Background

William G. Hale was born on February 9, 1849, in Savannah, Georgia, of New England parents, William Bradford Hale and Elizabeth Jewett. His boyhood home was Peterboro, New Hampshire.

Education

Hale went to Phillips Exeter Academy and to Harvard, where he was graduated in 1870. He held honorary degrees from Princeton, Saint Andrew's and Aberdeen Universities.

Career

Hale became a tutor until 1880 at Harvard, with the exception of the year 1876 - 1877, which was spent in study at Leipzig and Göttingen. In 1880 he succeeded Tracy Peck as professor of Latin at Cornell University.

The influence of such teachers as Goodwin, Lane, and Greenough directed his studies naturally toward the syntax of Greek and Latin. In Leipzig he sought the instruction of Georg Curtius; and in general, from Germany, he brought back the interests acquired by personal contact with the schools of Curtius and Schleicher. From the points of view thus early assumed he never departed, and in a paper of 1901 he reaffirms his conviction that comparative study is not a whit less important in syntax than in morphology, to which he appends the significant note: "An obvious truth, the neglect of which by all but a few workers in the present generation will seem inexplicable to the coming one. " For the purposes of creating an Indo-European comparative syntax this direction was deserving of all praise, but as a point of departure for determining and defining the actual facts of Latin usage, it has proved less fruitful than was hoped. There is in all of Hale's work a much larger element of theory than now seems necessary, in the elaboration of which he was ingenious and subtle. It resulted in considerable innovations of nomenclature, which have been rather a hindrance than a help to the diffusion of his ideas.

His general scheme of Latin syntax is presented in his Latin Grammar, an acute and independent treatment of the subject, but too delicate a mechanism to be operated by the casual teacher of Latin. To the training of teachers and to the practical teaching of Latin Hale devoted much attention, not only in the preparation of his Latin Grammar and First Latin Book, but also in conducting a very successful teachers' training course, and by giving actual instruction in elementary Latin in the University of Chicago High School. Hale was skilful and stimulating in using a Socratic form of lecture in which, while himself teaching and directing, his students participated and enjoyed the sensation of reaching conclusions by their own observation.

None of his works exercised so wholesome and practical an influence as his pamphlet on The Art of Reading Latin. Its purpose is to set forth the method he had devised of teaching students to read Latin at sight in the Latin order of words. Its value is to be estimated less by the originality of the idea than by the skill with which it was presented. In 1892 Hale accepted the position of head of the department of Latin in the new University of Chicago and there remained until his retirement in 1919, after which he made his residence at Stamford, Connecticut, where he died.

Into the movement for the establishment of the American School of Classical Studies in Rome (now a part of the American Academy in Rome), Hale threw himself with great energy, and the success of the campaign was due in large measure to his efforts. He was the first director of the new foundation, and the School was opened under his leadership in the autumn of 1895. During this year, in connection with the paleographical work of his students, Hale discovered in the Vatican Library a manuscript of Catullus, long misplaced and thus effectually lost, which proved to be the starting point of much of the work of the remainder of his life. To this manuscript, which he christened R, he accorded a place side by side with the MSS. O (Oxford) and G (Paris) as a source for the reconstruction of the Verona archetype, from which our text of Catullus is derived. His discovery was variously received. Ellis, the English editor, accepted Hale's conclusions and embodied the results in his Oxford text. German editors were more skeptical and at best-suspended judgment until the complete description and publication of the manuscript should be available.

This discovery led Hale to the ambitious plan of tracing the whole history of the text of Catullus, to which he believed that R furnished the key. To this large task, he devoted much of the leisure of his later years, leaving the work unfinished at his death. He had wide acquaintance in America and was the recipient of many academic honors. To his opinions and the causes which he supported weight was lent by the distinction of his personality. Not only in literature but in music and art he possessed well-trained and discerning judgment.

