall
was invited to return to the pastorate of Broadmead chapel, Bristol, and
as the peace of the congregation at Leicester had been to some degree
disturbed by a controversy regarding several cases of discipline, he
resolved to accept the invitation, and removed there in April 1826. The
malady of renal calculus had for many years rendered his life an almost
continual martyrdom, and henceforth increasing infirmities and
sufferings afflicted him. Gradually the inability to take proper
exercise, by inducing a plethoric habit of body and impeding the
circulation, led to a diseased condition of the heart, which resulted in
his death on the 21st of February 1831. He is remembered as a great
pulpit orator, of a somewhat laboured, rhetorical style in his written
works, but of undeniable vigour in his spoken sermons.
See _Works of Robert Hall, 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 Rev. 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 Grinfield, M.A.
(1843); _Reminiscences of College Life in Bristol during the Ministry
of the Rev. Robert Hall, A.M._, by Frederick Trestrail (1879).
HALL, SAMUEL CARTER (1800-1889), English journalist, was born at
Waterford on the 9th of May 1800, the son of an army officer. In 1821 he
went to London, and in 1823 became a parliamentary reporter. From 1826
to 1837 he was editor of a great number and variety of public prints,
and in 1839 he founded and edited _The Art Journal_. His exposure of the
trade in bogus "Old Masters" earned for this publication a considerable
reputation. Hall resigned the editorship in 1880, and was granted a
Civil List pension "for his long and valuable services to literature and
art." He died in London on the 16th of March 1889. His wife, Anna Maria
Fielding (1800-1881), became well known as Mrs S. C. Hall, for her
numerous novels, sketches of Irish life, and plays. Two of the last,
_The Groves of Blarney_ and _The French Refugee_, were produced in
London with success. She also wrote a number of children's books, and
was practically interested in various London charities, several of which
she helped to found.
HALL, WILLIAM EDWARD (1835-1894), English writer on international law,
was the only child of William Hall, M.D., a descendant of a junior
branch of the Halls of Dunglass, and of Charlotte, daughter of William
Cotton, F.S.A. He was born on the 22nd of August 1835, at Leatherhead,
Surrey, but passed his childhood abroad, Dr Hall having acted as
physician to the king of Hanover, and subsequently to the British
legation at Naples. Hence, perhaps, the son's taste in after life for
art and modern languages. He was educated privately till, at the early
age of seventeen, he matriculated at Oxford, where in 1856 he took his
degree with a first class in the then recently instituted school of law
and history, gaining, three years afterwards, the chancellor's prize for
an essay upon "the effect upon Spain of the discovery of the precious
metals in America." In 1861 he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn,
but devoted his time less to any serious attempt to obtain practice than
to the study of Italian art, and to travelling over a great part of
Europe, always bringing home admirable water-colour drawings of
buildings and scenery. He was an early and enthusiastic member of the
Alpine Club, making several first ascents, notably that of the Lyskamm.
He was always much interested in military matters, and was under fire,
on the Danish side, in the war of 1864. In 1867 he published a pamphlet
entitled "A Plan for the Reorganization of the Army," and, many years
afterwards, he saw as much as he was permitted to see of the expedition
sent for the rescue of Gordon. He would undoubtedly have made his mark
in the army, but in later life his ideal, which he realized, with much
success, first at Llanfihangel in Monmouthshire, and then at Coker Court
in Somersetshire, was, as has been said, "the English country gentleman,
with cosmopolitan experiences, encyclopaedic knowledge, and artistic
feeling." His travels took him to Lapland, Egypt, South America and
India. He had done good work for several government offices, in 1871 as
inspector of returns under the Elementary Education Act, in 1877 by
reports to the Board of Trade upon Oyster Fisheries, in France as well
as in England; and all the time was amassing materials for ambitious
undertakings upon the history of civilization, and of the colonies. His
title to lasting remembrance rests, however, upon his labours in the
realm of international law, recognized by his election as _associe_ in
1875, and as _membre_ in 1882, of the _Institut de Droit International_.
