Joseph Hall
born , July 1, 1574, Ashby-de-la-Zouch,
Leicestershire, Eng.
died Sept. 8, 1656, Higham, Norfolk
English bishop, moral philosopher, and satirist,
remarkable for his literary versatility and
innovations.
Hall’s Virgidemiarum: Six Books (1597–1602; “A
Harvest of Blows”) was the first English satire
successfully modeled on Latin satire, and its
couplets anticipated the satiric heroic couplets
of John Dryden in the late 17th century. Hall
was also the first writer in English to emulate
Theophrastus, an ancient Greek philosopher who
wrote a book of characters, with Characters of
Vertues and Vices (1608). As a moral philosopher
he achieved a European reputation for his
Christianization of Stoicism.
Educated under Puritan influences at the
Ashby School and the University of Cambridge
(from 1589), he was elected to the university
lectureship in rhetoric. He became rector of
Hawstead, Suffolk, in 1601 and concentrated
chiefly on writing books for the money “to buy
books.” Mundus Alter et Idem (c. 1605; “The
World Different and the Same”), an original and
entertaining Latin satire that influenced
Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726),
dates from this period, as does Heaven upon
Earth (1606), a book of moral philosophy. Hall
later became domestic chaplain to Prince Henry
(James I’s eldest son). He was made dean of
Worcester in 1616 and accompanied King James to
Scotland in 1617. He was a royal representative
at the Synod of Dort (1618–19), an assembly of
the Reformed Church of the Netherlands, and
became bishop of Exeter in 1627. Suspected of
Puritan leanings by William Laud, archbishop of
Canterbury, he counterattacked Puritans on
episcopacy’s behalf.
Hall took part in the literary campaign
between Anglicans and Puritans at the opening
(1642) of the English Civil War. John Milton,
poet and Puritan, wrote Animadversions against a
Defence of Hall’s, but amid the ensuing exchange
of invective Hall pleaded for unity and
tolerance among Christians. In 1641 Hall was
given the bishopric of Norwich but was
imprisoned for four months by an anti-episcopalian
House of Commons before arriving at his new see.
Deprived of his episcopal revenues in 1643, he
was finally ejected from his palace and retired
to Higham.
