Item 161 - Letter from Julius Charles Hare

4 pp.

[This is possibly the second half of JCH to WW, 20 Dec. 1847, Item 148]. JCH has been unable to finish his pamphlet [A Letter to the Dean of Chichester, on the Agitation Excited by the Appointment of Dr. Hampden to the See of Hereford, 1848], due to the immediate need to produce a memoir for his old friend John Sterling: 'The difficulty has been, not to speak the truth with love, but to speak the truth in spite of the love which wd have led one to conceal it. I don't think I shd have attempted it, but for the knowledge that, if I did not, Carlyle wd [Thomas Carlyle, The Life of John Sterling]: & then all that, which to me is so painful, wd of course have been brought out more prominently, while those parts of his life & character which to me are so precious, wd have been thrown entirely into the shade. I think it must be of deep interest to many, a picture of a class not ran among the genial minds of the age, & one of the noblest specimens of it. There is much that is excellent in his letters; & the lesson of his whole life ought also to be most profitable, if I can but bring it out rightly' [Essays and Tales of John Sterling, collected and edited, with a Memoir by JCH, 2 vols, 1848]. Ma-man's visit has been a great delight - 'there was the additional interest of the revival of Hyde Hall recollections'.