In 1874 he published a thin 8vo upon the _Rights and Duties of
Neutrals_, and followed it up in 1880 by his _magnum opus_, the
_Treatise on International Law_, unquestionably the best book upon the
subject in the English language. It is well planned, free from the
rhetorical vagueness which has been the besetting vice of older books of
a similar character, full of information, and everywhere bearing traces
of the sound judgment and statesmanlike views of its author. In 1894
Hall published a useful monograph upon a little-explored topic, "the
Foreign Jurisdictions of the British Crown," but on the 30th of November
of the same year, while apparently in the fullest enjoyment of bodily as
well as mental vigour, he suddenly died. He married, in 1866, Imogen,
daughter of Mr (afterwards Mr Justice) Grove, who died in 1886; and in
1891, Alice, daughter of Colonel Hill of Court Hill, Shropshire, but
left no issue.
See T. E. Holland in _Law Quarterly Review_, vol. xi. p. 113; and in
_Studies in International Law_, p. 302. (T. E. H.)
HALL, or BAD-HALL, a market-place and spa of Austria, in Upper Austria,
25 m. S. of Linz by rail. Pop. (1900) 984. It is renowned for its saline
springs, strongly impregnated with iodine and bromine, which are
considered very efficacious in scrofulous affections and venereal skin
diseases. Although the springs are known since the 8th century, Hall
attained its actual importance only since 1855, when the springs became
the property of the government. The number of visitors in 1901 was 4300.
HALL (generally known as SCHWABISCH-HALL, to distinguish it from the
small town of Hall in Tirol and Bad-Hall, a health resort in Upper
Austria), a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Wurttemberg, situated in
a deep valley on both sides of the Kocher, and on the railway from
Heilbronn to Krailsheim, 35 m. N.E. of Stuttgart. Pop. (1905) 9400. It
possesses four Evangelical churches (of which the Michaeliskirche dates
from the 15th century and has fine medieval carving), a Roman Catholic
church, a handsome town hall and classical and modern schools. A short
distance south from the town is the royal castle of Komburg, formerly a
Benedictine abbey and now used as a garrison for invalid soldiers, with
a church dating from the 12th century. The town is chiefly known for its
production of salt, which is converted into brine and piped from
Wilhelmsgluck mine, 5 m. distant. Connected with the salt-works there is
a salt-bath and whey-diet establishment. The industries of the town also
include cotton-spinning, iron founding, tanning, and the manufacture of
soap, starch, brushes, machines, carriages and metal ware.
Hall was early of importance on account of its salt-mines, which were
held as a fief of the Empire by the so-called Salzgrafen (Salt-graves),
of whom the earliest known, the counts of Westheim, had their seat in
the castle of Hall. Later the town belonged to the Knights Templars. It
was made a free imperial city in 1276 by Rudolph of Habsburg. In 1802 it
came into the possession of Wurttemberg.
HALL (O. E. _heall_, a common Teutonic word, cf. Ger. _Halle_), a term
which has two significations in England and is applied sometimes to the
manor house, the residence of the lord of the manor, which implied a
territorial possession, but more often to the entrance hall of a
mansion. In the latter case it was the one large room in the feudal
castle up to the middle of the 15th century, when it served as audience
chamber, dining-room, and dormitory. The hall was generally a
parallelogram on plan, with a raised dais at the farther end, a large
bow window on one side, and in one or two cases on both sides. At the
entrance end was a passage, which was separated from the hall by a
partition screen often elaborately decorated, and over which was
provided a minstrels' gallery; on the opposite side of the passage were
the hatches communicating with the serveries. This arrangement is still
found in some of the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, such as those of
New College, Christchurch, Wadham and Magdalen, Oxford, and in Trinity
College, Cambridge. In private mansions, however, the kitchen and
offices have been removed to a greater distance, and the great hall is
only used for banquets. Among the more remarkable examples are the halls
of Audley End; Hatfield; Brougham Castle; Hardwick; Knole Stanway in
Gloucestershire; Wollaton, where it is situated in the centre of the
mansion and lighted by clerestory windows; Burton Agnes in Yorkshire;
Canons Ashley, Northamptonshire; Westwood Park, Worcestershire;
Fountains, Yorkshire; Sydenham House, Devonshire; Cobham, Kent;
Montacute, Somersetshire; Bolsover Castle, Derbyshire (vaulted and with
two columns in the centre of the hall to carry the vault); Longford
Castle, Wiltshire; Barlborough, Derbyshire; Rushton Hall,
Northamptonshire, with a bow window at each end of the dais and a third
bow window at the other end; Knole, Kent; and at Mayfield, Sussex (with
stone arches across to carry the roof), now converted into a Roman
Catholic chapel. Many of these halls have hammer-beam roofs, the most
