ed in it, Archdeacon Hare and I agreed
that the whole task, of selecting what Writings were to be reprinted,
and of drawing up a Biography to introduce them, should be left to him
alone; and done without interference of mine:--as accordingly it was, [1]
in a manner surely far superior to the common, in every good quality of
editing; and visibly everywhere bearing testimony to the friendliness,
the piety, perspicacity and other gifts and virtues of that eminent and
amiable man.

In one respect, however, if in one only, the arrangement had been
unfortunate. Archdeacon Hare, both by natural tendency and by his
position as a Churchman, had been led, in editing a Work not free from
ecclesiastical heresies, and especially in writing a Life very full of
such, to dwell with preponderating emphasis on that part of his subject;
by no means extenuating the fact, nor yet passing lightly over it (which
a layman could have done) as needing no extenuation; but carefully
searching into it, with the view of excusing and explaining it; dwelling
on it, presenting all the documents of it, and as it were spreading it
over the whole field of his delineation; as if religious heterodoxy had
been the grand fact of Sterling's life, which even to the Archdeacon's
mind it could by no means seem to be. _Hinc illae lachrymae_. For the
Religious Newspapers, and Periodical Heresy-hunters, getting very lively
in those years, were prompt to seize the cue; and have prosecuted
and perhaps still prosecute it, in their sad way, to all lengths and
breadths. John Sterling's character and writings, which had little
business to be spoken of in any Church-court, have hereby been carried
thither as if for an exclusive trial; and the mournfulest set of
pleadings, out of which nothing but a misjudgment _can_ be formed,
prevail there ever since. The noble Sterling, a radiant child of the
empyrean, clad in bright auroral hues in the memory of all that knew
him,--what is he doing here in inquisitorial _sanbenito_, with nothing
but ghastly spectralities prowling round him, and inarticulately
screeching and gibbering what they call their judgment on him!

"The sin of Hare's Book," says one of my Correspondents in those years,
"is easily defined, and not very condemnable, but it is nevertheless
ruinous to his task as Biographer. He takes up Sterling as a clergyman
merely. Sterling, I find, was a curate for exactly eight months; during
eight months and no more had he any