STERLING, John (1806-1844), author, was descended from a family of Scottish origin which had settled in Ireland about the Cromwellian period. His father, Edward Sterling, born at Waterford 27th February 1773, had been called to the Irish bar, but, having fought as a militia captain at Vinegar Hill, afterwards volunteered with his company into the line. On the breaking up of his regiment he went to Scotland, and took to farming at Karnes Castle in Bute, where John, the second son, was born 20th July 1806. In 1810 the family removed to Llanblethian, Glamorganshire, and during his residence there Edward Sterling, under the signature of “Vetus,” contributed a number of letters to the Times, which were reprinted in 1812, and a second series in 1814. In the latter year he removed to Paris, but, the escape of Napoleon from Elba in 1815 compelling him to return to England, he took up his permanent residence in London, obtaining a connexion with the Times newspaper, and ultimately being promoted editor. Carlyle, who allows him the dubious credit of being one of the best of newspaper editors, represents him as manifesting “a thoroughly Irish form of character, fire and fervour, vitality of all kinds in genial abundance, but in a much more loquacious, ostentatious, much louder style than is freely patronized on this side of the Channel.” His fiery, emphatic, and oracular mode of writing conferred those characteristics on the Times which were recognized in the sobriquet of the “Thunderer.” The frequent changes of the family residence during the early years of young Sterling rendered his education somewhat desultory, but on the settlement in London it became more systematic. After studying for one year at the university of Glasgow, he in 1824 entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he had for tutor Julius Charles Hare. At Cambridge he did not distinguish himself except in the debates of the union, where, “none,” it was related, “ever came near him except the late Charles Buller.” He removed to Trinity Hall with the intention of graduating in law, but left the university without taking a degree. During the next four years he resided chiefly in London, employing himself actively in literature. Along with Frederick Maurice he purchased the Athenaeum from J. Silk Buckingham, but the enterprise was not a pecuniary success. Through Maurice he became an “assiduous pilgrim” to the shrine of Coleridge at Hampstead. He also formed an intimacy with the Spanish revolutionist General Torrijos, in whose unfortunate expedition he took an active interest. Shortly after his marriage in 1830, symptoms of pulmonary disease induced him to take up his residence in the island of St Vincent, where he had inherited some property, but after fifteen months he returned to England. After spending some time on the Continent he found his health so much re-established that in June 1834 he accepted a curacy at Hurstmonceaux, where his old tutor Julius Hare was vicar. Acting on the advice of his physician he resigned his clerical duties in the following February, but according to Carlyle ill-health was only the external occasion of his resignation, the primary cause being a partly unconscious divergence from the opinions of the church. Be this as it may, the threatening progress of the insidious disease under which he laboured soon rendered “public life in any professional form” quite impossible. There remained to him the “resource of the pen,” but, having to “live all the rest of his days as in continual flight for his very existence,” his literary achievements were necessarily fragmentary, and cannot be regarded as a criterion of his capabilities. He published in 1833 Arthur Coningsby, a novel, which attracted little attention, and his Poems (1839), the Election, a Poem (1841), and Strafford, a tragedy, were not more successful. He had, however, established a connexion with Blackwood’s Magazine, to which he contributed a variety of papers and several tales, which gave promise that under more favourable conditions he might have “achieved greatness.” He died at Ventnor 18th September 1844. His father survived him till 1847.

Sterling’s papers were entrusted to the joint care of Thomas Carlyle and Archdeacon Hare, and it was agreed that the selection of his writings for publication and the preparation of a memoir should be undertaken by the latter. Essays and Tales, by John Sterling, collected and edited, with a memoir of his life, by Julius Charles Hare, appeared therefore in 1848 in two volumes. So dissatisfied was Carlyle with the memoir, chiefly because it unduly magnified the ecclesiastical side of Sterling’s life, that he resolved to give his own “testimony” about his friend, and “record clearly” what his “knowledge of him was.” His vivid portraiture of Sterling in the Life which appeared in 1851 has perpetuated the memory of Sterling after his writings have ceased to be of interest on their own account.