Julius Charles Hare

He came to England with his parents in 1799, but in 1804-1805 spent a winter with them at Weimar, where he met Goethe and Schiller, and received a bias to German literature which influenced his style and sentiments throughout his whole career. On the death of his mother in 1806, Julius was sent home to the Charterhouse in London, where he remained till 1812, when he entered Trinity College, Cambridge. There he became fellow in 1818, and after some time spent abroad he began to read law in London in the following year. From 1822 to 1832 he was assistant-tutor at Trinity College.

Turning his attention from law to divinity, Hare took priest's orders in 1826; and, on the death of his uncle in 1832, he succeeded to the rich family living of Hurstmonceaux in Sussex, where he accumulated a library of some 12,000 volumes, especially rich in German literature. Before taking up residence in his parish he once more went abroad, and made in Rome the acquaintance of the Chevalier Bunsen, who afterwards dedicated to him part of his work, Hippolytus and his Age. In 1840 Hare was appointed archdeacon of Lewes, and in the same year preached a course of sermons at Cambridge (The Victory of Faith), followed in 1846 by a second, The Mission of the Comforter. Neither series when published attained any great popularity. Archdeacon Hare married in 1844 Esther, a sister of his friend Frederick Maurice.

In 1851 he was collated to a prebend in Chichester; and in 1853 he became one of Queen Victoria's chaplains. He died on the 23rd of January 1855.

Julius Hare belonged to what has been called the, "Broad Church party," though some of his opinions approach very closely to those of the Evangelical Arminian school, while others again seem vague and undecided. He was one of the first of his countrymen to recognize and come under the influence of German thought and speculation, and, amidst an exaggerated alarm of German heresy, did much to vindicate the authority of the sounder German critics. His writings, which are chiefly theological and controversial, are largely formed of charges to his clergy, and sermons on different topics; but, though valuable and full of thought, they lose' some of their force by the cumbrous German structure of the sentences, and by certain orthographical peculiarities in which the author indulged.

In 1827 Guesses at Truth by Two Brothars, appeared. Hare assisted Thirlwall, afterwards bishop of St David's, in the translation of the 1st and 2nd volumes of Niebuhr's History of Rome (1828 and 1832), and published a Vindication of Niebuhr's History in 1829. He wrote many similar works, among which is a Vindication of Luther against his recent English Assailants (1854). In 1848 he edited the Remains of John Sterling, who had formerly been his curate. Carlyle's Life of John Sterling was written through dissatisfaction with the “ Life “ prefixed to Archdeacon Hare's book. Memorials of a Quiet Life, published in 1872, contain accounts of the Hare family.

This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.