Background

William Gardner Hale was born on February 9, 1849, in Savannah, Georgia, United States, of New England parents, William Bradford and Elizabeth (Jewett) Hale.

Education

Hale's boyhood home was Peterboro, New Hampshire, whence he went to Phillips Exeter Academy and to Harvard, where he was graduated in 1870. The year 1876-1877 he spent in study at Leipzig and Gottingen.

Career

In 1880 William Gardner Hale succeeded Tracy Peck as professor of Latin in 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.

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 have been more skeptical and at best have 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.

The more important of Hale’s publications are: The Cum-Constructions (1887); 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 (1895); and others.

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.

Achievements

• William Gardner Hale is best known as an original teacher on questions of syntax. 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. He had wide acquaintance in America and was the recipient of many academic honors. In 1892 He participated in the movement for the establishment of the American School of Classical Studies in Rome.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Aims and Methods in Classical Study. Boston-1888

    ( About the Book Study Guides are books can be used by st...)

  • The Art of Reading Latin: How to Teach it

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

  • Cornell University. Studies in Classical Philology, No. I. The Cum-Constructions: Their History and Functions. Part I: Critical. Part II: Constructive

    (Leopold is delighted to publish this classic book as part...)

  • A First Latin Book

    (Leopold is delighted to publish this classic book as part...)

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

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

Membership

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).

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. He 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.

Interests

• Not only in literature but in music and art Hale possessed well-trained and discerning judgment. He 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.

• Sport & Clubs

  tennis, boating, fishing

Connections

William Hale was married on June 13, 1883, to Harriet Knowles Swinburne of Newport, Rhodе Island, by whom he had two sons and two daughters.

Father:

William Bradford Hale

Mother:

Elizabeth (Jewett) Hale

Spouse:

Harriet Knowles (Swinburne) Hale

References

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