William Harness
Connexion of Christianity with Human Happiness
with SIGNED LETTER
Rare First Edition
Riviere Leather Binding

1823

Reverend William Harness

The Connexion of Chrisitianity with Human Happiness

London: John Murray, 1823.

2 volumes bound together by Riviere. With bookplate or ex libris of Holcombe Ingleby of Valentines Mansion.

71/2 x 47/8 inches

xiv, [2], 290 + [6], 348 pages. Complete.

Exteriors show rubbing, edge and shelf wear with front cover detached. Minor foxing to pages, otherwise clean. Notations in pencil to the lower margins of pages 185 to 189.

With an 1867 hand inked letter by Harness tipped in.

We ran the images of the letters through Google Gemini to decipher the handwriting. Harness is discussing a academic or theological "tract" (essay/pamphlet) regarding the philosopher John Locke and expressing his dismay over evidence brought against Collins (likely referring to Anthony Collins, a well-known English deist and philosopher who was a friend and follower of Locke, often criticized by theologians for his unorthodox views and handling of text). He after discusses Shakespeare's sonnets:

"Kensington Gore Dec. 31 / 67

My dear Sir,

Pray accept my best thanks for your kindness in sending me a copy of your tract on Locke. It is very interesting; but your proof of Collins's delinquency is quite distressing. I have had doubts for some time his tendency to tamper with authorities to suit his views & divisions; but still I considered the question as being problematical. This more charitable view I can, of course, retain no longer. — — — Can your evidence be un- deniable. — — With regard to the Sonnets, I cannot find a single step in the maze of discretion. – I know that they are very beautiful – I believe that they express his inmost feelings — but they were written to his friends as elicited by the occasion, & that from them we dis- cover some personal traits, such as his lameness & his disgust of his profession which we should seek but in vain elsewhere: but as to the W.H. whoever I have never felt that the theory, which, for an instant, pauses on the slightest section of its probability. Believe me to be my dear Sir,

Yours very truly W. Harness"

Reverend William Harness was a distinguished 19th-century English cleric and a formidable "man of letters" who moved at the heart of London’s literary and social elite. Educated at Harrow School and Christ's College, Cambridge, Harness managed a rare feat for his time: balancing a devout ecclesiastical career with a life of serious scholarship and high-society connections. While he served as a popular preacher at St Peter's Church, Regent Square and later oversaw the construction of All Saints, Knightsbridge, he was equally well-known in the drawing rooms of the era's greatest thinkers and artists.

Harness is perhaps most celebrated for his contributions to Shakespearean studies. His landmark eight-volume edition, The Dramatic Works of Shakspeare (1825), which included his own original biography of the Bard, cemented his reputation as a premier editor and historian. His devotion to William Shakespeare was personal as well as professional; he famously funded the restoration of the inscription on Shakespeare's monument in Stratford-on-Avon after finding it in a state of neglect. Beyond Shakespeare, Harness edited the works of Philip Massinger and John Ford, and was himself an accomplished dramatist, penning plays such as Welcome and Farewell and The First-Born.

What truly set Harness apart was his extraordinary circle of friends. He was a lifelong confidant of the author Mary Russell Mitford, eventually publishing her biography posthumously. His most storied connection, however, was with Lord Byron, a school friend from Harrow with whom he shared a physical disability and a deep, if occasionally turbulent, bond. Throughout his life, Harness remained a beloved figure among the giants of the age, counting William Wordsworth, Robert Southey, and the legendary actress Sarah Siddons among his closest associates. His death in 1869 marked the end of a life that perfectly bridged the worlds of Victorian faith and Romantic literature.

The Connexion of Christianity with Human Happiness (1823) represents one of Harness's most significant early theological contributions, originally delivered as part of the prestigious Boyle Lectures. Coming just two years before his famous Shakespeare edition, this work captures Harness at a pivotal moment when his influence as a public intellectual and moral philosopher was beginning to peak.

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