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Account of a Useful Discovery to Distill double the usual quantity of Sea-water, by Blowing Showers of Air up through the Distilling Liquor … and an Account of the Benefit of Ventilators …’ 8vo, London, 1756.
[Masters's Hist. of Corpus Christi College, 1753, and Lamb's edition, 1831; Annual Register, 1761, 1764; numerous passages in Gent. Mag. and Annual Register; Lysons's Environs, 1795; W. Butler's Life of Hildesley, 1799; Teddington Parish Register and Teddington Parish Magazine; Notes and Queries, passim. Two letters are preserved in the Library of the Royal Society; one letter is published in W. Butler's Life of Hildesley. The author of this work speaks of an unfortunate loss of Hales's papers. Lysons, in his Environs of London, speaks of many papers of Hales being in his possession, but these do not seem to have been published.]
HALES, THOMAS (fl. 1250), poet and religious writer, was a Franciscan friar, and presumably a native of Hales (or Hailes) in Gloucestershire. Quétif and Echard, finding manuscripts of some of his works in the libraries of Dominican houses, without any further ascription than ‘frater Thomas,’ thought he might belong to that order, and other writers, as Bale and Pits, have given his date as 1340. But that he was a Franciscan is clear from the title of a poem ascribed to him in MS. Jesus Coll. Oxon., and from a prologue attached to a manuscript of his life of the Virgin, formerly in the library of the abbey of St. Victor. He is probably the ‘frater Thomas de Hales’ whom Adam de Marisco mentions as a friend (Mon. Franciscana, i. 395, in Rolls Series). The date thus arrived at is corroborated by allusions in his love song to ‘Henri our king,’ i.e. Henry III (l. 82; cf. l. 101), and by the dates of some of the manuscripts of his works which belong to the thirteenth century. Hales is said to have been a doctor of theology at the Sorbonne, and famous for his learning as well in France and Italy as in England; but nothing further is known as to his life. The following works are ascribed to him:
- ‘Vita beatæ Virginis Mariæ,’ manuscripts formerly in the libraries of the Dominicans of the Rue St. Honoré (sec. xiii.) and of the abbey of St. Victor.
- ‘Sermones Dominicales;’ in MS. St. John's College, Oxon. 190 (sec. xiii.), there are some ‘Sermones de Dominica proxima ante adventum,’ which may be by Hales, for the same volume contains
- ‘Sermones secundum fratrem Thomam de Hales’ in French.
- ‘Disputationes Scholasticæ.’
- ‘A Luve Ron’ (love song) in MS. Jesus College, Oxon., 29 (sec. xiii.); this early English poem, composed in stanzas of eight lines, is ‘a contemplative lyric of the simplest, noblest mould,’ and was written at the request of a nun on the merit of Christ as the true lover. It is printed in Morris's ‘Old English Miscellany’ (Early English Text Society). From the manuscript at St. Victor Hales seems to have also written
- ‘Lives of SS. Francis and Helena’ (mother of Constantine the Great). Petrus de Alva confuses him with the more famous Alexander of Hales [see Alexander, d. 1245].
[Bale, v. 49; Pits, p. 442; Quétif and Echard's Script. Ord. Præd. i. 490; Waddingus, Script. Ord. Min. p. 324; Sbaralea, Suppl. in Script. Ord. S. Francisc. p. 676; Fabricius, Bibl. Lat. Med. Æv. vi. 235, ed. 1754; Histoire Littéraire de la France, xxi. 307–8; Fuller's Worthies, i. 215; Ten Brink's Early English Literature, translated by H. M. Kennedy, pp. 208–11; Coxe's Cat. Cod. MSS. in Coll. Oxon.]
HALES, THOMAS (1740?–1780), known as D'Hèle, D'Hell, or Dell, French dramatist, born about 1740, belonged to a good English family (Bachaumont, Mémoires Secrets, xvii. 17), which was settled, according to Grimm, who knew him well, in Gloucestershire. Grimm states that Hales (or D'Hèle, as he is always called in France) entered the English service in early youth, was sent to Jamaica, and, after having travelled over the continent, lived for some time in Switzerland and Italy (Correspondance Littéraire, Paris, 1880, xii. 496). Grétry, his one intimate friend, assures us that D'Hèle was in the English navy, where he first gave way to the excess in drink which partly ruined him (Mémoires, ou essais sur la Musique, i. 326). The date of his withdrawal from the service is fixed at 1763, while at Havannah (Suite du Répertoire du Théâtre Français, t. lvi. p. 85). He went to Paris about 1770, and wasted his small fortune. It is not known how he attained the mastery of the French language which he so delicately displayed in his charming conte, ‘Le Roman de mon Oncle.’ He gave this little literary masterpiece to Grimm for his ‘Correspondance Littéraire,’ July 1777. Through Suard, whose salon was always open to Englishmen, he made the acquaintance of Grétry, to whom he was recommended ‘comme un homme de beaucoup d'esprit, qui joignait à un gout très-sain de l'originalité dans les idées’ (Mémoires, i. 298). Parisian society was divided into the partisans of Piccini and Gluck, and D'Hèle ridiculed the fashionable musical quarrels in a three-act comedy, ‘Le Jugement de Midas,’ for which Grétry, after keeping it a long time, composed some charming music (E. Fétis, Les Musiciens Belges, ii. 145). The regular companies would not look at the piece, but, thanks to the support
