Joseph Hall, born 1st July 1574 at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, became a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1595, incumbent of Halstead and Waltham, and dean of Worcester (1617). In that year be accompanied James I. to Scotland to help establish Episcopacy, and he was one of the English deputies to the synod of Dort. He became Bishop of Exeter in 1627, and as such on suspicion of Puritanism incurred Laud’s enmity, though he zealously defended Episcopacy. In 1641 he was translated to Norwich, and having with other prelates protested against the validity of laws passed during their enforced absence from Parliament, was committed to the Tower, but liberated at the end of seven months, on finding bail for £5000. Shortly after his return to Norwich his revenues were sequestrated and his property pillaged. He retired to a small farm at Higham in 1647, and died 8th September 1656. His works, including “Contemplations,” “Christian Meditations,” “Episcopacy,” and “Mundus Alter et Idem,” a Latin satirical romance, were edited by Pratt (1808), by Peter Hall, a descendant (1837–39), and by Wynter (1863). His poetical “Satires: “Virgidemiarum” (1597–98) Pope calls “the best poetry and the truest satire in the English language.”

Personal

  Not out of a vain affectation of my own glory, which I know how little it can avail me when I am gone hence, but out of a sincere desire to give glory to my God, whose wonderful providence I have noted in all my ways, have I recorded some remarkable passages of my fore-past life. What I have done is worthy of nothing but silence and forgetfulness; but what God hath done for me is worthy of everlasting and thankful memory.

  He was noted for a singular wit from his youth: a most acute rhetorician and an elegant poet. He understood many tongues; and in the rhetorick of his own he was second to none that lived in his time.

  So soon almost as Emanuel Colledge was admitted into Cambridge, he was admitted into that Colledge, within few years after the first foundation thereof. He passed all his degrees with great applause. First, noted in the University, for his ingenuous maintaining (be it Truth, or Paradox) that Mundus senescit, “The World groweth old.” Yet, in some sort, his position confuteth his position, the wit and quickness whereof did argue an increase rather than a decay of parts in this latter age…. He may be said to have dyed with his pen in his hand, whose Writing and Living expired together.

  Seems to have been very credulous in his disposition, rather religious than wise, or possessing any attainments equal to the dignity to which he rose.

  Joseph Hall, styled the Christian Seneca, from his sententious manner of writing, was justly celebrated for his piety, wit, learning, and extensive knowledge of mankind.

  Both as a writer and as a preacher his reputation stands high. With less scholarship and wit than Andrewes, and less original power than Donne or Taylor, he writes with great fluency and energy, and with much better taste than any of these writers. Some have called him the best preacher of that century—no small honour among such giants; and undoubtedly, for pulpit oratory, his strong feelings and fluent expression, guided by superior taste, would be more effective than the undisciplined profusion and originality of his great rivals.

  He is thus, more than any other man of his time, the personification of a great intellectual and spiritual movement. A character of which this could be said would hardly be one of great intellectual force; and, in fact, there is no trace in him of any individual opposition to the ideas floating in the circles in which he moved. His ecclesiastical opinions were the same as those of Laud; he had the same reverence for authority, and the same notion of the position of the king in the constitution. There is nothing to show that he was capable of contributing a single useful thought to avert the dangers which threatened his party and his country. Hall’s highest qualities, in truth, were moral rather than intellectual. Whatever doctrine he held, he did not push it to extremes; and, whatever order he enforced, he not only tried persuasion first, but he had the knack of persuading persuasively. If he had been Archbishop of Canterbury instead of Laud, he would have maintained much the same principles as Laud did, but he would have caused far less irritation.

Virgidemiarum, 1597–98

  They are full of spirit and poetry, as much of the first as Dr. Donne, and far more of the latter.

  These satires are marked with a classical precision, to which English poetry had yet rarely attained. They are replete with animation of style and sentiment. The indignation of the satirist is always the result of good sense. Nor are the thorns of severe invective unmixed with the flowers of pure poetry. The characters are delineated in strong and lively colouring, and their discriminations are touched with the masterly traces of genuine humour. The versification is equally energetic and elegant, and the fabric of the couplets approaches to the modern standard. It is no inconsiderable proof of a genius predominating over the general taste of an age when every preacher was a punster, to have written verses, where laughter was to be raised, and the reader to be entertained with sallies of pleasantry, without quibbles and conceits. His chief fault is obscurity, arising from a remote phraseology, constrained combinations, unfamiliar allusions, elliptical apostrophes, and abruptness of expression.

