HENRY, Dr Robert

HENRY, Dr Robert, author of the History of Great Britain, was the son of James Henry, farmer at Muirtown, in the parish of St Ninians, North Britain, and of Jean Galloway, daughter of Mr Galloway of Burrowmeadow, in Stirlingshire. He was born on the 18th of February 1718; and having early resolved to devote himself to a literary profession, was educated first under Mr John Nicolson at the parish-school of St Ninians, and for some time at the grammar-school of Stirling. He completed his course of academical study at the university of Edinburgh, and afterwards became master of the grammar-school of Annan. He was licensed to preach on the 27th of March 1746, and was the first licentiate of the presbytery of Annan after its institution as a separate presbytery. Soon afterwards he received a call from a congregation of Presbyterian dissenters at Carlisle, where he was ordained in November 1748. In this situation he remained twelve years, and on the 13th of August 1760 became pastor of a dissenting congregation at Berwick-upon-Tweed. Here he married, in 1763, Ann Balderston, daughter of Thomas Balderston, surgeon in Berwick, by whom he had no children, but with whom he enjoyed to the end of his life a large share of domestic happiness. He was removed from Berwick to be one of the ministers of Edinburgh in November 1768; officiated in the church of the New Grey Friars from that time until November 1776; and then became colleague-minister in the Old Church, and remained in that situation till his death. The degree of doctor in divinity was conferred upon him by the university of Edinburgh in 1770; and in 1774 he was unanimously chosen moderator of the general assembly of the church of Scotland, being the only person on record who had obtained that distinction the first time he was a member of assembly.

These facts contain the outline of Dr Henry's life, which, in fact, exhibits few events interesting to the biographer. Though he must have been always distinguished amongst his private friends, he had few opportunities of being known to the public until he was translated to Edinburgh. The composition of sermons must have occupied the chief part of his time during his residence at Carlisle, as his industry in that situation is known to have rendered his labours in this department easy to him during the remainder of his life. But even there he found leisure for other studies; and the knowledge of classical literature, in which he eminently excelled, soon enabled him to acquire an extent of information which qualified him for something more important than he had hitherto in his view.

Soon after his removal to Berwick, Henry published a scheme for raising a fund for the benefit of the widows and orphans of Protestant dissenting ministers in the north of England. This idea was probably suggested to him by the prosperity of the fund which had about thirty years before been established as a provision for ministers' widows in Scotland. But the situation of the clergy of Scotland was very different from the circumstances of the dissenting ministers in England. Annuities and provisions were to be secured to the families of dissenters, without subjecting the individuals, as in Scotland, to a proportional annual contribution, and without such means of creating a fund as could be the subject of an act of parliament to secure the annual payments. The acuteness and activity of Dr Henry surmounted these difficulties; and, chiefly by his exertions, this useful and benevolent institution commenced about the year 1762. The management was intrusted to him for several years; and its success exceeded the most sanguine expectations which were formed of it.

It was probably about the year 1763 that he first conceived the idea of his History of Great Britain; a work which has long been established in the public opinion, and will probably be regarded by posterity, not only as having enlarged the sphere of history, and gratified our curiosity on a variety of subjects which fall not within the limits prescribed by preceding historians, but as one of the most accurate and authentic repositories of historical information which this country has produced. The plan adopted by Dr Henry is sufficiently explained in his general preface. In every period, it arranges, under separate heads or chapters, the civil and military history of Great Britain; the history of religion; the history of our constitution, government, laws, and courts of justice; the history of learning, of learned men, and of the chief seminaries of learning; the history of arts; the history of commerce, of shipping, of money or coin, and of the price of commodities; and the history of manners, virtues, vices, customs, language, dress, diet, and amusements. Under these seven heads, which extend the province of the historian greatly beyond its usual limits, every thing curious or interesting in the history of any country may be comprehended. But it certainly required a more than common share of literary courage to attempt on so large a scale a subject so intricate and extensive as the history of Britain from the invasion of Julius Cæsar. That Dr Henry neither overrated his powers nor his industry, could only have been proved by the success and reputation of his works.

But he soon found that his residence at Berwick was an insuperable obstacle to the minute researches which the execution of his plan required. His situation there excluded him from the means of consulting the original authorities; and though he attempted to find access to them by means of his literary friends, and with their assistance made some progress in his work, his information was notwithstanding so incomplete, that he found it im-

possible to prosecute his plan to his own satisfaction, and was at last compelled to relinquish it.

