HENRY, Robert, D.D

HENRY, Robert, D.D., the author of the History of Great Britain, written on a new plan, was born in 1718 at a farm-house in the parish of St Ninian's, near Stirling. He was educated first at the school of his native parish, afterwards at the grammar-school of Stirling, and finally at the University of Edinburgh. Beginning public life as master of the grammar-school of Annan, he afterwards (in 1746) took orders and became the minister of a Presbyterian congregation at Carlisle. In 1760 he removed to a similar charge at Berwick-upon-Tweed, where he married a Miss Balderston, daughter of a surgeon in the town. It was during his stay at Berwick (where he signalized himself by his public spirit and zeal in promoting the local charitable schemes) that the idea of his History first occurred to him. But the dearth of books and the other difficulties of a provincial situation compelled him to postpone the execution of his design, till, through the influence of his wife's relations, he was translated to Edinburgh as minister of the New Greyfriars. He was then encouraged by the abundance of resources opened to him in the public libraries, and the ease with which he had access to them, to proceed with his great design. The first volume of the History appeared in 1771, and the others followed at irregular intervals till 1785, in which year the fifth was pub-

lished, bringing down the narrative to the accession of the Tudor dynasty. The historian, who had been made a D.D. by the University of Edinburgh, died in 1790, before his sixth volume was quite ready for the press. Four years after his death it was published under the care of Malcolm Laing who supplied the missing chapters, and performed the editorial work with great accuracy and ability.

Henry's History was undoubtedly a great advance upon all the works of the kind that had been attempted in England before his day. His design, which, up to the measure of his knowledge and ability, he carried out with decided success, was to engraft upon the narrative of the great political events of each era an account of the domestic state and social progress of the people within the same period. Despite the care with which Henry conducted his researches, his work is now superseded. The true sources of history were at that time hardly open to the writer, and Henry was consequently obliged often to adopt authorities even then doubtful and now wholly exploded. Nor are his faults redeemed by the qualities that still make Hume's the standard History of England. He does not conceive or draw the characters of the great personages that figure in his History with any depth of insight or skill in delineation. He is likewise totally wanting in that philosophic power which enabled his illustrious contemporary to take the wide and generalized views of history that distinguish his work. These faults of Henry's were even in his own day pointed out by his arch enemy, Gilbert Stuart, with a ferocious malignity worthy of the worst frenzy of John Dennis. There is a large substratum of truth in Stuart's criticisms, yet they breathe so completely the spirit of a literary cut-throat, as their author undoubtedly was, that our moral sympathies go entirely with the victimized historian. Stuart made no secret of his resolution to ruin the sale of Henry's work, and by his ruthless reviews of it in various influential journals he gained his point—at least for a time. But it was only for a time, for Henry realized altogether from his work £3300, and in 1781, through the influence of Lord Mansfield, was rewarded for his labours with a pension of £100 a year by George III. (The details of Henry's life are to be found in a biographical sketch prefixed to the posthumous volume of his History. An account of his quarrel with Gilbert Stuart is given in Isaac D'IIsrael's Calamities of Authors, vol. ii., p. 63.)