Thomas Hales

“ Hales is a stanch republican, while fraternally he is identified with the Masons, belonging to Waitsburg Lodge, No. 16, F. & A. M., and Dayton Chapter, R. A. M. Mr. Hales and his family are members of the Methodist Episcopal church. He is much interested in its work and generous in its support. He stands at all times for those things which are a matter of benefit to the individual and to the community at large and his influence is always on the side of progress, justice, truth and right. His career has been notably successful. It is true that something came to him through inheritance ”

“ These proved connections obviously countenance a belief in what indeed no one used to doubt—viz. that the poet married a Roet, and that Thomas was the first fruit of the union. This relationship is further confirmed by the recently ascertained fact that Thomas Chaucer succeeded Geoffrey Chaucer in the post of forester of North Petherton Park, Somersetshire, an office which the poet held in his latter days (Collinson, Somersetshire, iii. 62 ; Mr. W. D. Selby's letter in Athenæum, 20 Nov. 1886) . And there is no countervailing evidence of any importance; what there is is merely negative. ”

“ It has been doubted whether Thomas Chaucer [q. v.] was the poet’s son. This question is, as it happens, closely connected with the question whether the maiden name of Chaucer’s wife was Roet. On the tomb of Thomas Chaucer at Ewelme occur repeatedly the arms of Roet —viz. gules three Catherine wheels or. Thomas Chaucer also at one time used the arms Per pale argent and gules, a bend counterchanged. This is proved from a drawing of his seal to be found in the Cottonian MS. Julius C. vii. f. 153 (see an accurate copy of it given by Nicholas in Aldine edition, i. 45 n.) ”

“ PERCY, THOMAS (1729–1811) , editor of the ‘Reliques of Ancient English Poetry’ and bishop of Dromore, was born in Cartway Street, Bridgnorth, Shropshire, on 13 April 1729. His father was a grocer and the son of a grocer, as appears from the ‘Bridgnorth Common Council Books;’ but, in later life at least, the bishop was anxious to deduce his descent from the Percys of Northumberland, with the living representative of whom he was brought into official and social connection. ”

“ HALE, HORATIO (1817–1896) , anthropologist, born on 3 May 1817, at Newport, New Hampshire, in the United States, was the son of David Hale, a prominent lawyer of Newport, and of Sarah Josepha, his wife. After the death of her husband, Mrs. Hale turned her attention to literature. Entering Harvard College in 1833, Hale showed a marked faculty for languages. ”

“ Hales, John, the "Ever-memorable," canon of Windsor; a most scholarly man, liberal-minded and highly cultured; was professor of Greek at Oxford; suffered great hardships under the Puritan supremacy (1584-1656) .
Hales, Stephen, scientist, born at Beckesbourn, Kent; became a Fellow of Cambridge in 1702; took holy orders, and in 1710 settled down in the curacy of Teddington, Middlesex; science was his ruling passion, and his "Vegetable Staticks" is the first work to broach a true morphology of plants ”

“ He was committed to the Tower, but was soon released by the influence of Cecil, yet in 1568 he was under bond not to quit his house without the royal license (Cal. Dom. i. 306) . The affair was complicated, and endangered the reputation of Sir Nicholas Bacon [q. v.] and other eminent men.
Hales died on 28 Dec. 1571, and was buried in the church of St. Peter-le-Poer in London. His estates, with his principal house in Coventry called Hales's Place, otherwise the White Fryers, passed to John, son of his brother Christopher. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Farindon's materials passed to William Fulman [q. v.] , who likewise failed to write the memoir. Use has been made of Fulman's papers by Walker :and Chalmers.
Andrew Marvel justly describes Hales as 'one of the clearest heads and best prepared breasts in Christendom.' The richness of his learning impresses us even less than his felicity in using it. His humour enables him to treat disturbing questions with attractive lightness of touch. His strength lies in an invincible core of common sense, always blended with good feeling, and issuing in a wise and thoughtful charity. ”