  The “Satires” of Hall exhibit a very minute and curious picture of the literature and manners, the follies and vices of his times, and numerous quotations in the course of our work will amply prove the wit, the sagacity, and the elegance of his Muse.

  In his “Satires,” which were published at the age of twenty-three, he discovered not only the early vigour of his own genius, but the powers and pliability of his native tongue. Unfortunately, perhaps unconsciously, he caught, from studying Juvenal and Persius as his models, an elliptical manner and an antique allusion, which cast obscurity over his otherwise spirited and amusing traits of English manners; though the satirist himself was so far from anticipating this objection, that he formally apologizes for “too much stooping to the low reach of the vulgar.” But in many instances he redeems the antiquity of his allusions by their ingenious adaptation to modern manners; and this is but a small part of his praise; for in the point and volubility, and vigour of Hall’s numbers, we might frequently imagine ourselves perusing Dryden.

  This powerful and truly original writer is the earliest professed Satirist among our Poets; and he has himself alluded to that fact with a proud and pardonable egotism:

	“I first adventure, follow me who list,
	And be the Second English Satirist.”

His Satires, beside their own intrinsic poetical excellencies, are valuable to the Antiquary as presenting a most vivid and faithful picture of the manners of our ancestors; their fashions, follies, vices, and peculiarities. These Hall has touched with a powerful and unsparing hand. Scribblers, Lawyers, Parsons, Physicians, all those unfortunate classes of men, who have, from time immemorial, enjoyed the unenvied privilege of attracting the peculiar notice of the Satiric Muse, are by him laid bare and shrinking to the scorn and hatred of Mankind.

  Hall is in fact not only so harsh and rugged, that he cannot be read with much pleasure, but so obscure in very many places, that he cannot be understood at all; his lines frequently bearing no visible connection in sense or grammar with their neighbors. The stream is powerful, but turbid and often choked.

  The first book of the “Toothless Satires” was directed against the faults, literary and other, of the poets of the age; the second treated of academical abuses; the third of public manners and morality, which also form the matter of the “Biting Satires.” The author’s acknowledged models are Juvenal and Persius; and he professes that it was to their nervous and crabbed style of poetry, rather than to the imitation of Virgil and Spenser, that his genius inclined him.

	“Rather had I, albe in careless rhymes,
	Check the misordered world and lawless times.”

What Hall’s satires did towards “checking the misordered world” may not have been much; but, as compositions of the satirical order, they have kept a place in our literature.

  Have little to recommend them to the modern reader of English Verse, for they are disfigured with affected expressions, archaic phrases, and a curious obscurity of thought. Resolute in intention, and merciless in execution, his energy never flags, and his invectives never give out. The virtue with which he plies the lash, and which gives him such a savage delight, is a vice in disguise. His hatred of vice is more monstrous than vice itself. So thought the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop of London, the censors of the press, who forthwith ordered that the satires should be burnt.

  His Satires belong to his early Cambridge days, and to the last decade of the sixteenth century. They have on the whole been rather overpraised, though the variety of their matter and the abundance of reference to interesting social traits of the time to some extent redeem them. The worst point about them, as already noted, is the stale and commonplace impertinence with which their author, unlike the best breed of young poets and men of letters, attempts to satirise his literary betters; while they are to some extent at any rate tarred with the other two brushes of corrupt imitation of the ancients, and of sham moral indignation. Indeed the want of sincerity—the evidence of the literary exercise—injures Hall’s satirical work in different ways throughout. We do not, as we read him, in the least believe in his attitude of Hebrew prophet crossed with Roman satirist, and the occasional presence of a vigorous couplet or a lively metaphor hardly redeems this disbelief. Nevertheless, Hall is here as always a literary artist—a writer who took some trouble with his writings.

Epistles, 1608–11

  An able inquirer into the literature of this period has affirmed that Hall’s Epistles, written before the year 1613, are the first example of epistolary composition which England had seen. “Bishop Hall,” he says, “was not only our first satirist, but was the first who brought epistolary writing to the view of the public; which was common in that age to other parts of Europe, but not practiced in England till he published his own Epistles.” And Hall himself in the Dedication of his Epistles to Prince Henry observes, “Your grace shall herein perceiue a new fashion of discourse by Epistles, new to our language, vsuall to others: and, as nouelty is neuer without plea of vse, more free, more familiar.”

Contemplations, 1612–15

  Why have I travelled thus far on the road of Divinity without mentioning the “Contemplations” of Bishop Hall? a prelate and a poet, of very distinguished attainments. A vein of piety, and even of an original cast of observation, runs through the greater part of his performances: and his “Contemplations,” in particular, breathe the fire of poetry as well as of devotion. His works have been long and justly held in very general esteem.