By the friendship of Mr Gilbert Laurie, lord provost of Edinburgh, and one of his majesty's commissioners of excise in Scotland, who had married the sister of Mrs Henry, he was removed to Edinburgh in 1768; and it is to this event that the public are indebted for his prosecution of the History of Great Britain. His access to the public libraries, and the means of supplying the materials which these did not afford him, were from that time used with so much diligence and perseverance, that the first volume of his History, in quarto, was published in 1771, the second in 1774, the third in 1777, the fourth in 1781, and the fifth in 1785. The sixth volume was published after his death. These volumes comprehend the most intricate and obscure periods of our history; and when we consider the scanty and scattered materials which Dr Henry has digested, and the accurate and minute information which he has given us, under every chapter of the work, we must entertain a high opinion both of the learning and industry of the author, and of the vigour and activity of his mind; especially when it is added, that he employed no amanuensis, but completed the manuscript with his own hand, and that, excepting the first volume, the whole book, such as it is, was printed from the original copy. Whatever corrections were made on it were inserted by interlineations, or in revising the proof sheets. He found it necessary, indeed, to confine himself to a first copy, from an unfortunate tremor in his hand, which made writing extremely inconvenient, obliged him to write with his paper on a book placed on his knee instead of a table, and unhappily increased to such a degree that in the last years of his life he was often unable to take his victuals without assistance. An attempt which he made after the publication of the fifth volume, to employ an amanuensis, did not succeed. Never having been accustomed to dictate his compositions, he found it impossible to acquire a new habit; and though he persevered only a few days in the attempt, it had a sensible effect on his health, which he never afterwards recovered. An author has no right to claim indulgence, and is still less entitled to credit, from the public, for any thing which can be ascribed to negligence in committing his manuscripts to the press; but considering the difficulties which Dr Henry surmounted, and the accurate research and information which distinguish his History, the circumstances which have been mentioned are far from being uninteresting, and must add considerably to the opinion formed of his merit amongst men who are judges of what he has done. He did not profess to study the ornaments of language; but his arrangement is uniformly regular and natural, and his style simple and perspicuous. More than this he has not attempted, and this cannot be denied him. He believed that the time which might be spent in polishing or rounding a sentence was more usefully employed in investigating and ascertaining a fact. Hence, as a book of facts and solid information, supported by authentic documents, his History will stand a comparison with any other similar work of the same period.

But Dr Henry had other difficulties to surmount than those which related to the composition of his work. Not having been able to transact with the booksellers to his satisfaction, the five volumes were originally published at the risk of the author. When the first volume appeared, it was censured with unexampled acrimony and perseverance. Magazines, reviews, and even newspapers, were filled with abusive remarks and invectives, in which both the author and the book were treated with contempt and scurrility. When an author has once submitted his works to the public, he has no right to complain of the just severity of criticism. But Dr Henry had to contend with the inveterate scorn of malignity. In compliance with the

usual custom, he had permitted a sermon to be published which he had preached in 1773 before the Society in Scotland for propagating Christian Knowledge, a composition containing plain good sense on a common subject, from which he expected no reputation. This was eagerly seized on by the adversaries of his History, and torn to pieces with a virulence and asperity which no want of merit in the sermon could justify or explain. An anonymous letter had appeared in a newspaper vindicating the History from some of the unjust censures which had been published, and asserting, from the real merit and accuracy of the book, the author's title to the approbation of the public. An answer appeared in the course of the following week, charging him, in terms equally confident and indecent, with having written this letter in his own praise. The efforts of malignity seldom fail to defeat their purpose, and to recoil upon those who direct them. Dr Henry had many friends, and till lately had not discovered that he had any enemies. But the author of the anonymous letter was unknown to him, till the learned and respectable Dr Macqueen, from the indignation excited by the confident petulance of the answer, informed him that the letter had been written by him. These anecdotes are still remembered. The abuse of the History, which began in Scotland, was renewed in some of the periodical publications in South Britain; though it is justice to add, without meaning to refer to the candid observations of English critics, that in both kingdoms the asperity originated in the same quarter, and that paragraphs and criticisms written at Edinburgh were printed in London. The same spirit appeared in Strictures published on the second and third volumes; but by this time it had in a great measure lost the attention of the public.

The progress of his work introduced Dr Henry to more extensive patronage, and in particular to the notice and esteem of the Earl of Mansfield. That nobleman thought the merit of Dr Henry's History so considerable, that, without any solicitation, after the publication of the fourth volume, he applied personally to the king to bestow on the author some mark of his royal favour. In consequence of this, Dr Henry was informed by a letter from the secretary of state, of his majesty's intention to confer on him an annual pension for life of £100, "considering his distinguished talents and great literary merit, and the importance of the very useful and laborious work in which he was so successfully engaged, as titles to his royal countenance and favour." Dr Henry had kept very accurate accounts of the sales of his work from the time of the original publication; and after his last transaction conveying the copyright to a London bookseller, he found that his profits had amounted in all to about £3300; a striking proof of the intrinsic merit of a work which had forced its way to the public esteem, in spite of the malignant opposition with which it had to struggle.

The prosecution of his History had been Dr Henry's favourite object for almost thirty years of his life. He had naturally a sound constitution, and a more equal and larger portion of animal spirits than is commonly possessed by literary men. But from the year 1785 his bodily strength became sensibly impaired. Notwithstanding this, he persisted steadily in preparing his sixth volume, which brings down the history to the accession of Edward VI. The materials of this volume were left in the hands of his executors almost completed. Scarcely any thing remained unfinished but the two short chapters on arts and man-

ners; and even for these he had left materials and authorities so distinctly collected, that there was no great difficulty in supplying what was wanting. This sixth volume was published in the year 1793, with a life of the author prefixed; and it was found entitled to the same favourable reception from the public which had been given to the former volumes. Dr Henry's original plan extended from the invasion of Britain by the Romans to his own times; and men of literary curiosity must regret that he did not live to complete his design; but he has certainly finished the most difficult parts of his subject. The periods after the accession of Edward VI. afford materials more ample, better digested, and much more within the reach of common readers. Till the summer of 1790 he was able to pursue his studies, though not without some interruptions. But at that time his health greatly declined; and, with a constitution quite worn out, he died on the 24th of November of that year, in the seventy-third year of his age.