“ In October another grant of wine was made him, this time not a ‘pitcher,’ but a time, to be received in the port of London by the king's chief butler or his deputy. The king's butler at that time was Thomas Chaucer.
He was not more satisfactorily placed till the accession of Henry IV the son of his old patron the Duke of Lancaster (3 Oct. 1399) . Four days after Henry came to the throne he granted Chaucer forty marks (23l. 13s. 4d) . yearly, in addition to the annuity Richard II had given him, so nearly doubling his previous income. ”

“ HALES, JOHN (1584–1656) , the 'ever memorable,' was born in St. James's parish, Bath, on 19 April 1584. His father, John Hales, of an old Somersetshire stock, had an estate at Highchurch, near Bath, and was steward to the Horner family. After passing through the Bath grammar school, Hales went to Oxford on 16 April 1597 as a scholar of Corpus Christi College, and graduated B.A. on 9 July 1603 (Oxf. Univ. Reg., Oxf. Hist. Soc., ii. iii. 243) . His remarkable learning and philosophic acumen brought him under the notice of Sir Henry Savile, and secured his election as fellow of Merton in 1605. ”

“ She reached the table, paused, and gave Hales a slow appraising look. In appearance he was not quite as she had expected, not quite as he had seemed as she looked at him from the balcony. But she was intensely, prejudiced against him. She would pardon a man many things and some sins if he were one she liked; but she was imperiously unforgiving toward those who looked favorably upon women of Madame Renault's caste; and, from what she had overheard, the Washington Hall episode placed Hales pretty low in the scale of men. ”

“ Hale’s literary fame now rests on an anonymous study in the “Atlantic Monthly,” called “The Man without a Country,” a sketch of such absolutely lifelike vigor that I, reading it in camp during the Civil War, accepted it as an absolutely true narrative, until I suddenly came across, in the very midst of it, a phrase so wholly characteristic of its author that I sprang from my seat, exclaiming “Aut Cæsar aut nullus; Edward Hale or nobody.” ”

“ Hale being, by his own frequent confessions, the most terribly be-bored man in the universe, and having always had a hankering after Sybaritic islands where map-peddlers, book agents, and pious beggars might never mark his flight to do him wrong, it seemed providential, in a twofold sense, that a wealthy friend in Roger Williams’s city, the writer of a work on the labor question, should have carried out the brilliant idea of building the hard-worked author a summer retreat in the soft sea-air of Rhode Island. ”

“ Hales also held the professorship of oriental languages in the university. His first published work was ‘Sonorum doctrina rationalis et experimentalis,’ London, 1778, 8vo, a vindication and confirmation from recent experiments of Newton's theory of sounds. In 1782 he published ‘De motibus Planetarum dissertatio,’ Dublin, 12mo, on the motions of the planets in eccentric orbits, according to the Newtonian theory. In 1784 he printed at his own expense ‘Analysis Aequationum,’ Dublin, 4to. ”

“ Hale believes in the American people most heartily, and holds them to have been always in advance of their political leaders. He is full of plans for social betterments and the discomfiture of the devil’s regiments of the line. In fact he has too much of this kind of flax on his distaff for his own good. One of his hobbies being cheap and good literature for the people, he is thoroughly in sympathy with the Chautauqua system of popular instruction. ”

“ That pamphlet alcove, narrow, musty, yet busy, a composite of the stage-coach days and our electric era, gave me a graver suspicion of Doctor Hale’s cosmopolitan interests than any word he had uttered or anything I had hitherto seen in the temple.
When I came back Doctor Hale was again stretched upon the lounge. He began almost fiercely upon his favorite topic, and I can do no better than to give his own words:
“I have written twenty-five books, but I’m not an author; I’m a parish minister. I don’t care a snap for the difference between Balzac and Daudet. That isn’t important in life. ”

“ In 1798 he procured from the government some troops who tranquillised the country round Killeshandra. Hales was a good parish priest, ‘equally pleasing,’ says his biographer, ‘to the gentry and the lower orders.’ He was a kind-hearted, well-informed man, who told anecdotes well. ”