  The first and last terms are justly applied, but not the middle one; as there is very little criticism, in the proper meaning of the term, in any of the works of Hall…. There is a great variety of sentiment, and great richness of thought and expression, in these “Contemplations.” The historical passages are often very happily illustrated; and a pure and elevated devotion, combined with a fine imagination, pervades the whole.

  “The Contemplations” of Hall are among his most celebrated works. They are prolix, and without much of that vivacity or striking novelty we meet with in the devotional writings of his contemporary, but are perhaps more practical and generally edifying.

  Very devotional and useful.

Christian Meditations, 1640

  These satires, however, striking as they are for their compactness of language and vigor of characterization, convey but an inadequate idea of the depth, devoutness, and largeness of soul displayed in Hall’s theological writings. His “Meditations,” especially, have been read by thousands who never heard of him as a tart and caustic wit. But the one characteristic of sententiousness marks equally the sarcasm of the youthful satirist and the raptures of the aged saint.

Mundus Alter et Idem, 1643

  “Mundus Alter et Idem” … is a witty and ingenious Invention of a Learned Prelate, writ by him in his younger days (but well enough becoming the austerity of the gravest Head), in which he distinguisheth the Vices, Passions, Humours, and ill Affections most commonly incident to mankind into several Provinces; gives us the Character of each, as in the descriptions of a Country, People, and chief Cities of it, and sets them forth unto the Eye in such lively Colours, that the Vitious man may see therein his own Deformities, and the well-minded man his own Imperfections. The Scene of this Design is laid by the Reverend Author in this Terra Australis; the Decorum happily preserved in the whole Discovery; the style acutely clear, in the invention singular.

  With Hall’s satires should be ranked his “Mundus Alter et Idem,” an ingenious satirical fiction in prose, where, under a pretended description of the Terra Australis, he forms a pleasant invective against the characteristic vices of various nations, and is remarkably severe on the Church of Rome. This piece was written about the year 1600, before he had quitted the classics for the fathers, and published some years afterwards against his consent.

  I can only produce two books by English authors, in this first part of the seventeenth century, which fall properly under the class of novels or romances; and, of these, one is written in Latin. This is the “Mundus Alter et Idem” of Bishop Hall, an imitation of the latter and weaker volumes of Rabelais. A country in Terra Australis is divided into four regions,—Crapulia, Viraginia, Moronea, and Lavernia. Maps of the whole land and of particular regions are given; and the nature of the satire, not much of which has any especial reference to England, may easily be collected. It is not a very successful effort.

  Other circumstances, already recited, which connect the work with Gentili are its dedication to the Earl of Huntingdon and its publication at the cost of Ascanio Rinialme, both members of Gentili’s Inn, and further coincidence that the improved edition, Hanau, 1607, bears the same imprint as at least four others of Centili’s acknowledged works. Assuming the preface to be bona fide, Knight, as an Oxford M.A. may have been as much the friend of Gentili as of Hall. For Hall there is (a) the address of “J. H., the translator, to J. H., the author,” (b) the translator’s apology to the “reverend man” to whose muse some few attributed the little book from Frankfort, (c) Heylyn’s assignment of it to a “learned prelate”—unquestionably Hall is intended—and (d) the Bodleian Catalogue (1674) referring “Mercurius Britannicus” to Hall. Upon which an advocate for Gentili might further argue that, accepting all that the critics say about the book, there is nothing in it of which a scholar need be ashamed; (e) Hall never claimed it himself, as far as is known; (f) His friend James did not claim it for him in the Bodleian Catalogue of 1620, while (g) Gentili is mentioned as the author in the table of contents prefixed to the book; and (h) his name appears as author of it upon the title-page of the German translation (1618) within eight years of the original publication, not more than five years after Gentili’s death, three years before the death of his brother, Scipio Gentili, and without his or Hall’s contradiction (?).

General

  He was commonly called our English Seneca, for the purenesse, plainesse, and fulnesse of his style. Not unhappy at Controversies, more happy at Comments, very good in his Characters, better in his Sermons, best of all in his Meditations.

  Monsieur Balzac exceedingly admired him and often quotes him: vide Balzac’s “Apologie.”

  The wit of Hall is levelled against the ribaldry and bombast of the stage, the puritanical and religious poetry of the Precisians; and the extravagance of romantic and legendary poems. Spenser alone is excepted, from the general censure bestowed on the latter class of authors. Spenser was the only great poet contemporary with Hall, whose reputation, at the time his satires were published, was established.

