Sterling, JOHN, was born at Kames Castle in Bute, 20th July 1806, where his father, Captain Edward Sterling (1773-1847), was then making trial of farming. Ill-success drove him to Llanbethian, near Cowbridge, Glamorganshire, in 1809, thence to Paris, and finally to London, where he became one of the chief oracles of the Times. Of his seven children, John and an elder brother alone lived to grow up. John was educated at private schools, at sixteen went to Glasgow University, and at nineteen entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he had Julins Hare as his tutor. Impulsive, quick-witted, 'able to argue with four or five at once,' he was recognised as the most brilliant member of the famous debating society—the Union—members of which were Maurice, John Kemble, Spedding, Venables, Charles Buller, and Richard M. Milnes. After a year Sterling followed Maurice to Trinity Hall, but left Cambridge without a degree in 1827. He first thought of law, but soon became busy on the Athenæum, which had not yet begun to flourish. A Liberal in thought and in politics, he came under the influence of Coleridge, and formed a fast friendship with General Torrijos, chief of a group of Spanish exiles. Indeed his own uncertain health and his becoming at the hour of parting engaged to Miss Barton alone prevented his sailing on that crazy expedition which came to its inevitable close in the execution of Torrijos and Sterling's cousin Boyd at Malaga—a tragedy which haunted Sterling with a lasting horror. He married in November 1830, but soon after fell dangerously ill, and spent fifteen months in the island of St Vincent, returning in August 1832. In June of next year he met Hare at Bonn, and partly through his influence took orders, and served with characteristic zeal as Hare's curate at Hurstmonceaux for eight months. His health again giving way, he resigned, and though he sometimes for some time after, as Carlyle tells us, took duty for a friend in London, he never advanced to priest's orders; indeed, the divergence between his opinions and the church's soon widened beyond even the Coleridgean capability of accommodation. Carlyle first met him in February 1835, and his friendship with Maurice was knit still faster by the latter's marriage to Sterling's sister-in-law. He wrote for Blackwood and Mill's review—the Westminster, busied himself with projects for tragedies, one of which, Strafford, saw the light for a little in 1843, and wrote poems, one of which, The Election, was published in 1841. In August 1838 he formed the club first called the Anonymous, then the Sterling Club, among whose members were Carlyle, Allan Cunningham, G. C. Lewis, Malden, Mill, Milnes, Spedding, Tennyson, Thirlwall, W. H. Thompson, and Venables. His winters were spent abroad at Bordeaux, Madeira, or in Italy, in the vain hope of staving off his inevitable doom. In England he lived in turn at Clifton, Falmouth, and Ventnor, and here he died, 18th September 1843.
Julius Hare edited Sterling's Essays and Tales (2 vols. 1848) with a memoir, which seemed to Carlyle so incomplete, as dwelling too exclusively on his ecclesiastical side—a brief accident in his career—that he himself determined to write his life, to give a faithful picture of his friend. The result was a masterpiece of biography which will keep the name of John Sterling from ever being forgotten.