“ In any case there can be no doubt that the genius of Newton cast its light on Hales, as Sachs has clearly pointed out (Hist. Bot., Eng. Tr., p. 477) . Another great man who influenced Hales was Robert Boyle, who was born 1627 and died 1691. John Mayow again, that brilliant son of Oxford, whose premature death at 39 in 1679 was so heavy a blow to science, belongs to the same school as Hales—the school which was within an ace of founding a rational chemistry, but which was separated from the more obvious founders of that science by the phlogiston-theory of Becchers and Stahl. ”

“ Dead almost one hundred and forty years, we still are thrilled by proofs of the splendid manhood henceforth to be so prominent in every remaining day of Hale's brief life. A few letters to friends, a fairly comprehensive diary for a few months, his camp-book, and the recollections of a few of the officers and of his body-servant, give a moderately complete picture of Nathan Hale for a few brief weeks, during which time he had been doing all in his power to perfect himself and the men under him in the duties of soldiers. ”

“ Hales, it would appear, had known his business, and though he put his sitter to a deal of trouble, almost breaking his neck ‘to have the portrait full of shadows,’ and draping him in an Indian gown hired expressly for the purpose, he was preoccupied about no merely picturesque effects, but to [Pg 233] portray the essence of the man. Whether we read the picture by the diary, or the diary by the picture, we shall at least agree, that Hales was among the numbers of those who can ‘surprise the manners in a face.’ Here we have a mouth pouting, moist with desires ”

“ CHAPTER XIX 1 It was after dark when Hales arrived and a misty rain was falling. He put up his horse and started directly for Judge Deering's office. Men stumbled about through the mud in the drizzle, cursing and shouting good-naturedly; many of them carried lanterns. Lights blazed from the doorways of saloons. It sounded as if every saloon had an orchestra, every gambling house a band. As he crossed the Plaza he heard a strident voice crying through the gloom. ”

“ Elizabeth Strong, wife of Deacon Richard Hale and mother of Nathan, came from a family more notable than that of her husband. Her grandfather, Joseph Strong, represented Coventry in the General Assembly of Connecticut for sixty-five sessions and presided over town-meeting in his ninetieth year. [Pg 144]
Mrs. Hale had four immediate relatives who were graduates of Yale college. Three of the sons of Deacon Richard Hale and Elizabeth Strong Hale graduated from Yale,—Enoch, the fourth son, Nathan, the sixth child, and David, the eighth son. ”

“ When the protector, the duke of Somerset, was deprived of his authority in 1550, Hales left England and lived for some time at Strassburg and Frankfort, returning to his own country on the accession of Elizabeth. ”

“ It is to-day a recognized fact that no life worthy of our reverence, or even a life calculated to awaken our fear, is the result of accident. Whatever may be the character, its basis has been the result of long-developing causes. This the life of Nathan Hale well illustrates. He was born at a time and under influences that were sure to develop the best qualities in him. He was an immediate descendant of the best of the Puritans on both sides of the sea. His great-grandfather, John Hale, was the son of Robert Hale, who came to America in 1632. ”

“ A few years ago he entered the political arena, and at the general election held in the spring of 1887 was elected to represent the county of Carleton in the Dominion parliament at Ottawa. Mr. Hale is a director of the St. John Valley Railway. He takes an interest in Masonry, and is a member of the Woodstock lodge; and also a member of the Woodstock Royal Arch Chapter. In politics he is a Liberal; and in religion an adherent of the Free Baptist church. Mr. Hale has been twice married. On the 20th June, 1869, to Rhoda, daughter of the late George McGee; she died on the 16th June, 1870. ”

“ His name is a household word in American homes, and the keynote of his useful life may be expressed by the motto of one of his most popular books, “Ten Times One is Ten:”—“Look up and not down! Look forward and not backward! Look out and not in! Lend a hand!”
Edward Everett Hale was born in Boston, Massachusetts, April 3, 1822. He graduated at Harvard University in 1839, at the age of seventeen years. He took a post graduate course for two years in a Latin school and read theology and church history. ”