REMAINS,

IN VERSE AND PROSE,

OF

ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM.

VATTENE IN PACE, ALMA BEATA E BELLA.

ARIOSTO.

PRINTED BY W. NICOL, 51, PALL MALL.

MDCCCXXXIV.

270 e 151

PREFACE.

THE writer of the following Poems and Essays was so well known to the greater part of those into whose hands they are likely to come, that it may seem almost superfluous to commemorate a name little likely to fade from their recollection. Yet it is a pious, though at the same time, a very painful office, incumbent on the Editor, to furnish a few notices of a life as remarkable for the early splendour of genius, and for uniform moral excellence, as that of any one who has fallen under his observation; especially as some there must probably be, who will read these pages with little previous knowledge of him to whom they relate.

Arthur Henry Hallam was born in

London, on the 1st of February, 1811.

had elapsed before his parents observed

Bedford Place,

Very few years

strong indica

tions of his future character, in a peculiar clearness of perception, a facility of acquiring knowledge, and, above all, in an undeviating sweetness of disposition, and adherence to his sense of what was right and becoming. As he advanced to another stage of childhood, it was rendered still more manifest that he would be distinguished from ordinary persons, by an increasing thoughtfulness, and a fondness for a class of books, which in general are so little intelligible to boys of his age, that they excite in them no kind of interest.

In the summer of 1818 he spent some months with his parents in Germany and Switzerland, and became familiar with the French language, which he had already learned to read with facility. He had gone through the elements of Latin before this time; but that language having been laid aside during his tour, it was found upon his return that, a variety of new scenes having effaced it from his memory, it was necessary to begin again with the first rudiments. He was nearly eight years old at this time; and in little more than twelve months he could read Latin with tolerable facility. In this period his mind was developing itself more rapidly than before; he now felt a keen relish for dramatic poe

try, and wrote several tragedies, if we may so call them, either in prose or verse, with a more precocious display of talents, than the Editor remembers to have met with in any other individual. The natural pride, however, of his parents did not blind them to the uncertainty that belongs to all premature efforts of the mind; and they so carefully avoided every thing like a boastful display of blossoms which, in many cases, have withered away in barren luxuriance, that the circumstance of these compositions was hardly ever mentioned out of their own family.

In the spring of 1820, Arthur was placed under the Rev. W. Carmalt at Putney, where he remained nearly two years. After leaving this school, he went abroad again for some months; and in October 1822 became the pupil of the Rev. E. C. Hawtrey, an Assistant Master of Eton College. At Eton he continued till the summer of 1827. He was now become a good, though not perhaps a first-rate, scholar in the Latin and Greek languages. The loss of time, relatively to this object, in travelling, but, far more, his increasing avidity for a different kind of knowledge, and the strong bent of his mind to subjects which exercise other faculties than