Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 24.djvu/89

 1818, and an ardent advocate of teetotalism. In 1812 he became the subject of strong religious convictions. In April 1814 he returned to Maidstone as proprietor of the bookshop where he had been errand-boy twenty-eight years before. One of his favourite occupations here was visiting the prisoners in the county gaol, especially those under sentence of death. In 1821 he conceived the idea of writing ‘The Sinner's Friend,’ the first edition of which consisted of a series of selections from Bogatzky's ‘Golden Treasury,’ with a short introduction by himself. It appeared on 29 May 1821. In subsequent editions he gradually substituted pages from his own pen for those taken from Bogatzky, until in the end the little work was entirely his own, with the exception of one extract. It quickly became a favourite in the religious world. It has been translated into thirty languages, and reached a circulation of nearly three millions of copies. In 1850 he retired from business, and in 1854 went to reside at Heath Cottage, Kentish Town. He now became an elder in Surrey Chapel, of which his son, the Rev. Newman Hall, LL.B., was minister, and busied himself about religious and temperance work. He died on 22 Sept. 1860. His remains were interred in Abney Park cemetery. He married, at Worcester, in August 1806, Mary Teverill.



HALL, JOSEPH (1574–1656), bishop of Norwich, was born at Bristow Park, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, 1 July 1574. His father, John Hall, was employed under the Earl of Huntingdon, president of the north, and was his deputy at Ashby. His mother was Winifred Bambridge, a strict puritan. Hall has left among his works two tracts (‘Observations of some Specialties of Divine Providence in the Life of Joseph Hall, Bishop of Norwich,’ and ‘Hard Measure’), which together form a useful and interesting autobiography. The first part of his education was received at the grammar school at Ashby. When he was of the age of fifteen Mr. Pelset, lecturer at Leicester, a divine of puritan views, offered to take him ‘under indentures’ and educate him for the ministry. Just before this arrangement was completed, it came to the knowledge of Nathaniel Gilby, son of [q. v.], and a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, who was a friend of the family. Gilby induced Hall's father to send his son to Emmanuel College in 1589. The expense of his education at the university was partly borne by his uncle, Edmund Sleigh. He was elected scholar and afterwards fellow of Emmanuel College (1595), graduating B.A. in 1592 and M.A. in 1596 (B.D. 1603 and D.D. 1612). Fuller, nearly a contemporary, says that Hall ‘passed all his degrees with great applause.’ He obtained a high reputation in the university for scholarship, and read the public rhetoric lecture in the schools for two years with much credit.

Hall's earliest published verse appeared in a collection of elegies on the death of Dr. William Whitaker, to which he contributed the only English poem (1596). A line in John Marston's ‘Pigmalion's Image’ (1598) proves that Hall also wrote pastoral poems at an early age, but none of these have survived. He first made a reputation as a writer by his pungent satires, published in 1597 under the title of ‘Virgidemiarum, Sixe Bookes. First three bookes of Toothlesse Satyrs’ (Lond. by Thomas Creede), 12mo. A second volume, with the same general title, containing ‘three last bookes of byting Satyres,’ followed in 1598. New editions appeared in 1599 and 1602. They have been frequently republished and illustrated by Warton, Singer, Ellis, and Dr. Grosart (1879). These satires are formed on the model of the Latin satirists. Their diction is sometimes rough, and the allusions obscure, while some passages border closely upon scurrility; but Hall's verses are generally vigorous and witty. Hall calls himself the ‘first English satirist,’ which must be interpreted as the first formal writer of satires after the Latin models since Wyatt, Gascoigne, Lodge, and others had preceded him as satirists. His claims of priority seem to have specially excited the wrath of Marston, whose satires, issued in 1598, attack Hall with much bitterness. On 1 June 1599 an order signed by Whitgift, archbishop of Canterbury, and Bancroft, bishop of London, directed the Stationers' Company to burn Hall's satires, together with books by Marston, Marlowe, and others, on the ground of their licentiousness. But a few days later Hall's satires with Cutwode's ‘Caltha Poetarum’ were ‘staied,’ i.e. reprieved (cf. Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. xii. 436). In 1600 Hall wrote an elegy and epitaph, both in verse, on Sir Horatio Pallavicino, which were published in ‘An Italian's dead Bodie stucke with English Flowers,’ Lond. 1600 (a copy is in the Lambeth Library).

Towards the end of the century Hall took holy orders, and in 1601 had the offer of the mastership of Blundell's school at Tiverton [see ]. He was on the point of accepting this when the offer of the living of Halsted in Suffolk came from Lady Drury, and he decided to take the benefice.