remarkable of which is found in the Middle Temple Hall, London, where
both the tie and collar beams have hammer-beams. Of other halls,
Westminster is the largest, being 238 ft. long; followed by the
Banqueting Hall, Whitehall, 110 ft.; Wolsey's Hall, Hampton Court, 106
ft.; the Egyptian Hall at the Mansion House; the hall at Lambeth, now
the library; Crosby Hall; Gray's Inn Hall; the Guildhall; Charterhouse;
and the following halls of the London City Companies--Clothworkers,
Brewers, Goldsmiths, Fishmongers. The term hall is also given to the
following English mansions:--Haddon, Hardwick, Apethorpe, Aston,
Blickling, Brereton, Burton Agnes, Cobham, Dingley, Rushton, Kirby,
Litford and Wollaton; and it was the name of some of the earlier
colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, most of which have now been absorbed
in other colleges, so that there remain only St Edmund's Hall, Oxford,
and Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
HALLAM, HENRY (1777-1859), English historian, was the only son of John
Hallam, canon of Windsor and dean of Bristol, and was born on the 9th of
July 1777. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, where he
graduated in 1799. Called to the bar, he practised for some years on the
Oxford circuit; but his tastes were literary, and when, on the death of
his father in 1812, he inherited a small estate in Lincolnshire, he gave
himself up wholly to the studies of his life. He had early become
connected with the brilliant band of authors and politicians who then
led the Whig party, a connexion to which he owed his appointment to the
well-paid and easy post of commissioner of stamps; but in practical
politics, for which he was by nature unsuited, he took no active share.
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 Review_, where his review
of Scott's _Dryden_ attracted much notice. His first great work, _The
View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages_, was produced in
1818, and was followed nine years later by the _Constitutional History
of England_. In 1838-1839 appeared the _Introduction to the Literature
of Europe in the 15th, 16th and 17th 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 published 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, with 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 IV. He died on the 21st of January 1859.
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 century. 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
medieval 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.
The _Constitutional History of England_ takes up the subject at the
point at which it had been dropped in the _View 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 impossible 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 farther, 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 Review_ for 1828
contains an article on the _Constitutional History_, written by Southey,
full of railing and reproach. The work, he says, is the "production of a
decided partisan," who "rakes in the ashes of long-forgotten and a
thousand times buried slanders, for the means of heaping obloquy on all
who supported the established institutions of the country." No
accusation made by a critic ever fell so wide of the mark. Absolute
justice is the standard which Hallam set himself and maintained. His
view of constitutional history was that it should contain only so much
of the political and general history of the time as bears directly on
specific changes in the organization of the state, including therein
judicial as well as ecclesiastical institutions. But while abstaining
from irrelevant historical discussions, Hallam dealt with statesmen and
policies with the calm and fearless impartiality of a judge. It was his
cool treatment of such sanctified names as Charles, Cranmer and Laud
that provoked the indignation of Southey and the _Quarterly_, who forgot
that the same impartial measure was extended to statesmen on the other
side. If Hallam can ever be said to have deviated from perfect fairness,
it was in the tacit assumption that the 19th-century theory of the
constitution was the right theory in previous centuries, and that those
who departed from it on one side or the other were in the wrong. He did
unconsciously antedate the constitution, and it is clear from incidental
allusions in his last work that he did not regard with favour the
democratic changes which he thought to be impending. Hallam, like
Macaulay, ultimately referred all political questions to the standard of
Whig constitutionalism. But though his work is thus, like that of many
historians, coloured by his opinions, this was not the outcome of a
conscious purpose, and he was scrupulously conscientious in collecting
and weighing his materials. In this he was helped by his legal training,
and it was doubtless this fact which made the _Constitutional History_
one of the text-books of English politics, to which men of all parties
appealed, and which, in spite of all the work of later writers, still
leaves it a standard authority.
