An eminent English antiquary, was born in 1678 in the parish of White Waltham, Berkshire, and had his education at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1699. Two years later he was appointed to a post in the Bodleian Library of which in 1712 he became second keeper. This office he was obliged to resign in 1716 from his inability to take the oaths to the government, but he continued to live at Oxford occupied entirely with his studies. He died 10th June 1735. Hearne compiled and edited no less than forty-one works, all stamped by painful and laborious learnings, although poor in style and somewhat rambling in method. They are usually marred by the intrusion of irrelevant matter—even his Jacobitism crept into his prefaces; yet they remain solid contributions to bibliography, and their author deserved better than to be gibbeted in the Dunciad as a dull and dusty pedant. His most important books were Reliquiæ Bodleianæ (1703), Leland’s Itinerary (9 vols. 1710–12), Leland’s Collectanea (6 vols. 1715), A Collection of Curious Discourses upon English Antiquities (1720); and the editions of Camden’s Annals (3 vols. 1717), Alured of Beverley (1716), William of Newburgh (1719), Fordun’s Scotichronicon (1722), Robert of Gloucester’s Chronicle (1724), and that of Peter Langtoft (1725). The Bibliotheca Hearniana was published in 1848; Reliquiæ Hearnianæ, by Philip Bliss, in 1857. The third volume of Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne appeared in 1889, edited by C. E. Doble for the Oxford Historical Society. See Impartial Memorials of his life by several hands (1736), and the Lives of Leland, Hearne, and Wood (Oxford, 1772).

Personal

  The son of a parish clerk in Berkshire, he was taken while a boy into the service of Mr. Cherry, and employed to clean knives, and help in the kitchen. He neglected his menial duties for books, which brought him into discredit with his fellow-servants, and got him the favour of his master, who sent him to school and college. He was singularly uncouth in his person and manners, his countenance was dull, and he was not a man of powerful intellect. But his industry was unbounded, his passion for poring over classical and mediæval manuscripts intense, and he rendered considerable service to literature by printing the text of many valuable works. Having become Roman catholic and non-juror through independent inquiry, he sacrificed his pecuniary interests to his principles, and had a claim to respect for his integrity even more than for his learning.

  Prejudiced up to the eyes as this bookworm of bookworms is, even the least of the sympathisers with his ecclesiastical or political opinions cannot refrain from admiring the disinterestedness of his labours. His whole thoughts were centered in the success of his principles, or in the advancement of learning; and he pursued his course with unflagging spirit, although his means at home were but scant and his enemies at the university took advantage of his sympathies with the vanquished cause to hinder his advancement.

  Hearne again! May not one wonder what there is in this Hearne that volume after volume of choosings from his handwritten books of jottings is given to the world, in good paper and print? Indeed, the great number of American reader-folk need not take any shame to themselves if they cannot recall the man to mind…. We may say that we should like an etching of this steadfast, trusty, possibly a little crabbed, “Jacobite” and (half)? “non-juror.” There are many chances to one that he was not handsome, or “distinguished”-looking, or well-dressed; he may have been ungainly, even rawboned and coarse-skinned; but, being a shrewd man, with eyes quick to watch those about him, and the comers and goers, in times when it was “touch-and-go” with any man of any account, we should like a glimpse of him, caught in a twinkling. His wig might be a little awry; a grim smile might float about his tightened lips as he wrote, glibly, how “that old smooth-booted, self-interested, ambitious, paultry Lancaster” (the Vice-Chancellor of the University—and a Whig, of course) had met a rebuff, or mortification; or his brows might have been knitted, and his teeth set, while he put down, in black and white, what “that sneaking, snivelling” wretch, and his likes, were plotting.

General

  The last who has dug deep into the mine was Thomas Hearne, a clerk of Oxford, poor in fortune, and indeed, poor in understanding. His minute and obscure diligence, his voracious and undistinguishing appetite, and the coarse vulgarity of his taste and style, have exposed him to the ridicule of idle wits. Yet it cannot be denied that Thomas Hearne has gathered many gleanings of the harvest; and if his own prefaces are filled with crude and extraneous matter, his editions will always be recommended by their accuracy and use.

  The ridicule and satire which once pursued the person and the publications of the author, are now forgotten; and Hearne stands upon a pedestal which may be said to have truth and honour for its basis. His works, which present us with portions of History, chiefly local, are now coveted by the antiquary, and respected by the scholar. The “old” and the “young,” professedly attached to book collecting, can never be thoroughly happy, if their Hearnëan Series be not complete.

  As he grew older his attention was chiefly confined to English history and antiquities, and after publishing the “Itinerary” and “Collectanea” of John Leland he began his well-known series of editions of the English chroniclers; they were all published by subscription, very few copies of each being printed. Their importance to historical students can scarcely be exaggerated, many of them being the only editions that existed till the recent publication of the Rolls Series of historical works, and some being still the only editions in print. Hearne accomplished all this with little help from others, with only the income he derived from his subscribers, and with the chief authorities of the university looking askance at him. It is satisfactory to know that he lived to see what he had published for 2l. 2s. sold for 12l. 12s. and that at his death over 1000l. was found in his possession. He does not show any grasp of history, and for the most part he contented himself with seeing his manuscripts carefully through the press; but his accuracy is generally to be depended on, though his explanations of words are not always satisfactory. His prefaces do not give the information which would be expected of the contents of the volumes or even of the history and condition of the manuscripts from which he printed. His appendices contain all kinds of extraneous matters, having in most cases no connection with the author they follow. He was certainly wanting in power to distinguish the relative value of what fell in his way; it seemed to him enough that a document was old to induce him to publish it.