HALES, JOHN (1584-1656), English scholar, frequently referred to as “the ever memorable,” was born at Bath on the 19th of April 1584, and was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He was elected a fellow of Merton in 1605, and in 1612 he was appointed public lecturer on Greek. In 1613 he was made a fellow of Eton. Five years later he went to Holland, as chaplain to the English ambassador, Sir Dudley Carleton, who despatched him to Dort to report upon the proceedings of the synod then sitting. In 1619 he returned to Eton and spent his time among his books and in the company of literary men, among whom he was highly reputed for his common sense, his erudition and his genial charity. Andrew Marvell called him “one of the clearest heads and best-prepared breasts in Christendom.” His eirenical tract entitled Schism and Schismaticks (1636) fell into the hands of Archbishop Laud, and Hales, hearing that he had disapproved of it, is said to have written to the prelate a vindication of his position. This led to a meeting, and in 1639 Hales was made one of Laud’s chaplains and also a canon of Windsor. In 1642 he was deprived of his canonry by the parliamentary committee, and two years later was obliged to hide in Eton with the college documents and keys. In 1649 he refused to take the “Engagement” and was ejected from his fellowship. He then retired to Buckinghamshire, where he found a home with Mrs Salter, the sister of the bishop of Salisbury (Brian Duppa), and acted as tutor to her son. The issue of the order against harbouring malignants led him to return to Eton. Here, having sold his valuable library at great sacrifice, he lived in poverty until his death on the 19th of May 1656.
His collected works (3 vols.) were edited by Lord Hailes, and published in 1765.
HALES, STEPHEN (1677-1761), English physiologist, chemist and inventor, was born at Bekesbourne in Kent on the 7th or 17th of September 1677, the fifth (or sixth) son of Thomas Hales, whose father, Sir Robert Hales, was created a baronet by Charles II. in 1670. In June 1696 he was entered as a pensioner of Benet (now Corpus Christi) College, Cambridge, with the view of taking holy orders, and in February 1703 was admitted to a fellowship. He received the degree of master of arts in 1703 and of bachelor of divinity in 1711. One of his most intimate friends was William Stukeley (1687-1765) with whom he studied anatomy, chemistry, &c. In 1708-1709 Hales was presented to the perpetual curacy of Teddington in Middlesex, where he remained all his life, notwithstanding that he was subsequently appointed rector of Porlock in Somerset, and later of Faringdon in Hampshire. In 1717 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society, which awarded him the Copley medal in 1739. In 1732 he was named one of a committee for establishing a colony in Georgia, and the next year he received the degree of doctor of divinity from Oxford. He was appointed almoner to the princess-dowager of Wales in 1750. On the death of Sir Hans Sloane in 1753, Hales was chosen foreign associate of the French Academy of Sciences. He died at Teddington on the 4th of January 1761.
Hales is best known for his Statical Essays. The first volume, Vegetable Staticks (1727), contains an account of numerous experiments in plant-physiology—the loss of water in plants by evaporation, the rate of growth of shoots and leaves, variations in root-force at different times of the day, &c. Considering it very probable that plants draw “through their leaves some part of their nourishment from the air,” he undertook experiments to show in “how great a proportion air is wrought into the composition of animal, vegetable and mineral substances”; though this “analysis of the air” did not lead him to any very clear ideas about the composition of the atmosphere, in the course of his inquiries he collected gases over water in vessels separate from those in which they were generated, and thus used what was to all intents and purposes a “pneumatic trough.” The second volume (1733) on Haemostaticks, containing experiments on the “force of the blood” in various animals, its rate of flow, the capacity of the different vessels, &c., entitles him to be regarded as one of the originators of experimental physiology. But he did not confine his attention to abstract inquiries. The quest of a solvent for calculus in the bladder and kidneys was pursued by him as by others at the period, and he devised a form of forceps which, on the testimony of John Ranby (1703-1773), sergeant-surgeon to George II., extracted stones with “great ease and readiness.” His observations of the evil effect of vitiated air caused him to devise a “ventilator” (a modified organ-bellows) by which fresh air could be conveyed into gaols, hospitals, ships’-holds, &c.; this apparatus was successful in reducing the mortality in the Savoy prison, and it was introduced into France by the aid of H. L. Duhamel du Monceau. Among other things Hales invented a “sea-gauge” for sounding, and processes for distilling fresh from sea water, for preserving corn from weevils by fumigation with brimstone, and for salting animals whole by passing brine into their arteries. His Admonition to the Drinkers of Gin, Brandy, &c., published anonymously in 1734, has been several times reprinted.
HALESOWEN, a market town in the Oldbury parliamentary division of Worcestershire, England, on a branch line of the Great Western and Midland railways, 6½ m. W.S.W. of Birmingham. Pop. (1901), 4057. It lies in a pleasant country among the eastern foothills of the Lickey Hills. There are extensive iron and steel manufactures. The church of SS Mary and John the Baptist has rude Norman portions; and the poet William Shenstone, buried in 1763 in the churchyard, has a memorial in the church. His delight in landscape gardening is exemplified in the neighbouring estate of the Leasowes, which was his property. There is a grammar school founded in 1652, and in the neighbourhood is the Methodist foundation of Bourne College (1883). Close to the town, on the river Stour, which rises in the vicinity, are slight ruins of a Premonstratensian abbey of Early English date. Within the parish and 2 m. N.W. of Halesowen is Cradley, with iron and steel works, fire-clay works and a large nail and chain industry.
HALEVI, JUDAH BEN SAMUEL (c. 1085-c. 1140), the greatest Hebrew poet of the middle ages, was born in Toledo c. 1085, and died in Palestine after 1140. In his youth he wrote Hebrew love poems of exquisite fancy, and several of his Wedding Odes are included in the liturgy of the Synagogue. The mystical connexion between marital affection and the love of God had, in the view of older exegesis, already expressed itself in the scriptural Song of Songs and Judah Halevi used this book as his model. In this aspect of his work he found inspiration also in Arabic predecessors. The second period of his literary career was devoted to more serious pursuits. He wrote a philosophical dialogue in five books, called the Cuzari, which has been translated into English by Hirschfeld. This book bases itself on the historical fact that the Crimean Kingdom of the Khazars adopted Judaism, and the Hebrew poet-philosopher describes what he conceives to be the steps by which the Khazar king satisfied himself as to the claims of Judaism. Like many other medieval Jewish authors, Judah Halevi was a physician. His real fame depends on his liturgical hymns, which are the finest written in Hebrew since the Psalter, and are extensively used in the Septardic rite. A striking feature of his thought was his devotion to Jerusalem. To the love of the Holy City he devoted his noblest genius, and he wrote some memorable Odes to Zion, which have been commemorated by Heine, and doubly appreciated recently under the impulse of Zionism (q.v.). He started for Jerusalem, was in Damascus in 1140, and soon afterwards died. Legend has it that he was slain by an Arab horseman just as he arrived within sight of what Heine called his “Woebegone poor darling, Desolation’s very image,—Jerusalem.”
Excellent English renderings of some of Judah Halevi’s poems may be read in Mrs H. Lucas’s The Jewish Year, and Mrs R. N. Solomon’s Songs of Exile.