Year: 1859




on Saturday the 22d ut., at the advanced age of 81
years. The following extracts are taken from an
obituary notice in the Times:


The constellation of writers who shed radiance
on the early part of the present century is fast van
ishing away. Not the least remarkable OF these
the historian of the Middle Ages of the Revival of
Letters, and of the English Constitution, Henry
Hallam, died Saturday, Jan. 90 at the great age
ofSl. He has left but few of his companions behind
him, and than this it was his bitter fate to ont
live those who should have come after him, to see
two sons of rare PROMISE who should have preserved
his name, go before him, the pride of his life
snatched from his eyes, the delight OF his old age
laid low in the dust of DEATH One of these was that
Arthur Henry Halam, who died in 1888, and to
whom Tennyson dedicated the remarkable series of
poems which have been published under the title of
" In Memoriam." The beseaved father was broke
hearted for his son, and spoke of his hopes this
side the tomb being struck down for ever. A
year or two afterwards, when he produced the
Introduction to the Literature of Europe"
there appeared most affecting passage in the
preface which to those who knew him, sug-
gested the hidden grief that preying on his
mind. He referred to the imperfection of his work.
to the impossibity of rendering it complete under
any circumstances, and the especial impossbility
of his doing so. 81 have other warnings" he said
"to bind up my sheaves while may-my own ad-
vancing years and the gathering in the heavens"
His hopes, however, revived as his Younger son
grew up to manhood and seemed to promise not
less than the accomplished youth whom his father





one without a fellow. But this son, also Henry
Fitzmaurice Hallam, taken from him shortly
fter he had been called to the bar in 1885, and the
poor bereayed father buried him in Clevedon
Church. in SOmersetshire, by the side of his broth
er, and his sister, and his mother.


There are few literary men who have reached an
eminence to be compared with that of Mr.. Hallam,
OF whose personal history little is known to the
great public. That he was born in or about 177S
that he was educated at Eton, that from Eton he
passed to Christ Church, Oxford, and that at this
University he took his degree in 1893, are almost
all the facts of his early life which have been pub
ished. After leaving the University he took up
his residence in London, joined huself to the
Wings, and acquired his first reputation as con-
tributor to the great Whig Review established in
the northern metropolis. 1t on account of his
supposed connection with the edinburgh Review"
that he incurred the wrath of Byron, who, IN that
satire in which he first of all showed his power
ferred in ironical terms to 'the classic Hallam
much renowned for Greek" Greek, however, was
not the peculiar study of our historian, who set
himself the task of learning all the European Ian
guages of Importance, as the steppng-stone to an
acquaintance with the State of Europe during the
Middle Ages. He quietly settled down to his work
marrying in the meantime and in 1911 rejoicing in
the birth of his little Arthur, who was such mar
vel of child that at the age of seven he learned to
read Latin with fiuency in year.


1t was amid this domestic happiness and the re-
pose which it provided that, in 1918, he at length
gave to the world the first, and perhaps the great
est of his works, the 'View of the State of Earope
during the Middle Ages'-a work which, although
somewhat expensive and by means adapted to
the popular taste, has gone through dozen edi-
tions. In every page of this history we are struck
with the enormous industry and the conscientious
of the writer, which in union with his sagacity
ofthought and pith of composition have rendered
every work produced by him standard of its
kind. He waited nine years and then gave to the
world his constitutional History of England from
the accession of Henry VII to the death of George
ii" Nothing can be more masterly than the man
ner in which he has here traced the history of the
English Constitution from its first faint beginnings
to its perfect development 1t is vast treasury of
political thought-an armory of political facts; in
itself the Magma Charta of liberty and our
rights, which bears the sign manual, not of Kings
or their Ministers, but of the Muse of History.


After these publications, Mr.. Hallam turned from
political to literary history, preparing to write
full account of the revival of letters and the various
steps by which literature came to be cultivated
in the vernacular languages of Europe. 1t was
while engaged in this work, and while his heart
full of JOY in the requirements of his elder son,
who had just left College, and who, under his
fathers eye, now studying the Institutes of
Justnian and the Commentaries of Blackstone, now
writing sort papers for various works, reviews of
Tennyson for magazine, biographies of Burke
and Noltaire for the Portrait Gallery of the Useful
knowledge Society, that the great afiliction came
which seemed for time to PROSTATE the historian,
and which certainly gave a mellOwness to his hab-
its of thought as well depth of feeling to his
whole character that had the happiest influence on
his critical disquisitions.