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