MACKENZIE, Henry, was born at Edinburgh, in August 1745. His father, Dr Joshua Mackenzie, was an eminent physician in that city, the author of a volume of Medical
and Literary Essays; his mother was the eldest daughter of Mackenzie, Rose of Kilravock, an ancient family in Nairnshire.
After being educated at the High School and University of Edinburgh, Mr Mackenzie entered upon the study of exchequer business. In 1765 he went to London to study the modes of English exchequer practice. Whilst there, his talents induced a friend to solicit his remaining in London to qualify himself for the English bar; but the wishes of his family, and the moderation of his own unambitious mind, decided his return to Edinburgh, where he ultimately became attorney for the crown. When in London he sketched some part of his first and very popular work, The Man of Feeling, which was published anonymously in 1771. The great popularity of this volume gave occasion to a remarkable fraud on the part of a Mr Eccles of Bath, who, taking advantage of the book being anonymous, laid claim to the authorship, transcribed the whole in his own hand, with interlinings and corrections, and maintained his right with such plausible pertinacity, that Messrs Cadell and Strahan, Mr Mackenzie's publishers, found it necessary to undeceive the public by a formal contradiction. The Man of the World was published a few years after The Man of Feeling, and breathes the same tone of exquisite sensibility. In his first publication he imagined a hero constantly obedient to every emotion of his moral sense. In The Man of the World he exhibited, on the contrary, a person rushing headlong into vice and ruin, and spreading misery all around him, by grasping at happiness in defiance of the moral sense. His next production was Julia de Roubigné, a novel in a series of letters. The fable is very interesting, and the letters are written with great elegance and propriety of style. In 1777 or 1778, a society of gentlemen in Edinburgh, mostly lawyers, projected the publication of a series of papers on morals, manners, taste, and literature, similar to those of the Spectator. Their scheme was speedily carried into effect, and the papers, under the title of the Mirror, of which Mr Mackenzie was the editor, were published in weekly numbers. The whole, with the names of the respective authors, were afterwards republished in three duodecimo volumes. To the Mirror succeeded the Lounger, a periodical of a similar character, and equally successful. Mr Mackenzie was the most valuable contributor to both these works. He contributed forty-two papers to the Mirror, and fifty-seven to the Lounger. They are distinguished from all the rest by that sweetness and beauty of style, and tenderness of feeling, which form the peculiar character of his writings. In the Lounger Mr Mackenzie was the first to appreciate the genius of Burns, in a review of his poems, then recently published, which at once drew the unknown poet from obscurity into the full blaze of a fame that will never die. On the institution of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Mr Mackenzie became one of its members; and enriched the volumes of its Transactions with an elegant tribute to the memory of his friend Judge Abercrombie, and a memoir on German tragedy, the latter of which bestows high praise on the Emilia Galotti of Lessing, and on the Robbers by Schiller. He also published, in 1791, a small volume containing translations of the Set of Horaces by Lessing, and of two or three other dramatic pieces. In the Transactions of the Highland Society he wrote an account of the origin and proceedings of that association, and published a view of the controversy respecting the poems of Ossian, in which he attempted to vindicate their authenticity; and in the same paper gave a spirited and interesting account of Gaelic poetry. In 1793 he wrote the Life of Dr Blacklock, prefixed to the quarto edition of the works of the blind poet; and in 1812 he read to the Royal Society a memoir of John Home, author of Douglas, in which he gives a sketch of the literary society of Edinburgh during the latter part of the last century.
Mr Mackenzie was not so fortunate as a writer of dramas. Several of his plays were brought out at different theatres, but, though possessed of considerable merit as literary productions, they were not successful on the stage. He wrote several political tracts in the Tory interest, which procured him the countenance and respect of Mr Pitt and other illustrious statesmen of his time, and led to his being appointed, in 1804, comptroller of taxes for Scotland. He died at Edinburgh on the 14th of January 1831, in the eighty-sixth year of his age.
A complete edition of his works was published at Edinburgh, in eight volumes 8vo, in 1808.