The more important of Hale's publications are: The Cum-Constructions (pt. I, 1887; pt. II, 1888); The Art of Reading Latin (1887); three papers on "The Sequence of Tenses in Latin, " American Journal of Philology (1886 - 1888); "The Anticipatory Subjunctive, in Greek and Latin, " University of Chicago Studies in Classical Philology, vol. I (1895); "The Origin of Subjunctive and Optative Conditions in Greek and Latin, " Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. XII (1901); "A Century of Metaphysical Syntax, " Congress of Arts and Sciences (Saint Louis, 1904, vol. III, 1906); A Latin Grammar, with C. D. Buck (1903); A First Latin Book (1907). Concerning MS. R of Catullus the first announcement was made in the Rendiconti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei, Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche (Rome), June 21, 1896, and in the Classical Review, June 1896. Of several later publications pertaining to it the most important are: "Der Codex Romanus des Catullus, " Hermes, XXXIV (1899), 133 - 144; "The Manuscripts of Catullus, " Classical Philology, III (1908), 233 - 256; "Stampini and Pascal on the Catullus Manuscripts, " Transactions of the American Philological Association, LIII (1922), 103 - 112.

Achievements

• William Gardner Hale was a noted classical scholar and professor of Latin at the University of Chicago, best known for his work on the poet Catullus and Latin grammar.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Art of Reading Latin: How to Teach it

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • The Cum-Constructions: Their History and Functions

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Latin Composition

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • A Latin Grammar Latin Grammar Latin Grammar (Alabama Linguistic & Philological Ser: V)

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • A Latin grammar

    (A Latin grammar. 403 Pages.)

Politics

When the German Empire invade Belgium in 1914, Professor Hale was abroad in Europe. He cabled the New York Times from Le Havre, France, and permitted his name to be published with his cable recommending the United States declare war on Germany. Six months into the First World War, the Wilson Administration had succeeded in keeping the United States neutral. Professor Hale called for war in September 1914; in January 1915 he was in partial agreement with former President Theodore Roosevelt on the need to act against the German Empire. But like fellow progressive Alfred Hayes, Jr. , William Gardner Hale viewed the American role as supporting the internationalist and multilateral position represented by the Hague Conventions. Roosevelt was defining the unilateralist tenet that would become a hallmark of 20th century Republican Party foreign policy doctrine.

In May 1916, Hale agreed to serve as an honorary vice president of the American Rights Committee during its Carnegie Hall memorial protest of the Lusitania sinking by a German Navy U-Boat. The purpose of the mass meeting was to organize a petition to President Woodrow Wilson demanding an end of diplomatic relations with the Imperial Court at Berlin. New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchel succeeded in postponing the protest, in part to ameliorate worsening relations in the city between the pro-Allied and pro-German factions.

In the 1916 Presidential election, William Gardner Hale endorsed Woodrow Wilson over Charles Evans Hughes. Hale's position was based on his concern that Hughes would draw the United States into another war with the Republic of Mexico and that Wilson, while not supportive enough of the Allies in Europe, "had the high aim of building up a national life in which, while honest business shall have every opportunity, privilege shall not rule the poor and the weak. He has made of his party a truly progressive party.

Membership

William G. Hale was a member of the New England Anti-Imperialist League, as well as the Phi Beta Kappa Society, the German Archaeological Institute of Berlin, Athens and Rome, and the American Philological Association (APA). He was President of the APA from 1892 to 1893.

Personality

William Hale was tall and of fine physique, and up to the last year or two of his life his vigorous appearance belied his years.

Interests

• William Hale was fond of outdoor life, of the woods, of boating and fishing (which he enjoyed at his summer home on Moosehead Lake), and at least up to the time of his retirement he played a strong game of tennis.

Connections

On June 13, 1883, William G. Hale married Harriet Knowles Swinburne of Newport, Rhode Island, by whom he had two sons and two daughters.

Father:

William Bradford

Mother:

Elizabeth Hale (Jewett)

Wife:

Harriet Knowles Hale (Swinburne)

Daughter:

Vancil Foster Hale

Daughter:

Virginia Hall Hale

Son:

Gardner Hale

Gardner Hale was an American fresco painter and interior decorator.

Son:

Swinburne Hale

Swinburne Hale was an American lawyer and poet, who is best remembered as one of the leading civil rights attorneys of the decade of the 1920s.

References

• Who's Who in America Vol. X 1918-1919