THE AUTHOR OF “THE GROUNDS AND REASONS OF MONARCHY.”
The author of “The Grounds and Reasons of Monarchy,” whose historical libel is perpetuated in the works of Harrington, is John Hall, of Gray’s Inn, sometimes described of Durham; one of those fervid spirits who take the bent of the times in a revolutionary period. He must be classed among those precocious minds which astonish their contemporaries by acquisitions of knowledge, combined with the finest genius, and in their boyhood betray no immaturity. We may receive with some suspicion accounts of such gifted youths, though they come from competent judges; but when we are reminded of the Rowley of Chatterton, and find what Hall did, we must conclude that there are meteorous beings, whose eccentric orbits we know not how to describe. Hall, prevented by the civil wars from entering the university, pursued his studies in the privacy of the library at Durham. When the war ceased, he was admitted at Cambridge; and in 1646 published, in his nineteenth year, Horæ Vacivæ, or “Essays, with some Occasional Considerations.” These are essays in prose; and at a time when our literature could boast of none except the masterpieces of Lord Bacon, a boy of nineteen sends forth this extraordinary volume. Even our plain Anthony caught the rapture; for he describes its appearance—“the sudden breaking forth of which amazed not only the university, but the more serious part of men in the three nations, when they (the Essays) were spread.” Here is the puerility of a genius of the first order! A boy’s essays raised the admiration of “the three nations!” and they remain still remarkable! This youth seems to have modelled his manner on Bacon for the turn of his thoughts, and on Seneca for the point and sparkle of his periods. The dwarf rose strong as a giant.[1]
The boy having astonished the world by a volume of his prose, amazed them in the succeeding year by a volume of his verse, poetry as graceful as the prose was nervous; his verses still adorn the most elegant of our modern anthologies.[2]
Attracted to the metropolis, he entered as a student at Gray’s Inn; and there his political character soon assumed the supremacy over his literary. He sided with the independents, the ultra-commonwealth-men, and satirised the presbyterians, the friends of monarchy. He plunged into extreme measures; courting his new masters by the baseness of a busy pen, he justified Barebones’ parliament, got up a state-pamphlet against the Hollanders, proposed the reform of the universities, “to have the Frier-like list of the fellowships reduced, and the rest of the revenue of the university sequestered into the hands of the committee,” of which, probably, he might himself have been one. The exchequer was opened; he received “present sums of money;” and the council granted their scribe a considerable pension.
During this life of political activity, Hall, in 1650, was commanded by the council of state to repair to Scotland, to attend on Cromwell, for the purpose of settling affairs in favour of the commonwealth, and to wean the Scots from their lingering affection for the surviving Stuart. It was then that Hall, in his vocation, sent forth the thunder of a party-pamphlet, “The Grounds and Reasons of Monarchy.” This extraordinary tract consists of two parts: the first, more elaborately composed, is an argumentative exposition of anti-monarchical doctrines; in the second, to bring the business home to their bosoms, he offers a demonstration of his principles, in a review of the whole Scottish history, sarcastically reminding them of their kings “crowned with happy reigns, and quiet deaths (two successively scarce dying naturally).” It is a mass of invectives and calumnies in the disguise of grave history; and this historical libel, concocted for a particular time and a particular place, was eagerly received at Edinburgh, and immediately republished in London, where it was sure of as warm a reception.[3]
Hall’s passion for literature must have been intense; for amid these discordant days, he found time to glide into hours of refreshing studies. He gave us the first vernacular version of “The Sublime” of Longinus,[4] and left another of the moral Hierocles. This gifted youth with sportive facility turned English into Latin, or Latin into English; it has been recorded of him that he translated the greater part of a singular work of the Alchemical Maier, in one afternoon over his wine at a tavern; and he entranced the ear of that universal patron, Edward Bendlowes, by turning into Latin verse three hundred lines of his mystical poem of “Theophila,” at one sitting.
In this impassioned existence, excited by the acrimony of politics, and the enthusiasm of study, he fell into reckless dissipation, and undermined a constitution which, probably, had all the delicacy and sensitiveness of his genius. He sunk in the struggle of celebrity and personal indulgence, and hastened back to his family to die, when he had hardly attained to manhood.