William Ware was born at Hingham in Massachusetts on the third of August, 1797. He is a descendant in the fifth generation from Robert Ware, one of the earliest settlers of the colony, who came from England about the year 1644. His father was Henry Ware, D.D., many years honourably distinguished by his connection with the Divinity School at Cambridge, and the late Henry Ware, jr., D. D., was his elder brother. His only living brother is Dr. John Ware, who also shares of the literary tastes and talents of his family.

William Ware was graduated at Harvard University in 1816. After reading theology the usual term he was settled over the Unitarian society of Chambers street, New York, where he remained about sixteen years. He gave little to the press except a few sermons, and four numbers of a religious miscellany called The Unitarian, until near the close of this period, when he commenced the publication in the Knickerbocker Magazine of those brilliant papers which in the autumn of 1836 were given to the world under the title of Zenobia or the Fall of Palmyra, an Historical Romance. Before the completion of this work he had resigned his pastoral office and removed to Brookline, near Boston.

The romance of Zenobia is in the form of letters to Marcus Curtius, at Rome, from Lucius Manlius Piso, a senator, who is supposed to have been led by circumstances of a private nature to visit Palmyra toward the close of the third century, to have become acquainted with the queen and her court, to have seen the City  of the Desert in its greatest magnificence, and to have witnessed its destruction by the Emperor Aurelian. For the purposes of romantic fiction the subject is perhaps the finest that had not been appropriated in all ancient history; and the treatment of it, which is highly picturesque and dramatic throughout, shows that the author has been a successful student of the institutions, manners and social life of the age he has attempted to illustrate.

Mr. Ware’s second romance, Probus, or ; Rome in the Third Century, was published in

the summer of 1838. It is a sort of sequel to the Zenobia, and is composed of letters purporting to be written by Piso from Rome to Fausta, the daughter of Gracchus, one of the old Palmyrene ministers. In the first work Piso meets with Probus, a Christian teacher, and is partially convinced of the truth of his doctrine; he is now a disciple, and a sharer of the persecutions which marked the last days of the reign of Aurelian. The characters in Probus are skilfully drawn and contrasted, and with a deeper moral interest, from the frequent discussions of doctrine which it contains, the romance has the classical style and spirit which characterized its predecessor.

Mr. Ware’s third work is entitled Julian, or Scenes in Judea, and was published in 1841. The hero is a Roman, of Hebrew descent, who visits the land of his ancestors, to gratify a liberal curiosity, during the last days of the Saviour. Every thing connected with Palestine at this period is so familiar that the ground might seem to be sacred to History and Religion ; but it has often been invaded by the romancer, and perhaps never with more success than in the present instance. Although Julian has less freshness than Zenobia, it has an air of truth and sincerity that renders it scarcely less interesting.

Mr. Ware was several years editor of the Christian Examiner, the very able journal of religion and letters published at Boston, and he was recently minister of the Unitarian Society at West Cambridge, but ill health has since compelled him to relinquish all kinds of occupation.

The writings of Mr. Ware betray a familiarity with the civilization of the ancients, and are written in a graceful, pure and brilliant style. In our literature they are peculiar, and they will bear a favourable comparison with the most celebrated historical romances relating to the same scenes and periods which have been written abroad. They have passed through many editions in Great Britain, and have been translated into German and other languages of the continent.”

Reference Data:

The Prose Writers of America, by Rufus Wilmot Griswold, 1859, page 398