[Son of Henry Hallam.] Born, in London, 1 Feb. 1811. Visit to Germany and Switzerland, 1818. At first privately educated; afterwards at Eton, till 1827. Contrib. to “Eton Miscellany,” 1827. In Italy, winter 1827–28. Returned to England, June 1828. To Trin. Coll., Camb., Oct. 1828, Friendship with Tennyson formed there. B.A., 1832. Contrib. to “Englishman’s Mag.,” 1831. Student of Inner Temple, 1832. With father in Germany, 1833. Died suddenly, at Vienna, 15 Sept. 1833. Works: “Remarks on Prof. Rossetti’s ‘Disquisizioni sullo Spirito Antipapale’” (under initials: T. H. E. A.), 1832. Posthumous: “Remains in Prose and Verse,” ed. by his father (priv. ptd.), 1834.

Personal

  More ought, perhaps, to be said; but it is very difficult to proceed. From the earliest years of this extraordinary young man, his premature abilities were not more conspicuous than an almost faultless disposition, sustained by a more calm self-command than has often been witnessed in that season of life. The sweetness of temper that distinguished his childhood, became, with the advance of manhood, an habitual benevolence, and ultimately ripened into that exalted principle of love towards God and man, which animated and almost absorbed his soul during the latter period of his life, and to which most of the following compositions bear such emphatic testimony. He seemed to tread the earth as a spirit from some better world; and in bowing to the mysterious will which has in mercy removed him, perfected by so short a trial, and passing over the bridge which separates the seen from the unseen life in a moment, and, as we believe, without a moment’s pang, we must feel not only the bereavement of those to whom he was dear, but the loss which mankind have sustained by the withdrawing of such light.

  And now what shall I say of Arthur Hallam? I have been somewhat taken by surprise, though probably without sufficient cause, to find how much of his memory has ceased to exist for the younger men who sway the present time. He has remained so vividly before all of us, first as the most charming and perhaps the most promising of our contemporaries, and secondly, as the hero of the great poem “In Memoriam,” that we thought his name an imperishable one; but a poem is one thing, the man in whose honour it is written, quite another. We now read “Lycidas” without taking any great interest in Mr. King, and those who come after us may go on admiring Tennyson’s verses, without dwelling much on the image of Tennyson’s friend…. A son of Mr. Tennyson’s, though born many years after he left us, has been called Hallam, and a son of mine has been called Arthur. It seemed as if neither he nor I could bear to let the name pass quite away from us, and I have no doubt that the same thing has happened in many other families, as he was regarded by all who knew him with unusual affection…. We all of us, even Mr. Gladstone, I think, felt whilst conversing with him, that we were in the presence of a larger, profounder, and more thoughtful mind than any one of us could claim for himself.

  It is the simple truth that Arthur Henry Hallam was a spirit so exceptional, that everything with which he was brought into relation during his shortened passage through this world came to be, through this contact, glorified by a touch of the ideal. Among his contemporaries at Eton, that queen of visible homes for the ideal schoolboy, he stood supreme among all his fellows; and the long life which I have since wound my way, and which has brought me into contact with so many men of rich endowments, leaves him where he then stood, as to natural gifts, so far as my estimation is concerned.

General

  We do not remember when we have been more impressed than by these “Remains” of this young man, especially when taken along with his friend’s Memorial; and instead of trying to tell our readers what this impression is, we have preferred giving them as copious extracts as our space allows, that they may judge and enjoy for themselves…. We can promise them few finer, deeper, and better pleasures than reading, and detaining their minds over these two books together, filling their hearts with the fullness of their truth and tenderness.

  His very depth and originality rendered it more difficult for him to bring his ideas to the surface, and give them their adequate expression. He required more time for his full development than we did. For instance, his poems, as poems of promise, gave greater hopes for the future than my diluted Scott and water or Byron and water. But just because they were his own, and not borrowed, they seemed (naturally enough, because he was yet but a boy) stiff as to the language, and imperfect in point of form. Before he died, these defects had almost disappeared, or at any rate were rapidly disappearing; I would particularly mention a dramatic scene preserved in his Remains, between the painter Raphael and his mistress (the Fornarina she was called), which strikes me as not only beautifully conceived, but excellent in point of execution. His prose writings were vigorous and effective, but still somewhat wanting in ease, grace, and lightness. Here again, he was moving onward with rapid strides. In proof of this I may refer to the fine analysis of Cicero’s character and writings, also preserved in his Remains…. It is a critical and philosophical dissertation in the very first rank of such dissertations.

  Arthur Hallam was himself little more than a hope unfulfilled. His pathetic little “Remains” do not even seem to convey to the reader the promises which all his youthful circle saw in him:—a conclusion not by any means unusual—yet in inspiring and making possible this great poem [“In Memoriam”] he has had an unusual fate.

  Arthur Hallam’s poems, we are told by his father, were intended to be published along with those of his friend, Alfred Tennyson. They would have been worthy of the association. If, on account of his youth, Arthur Hallam had not fashioned any one great work, there is abundant promise of greatness had life been allowed him. He has learned the power of simplicity; he has reached to Dante’s secret, and already knows how to suggest by reserve of language. Some of his sonnets are very perfect—full of melody; and hardly could you either add to, or take away from them. He sees clearly, and his expression is adequate; he will allow no redundancy…. Arthur Hallam was not only gifted, a genius and a poet, but he almost seems to have known nothing of that intermediate period of vague and misty aspiration, of which the poet Keats so pathetically speaks in the preface to “Endymion.”

  Arthur Hallam, whom “In Memoriam” has made immortal, was credited by the partial judgment of his friends with talents which, they would fain think, were actually shown both in verse and prose. A wiser criticism will content itself with saying that in one sense he produced “In Memoriam” itself, and that this is enough connection with literature for any man. His own work has a suspicious absence of faults, without the presence of any great positive merit,—a combination almost certainly indicating precocity, to be followed by sterility.