Like the _Constitutional History_, the _Introduction to the Literature of
Europe_ continues one of the branches of inquiry which had been opened in
the _View of the Middle Ages_. In the first chapter of the _Literature_,
which is to a great extent supplementary to the last chapter of the
_Middle Ages_, Hallam sketches the state of literature in Europe down to
the end of the 14th century: the extinction of ancient learning which
followed the fall of the Roman empire and the rise of Christianity; the
preservation of the Latin language in the services of the church; and the
slow revival of letters, which began to show itself soon after the 7th
century--"the _nadir_ of the human mind"--had been passed. For the first
century and a half of his special period he is mainly occupied with a
review of classical learning, and he adopts the plan of taking short
decennial periods and noticing the most remarkable works which they
produced. The rapid growth of literature in the 16th century compels him
to resort to a classification of subjects. Thus in the period 1520-1550 we
have separate chapters on ancient literature, theology, speculative
philosophy and jurisprudence, the literature of taste, and scientific and
miscellaneous literature; and the subdivisions of subjects is carried
further of course in the later periods. Thus poetry, the drama and polite
literature form the subjects of separate chapters. One inconvenient result
of this arrangement is that the same author is scattered over many
chapters, according as his works fall within this category or that period
of time. Names like Shakespeare, Grotius, Bacon, Hobbes appear in half a
dozen different places. The individuality of great authors is thus
dissipated except when it has been preserved by an occasional sacrifice of
the arrangement--and this defect, if it is to be esteemed a defect, is
increased by the very sparing references to personal history and character
with which Hallam was obliged to content himself. His plan excluded
biographical history, nor is the work, he tells us, to be regarded as one
of reference. It is rigidly an account of the books which would make a
complete library of the period,[2] arranged according to the date of their
publication and the nature of their subjects. The history of institutions
like universities and academies, and that of great popular movements like
the Reformation, are of course noticed in their immediate connexion with
literary results; but Hallam had little taste for the spacious
generalization which such subjects suggest. The great qualities displayed
in this work have been universally acknowledged--conscientiousness,
accuracy, judgment and enormous reading. Not the least striking testimony
to Hallam's powers is his mastery over so many diverse forms of
intellectual activity. In science and theology, mathematics and poetry,
metaphysics and law, he is a competent and always a fair if not a profound
critic. The bent of his own mind is manifest in his treatment of pure
literature and of political speculation--which seems to be inspired with
stronger personal interest and a higher sense of power than other parts of
his work display. Not less worthy of notice in a literary history is the
good sense by which both his learning and his tastes have been held in
control. Probably no writer ever possessed a juster view of the relative
importance of men and things. The labour devoted to an investigation is
with Hallam no excuse for dwelling on the result, unless that is in itself
important. He turns away contemptuously from the mere curiosities of
literature, and is never tempted to make a display of trivial erudition.
Nor do we find that his interest in special studies leads him to assign
them a disproportionate place in his general view of the literature of a
period.
Hallam is generally described as a "philosophical historian." The
description is justified not so much by any philosophical quality in his
method as by the nature of his subject and his own temper. Hallam is a
philosopher to this extent that both in political and in literary
history he fixed his attention on results rather than on persons. His
conception of history embraced the whole movement of society. Beside
that conception the issue of battles and the fate of kings fall into
comparative insignificance. "We can trace the pedigree of princes," he
reflects, "fill up the catalogue of towns besieged and provinces
desolated, describe even the whole pageantry of coronations and
festivals, but we cannot recover the genuine history of mankind." But,
on the other hand, there is no trace in Hallam of anything like a
philosophy of history or society. Wise and generally melancholy
reflections on human nature and political society are not infrequent in
his writings, and they arise naturally and incidentally out of the
subject he is discussing. His object is the attainment of truth in
matters of fact. Sweeping theories of the movement of society, and broad
characterizations of particular periods of history seem to have no
attraction for him. The view of mankind on which such generalizations
are usually based, taking little account of individual character, was
highly distasteful to him. Thus he objects to the use of statistics
because they favour that tendency to regard all men as mentally and
morally equal which is so unhappily strong in modern times. At the same
time Hallam by no means assumes the tone of the mere scholar. He is even
solicitous to show that his point of view is that of the cultivated
gentleman and not of the specialist of any order. Thus he tells us that
Montaigne is the first French author whom an English gentleman is
ashamed not to have read. In fact, allusions to the necessary studies of
a gentleman meet us constantly, reminding us of the unlikely erudition
of the schoolboy in Macaulay. Hallam's prejudices, so far as he had any,
belong to the same character. His criticism is apt to assume a tone of
moral censure when he has to deal with certain extremes of human
thought--scepticism in philosophy, atheism in religion and democracy in
politics.
Hallam's style is singularly uniform throughout all his writings. It is
sincere and straightforward, and obviously innocent of any motive beyond
that of clearly expressing the writer's meaning. In the _Literature of
Europe_ there are many passages of great imaginative beauty. (E. R.)