  Imaginative and copious eloquence, terse and pointed sentences, full of piety and devotion. Few writers more likely to be useful to (Divinity) students. Let them thoroughly read and digest such a writer, and they will be furnished for most of the calls upon them.

  Most of Hall’s prose writings, had a merit which might have been expected from the author of the “Satires,” and which distinguished them from the mass of the theological writings of their day—the merit of careful literary execution…. Has still a place in the history of English theological prose between Hooker and Jeremy Taylor; and there are modern critics who, comparing Hall and Taylor, and pointing out their differences in the midst of some obvious similarities, seem to waver in their choice between them. With much of Taylor’s rich fancy and rhetorical copiousness, however, there is more in Hall of a certain mechanical hardness of purpose, more of astringency and of mean temper. Even in his “Meditations” there is less of a genuine meditative disposition than of a cultured tendency to ethical sententiousness.

  In naming Hall, indeed, we name a prince and chief among our English divines—equally good at all weapons, equally surpassing in every department of theology…. The highest tribute to the merits of Bishop Hall’s writings is their great and unceasing popularity with the unlearned and poor. Side by side with the writings of Bunyan and Defoe, portions of them are to be found on many a cottage shelf; and the pious contemplations of the witty and eloquent bishop have gladdened and strengthened many a soul in sickness, sorrow, and pain. Do we seek the cause of this? It will be found in the fact that Joseph Hall had not only earnest, practical piety, great learning, great zeal, but also the invaluable gift of genuine wit and humour. Resembling Bishop Andrewes in the raciness, point, and piquancy of his imaginings, he far surpassed him in his power of expressing, in nervous and telling words, the products of his brain. His style is eminently happy, effective, graphic, and genuine. His mind was stored with learning. He had studied men and things under many circumstances, in various lands. His power of illustration is inexhaustible; his wit always fresh and telling; his knowledge of Scripture profound; his sense of the wants, dangers, and difficulties of men deep and practical; his charity and loving spirit abundant. With these qualifications he could scarcely fail of addressing himself effectively to men. And he shone in all subjects. His satires are the best imitations of the Juvenalian vein which we possess; his letters some of the most charming specimens of earnestness, without dulness.

  The poetic temperament of Hall reveals itself, in his prose as well as in his verse, by the fervor of his piety, and the forcible and often picturesque character of his style, in which it has been thought he made Seneca his model…. Both in style and in mind Hall and Donne were altogether opposed; neither in his prose nor in his verse has the former the originality of the latter, or the fineness of thought that will often break out in a sudden streak of light from the midst of his dark sayings; but, on the other hand, he is perfectly free from the dominant vices of Donne’s manner, his conceits, his quaintness, his remote and fantastic analogies, his obscurity, his harshness, his parade of a useless and encumbering erudition.

  Hall writes with skill and with spirit. It can scarcely be said of him: Facit indignatio versum. He finds a pleasure in imitating, and in some sort reproducing, his Latin models; and this is rather his inspiration than any moral fervour. And the chief value of his work is its vigorous picture of Elizabethan ways and manners. Whatever the old comedy did for Athens in the way of illustrating the old Athenian life, that satire did for Rome, and with inferior, but yet no mean force, Hall did for Elizabethan London. It is no contemptible service to have helped to keep alive for us an age so fascinating, so glorious, so momentous. Whoever would picture to himself the very town in the midst of which Shakespeare moved, its lights and shadows, its whims and phantasies and follies—“a mad world, my masters”—see “the very age and body of the time, his form and presence,” and learn what were its daily thoughts, interests, cares, credulities, passions—will find truly valuable aid in Hall’s satires.

  In language the “Satires” are artificially archaic: and the tone that pervades them has very little in common with the spirit of his later work. But they brought a freedom and a vigour to his prose style which it never lost, and the practice which they gave him in his early years not only added force and liveliness to his later controversial style, but also gave to his religious writings the quick movement, the variety and the lavish illustration, which are their chief characteristics. Hall thus combined some elements which are rarely found in combination. Educated amongst puritanic influences and under the shadow of a religion that regarded each individual accident as brought about by the special intervention of providence; passing from this to the classical influences of the University, and finding his models in antiquity; thrusting himself as a youth into the literary struggles of the day—he brought to his later work as a divine some unique qualities. His earliest religious writings are devout and earnest, but they borrow their illustrations largely from secular sources; they have no strongly marked dogmatic features, and their language has a freedom and a force that are peculiar.