DIRECTION BY ITS ABUSE.
How the moral and literary character are reciprocally influenced, may be traced in the character of a personage peculiarly apposite to these inquiries. This worthy of literature is Orator Henley, who is rather known traditionally than historically.[43] He is so overwhelmed with the echoed satire of Pope, and his own extravagant conduct for many years, that I should not care to extricate him, had I not discovered a feature in the character of Henley not yet drawn, and constituting no inferior calamity among authors.
Henley stands in his “gilt tub” in the Dunciad; and a portrait of him hangs in the picture-gallery of the Commentary. Pope’s verse and Warburton’s notes are the pickle and the bandages for any Egyptian mummy of dulness, who will last as long as the pyramid that encloses him. I shall transcribe, for the reader’s convenience, the lines of Pope:—
| Embrown’d with native bronze, lo! Henley stands, Tuning his voice, and balancing his hands; How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue! How sweet the periods, neither said nor sung! Still break the benches, Henley, with thy strain, While Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson, preach in vain. Oh! great restorer of the good old stage, Preacher at once, and Zany of thy age![44] |
It will surprise when I declare that this buffoon was an indefatigable student, a proficient in all the learned languages, an elegant poet, and, withal, a wit of no inferior class. It remains to discover why “the Preacher” became “the Zany.”
Henley was of St. John’s College, Cambridge, and was distinguished for the ardour and pertinacity of his studies; he gave evident marks of genius. There is a letter of his to the 60 “Spectator,” signed Peter de Quir, which abounds with local wit and quaint humour.[45] He had not attained his twenty-second year when he published a poem, entitled “Esther, Queen of Persia,”[46] written amid graver studies; for three years after, Henley, being M.A., published his “Complete Linguist,” consisting of grammars of ten languages.
The poem itself must not be passed by in silent notice. It is preceded by a learned preface, in which the poet discovers his intimate knowledge of oriental studies, with some etymologies from the Persic, the Hebrew, and the Greek, concerning the name and person of Ahasuerus, whom he makes to be Xerxes. The close of this preface gives another unexpected feature in the character of him who, the poet tells us, was “embrowned with native bronze”—an unaffected modesty! Henley, alluding to a Greek paraphrase of Barnes, censures his faults with acrimony, and even apologises for them, by thus gracefully closing the preface: “These can only be alleviated by one plea, the youth of the author, which is a circumstance I hope the candid will consider in favour of the present writer!”
The poem is not destitute of imagination and harmony.
The pomp of the feast of Ahasuerus has all the luxuriance of Asiatic splendour; and the circumstances are selected with some fancy.
| The higher guests approach a room of state, Where tissued couches all around were set Labour’d with art; o’er ivory tables thrown, Embroider’d carpets fell in folds adown. The bowers and gardens of the court were near, And open lights indulged the breathing air. Pillars of marble bore a silken sky, While cords of purple and fine linen tie In silver rings, the azure canopy. Distinct with diamond stars the blue was seen, And earth and seas were feign’d in emerald green; A globe of gold, ray’d with a pointed crown, Form’d in the midst almost a real sun. |
Nor is Henley less skilful in the elegance of his sentiments, 61 and in his development of the human character. When Esther is raised to the throne, the poet says—
| And Esther, though in robes, is Esther still. |
And then sublimely exclaims—
| The heroic soul, amidst its bliss or woe, Is never swell’d too high, nor sunk too low; Stands, like its origin above the skies, Ever the same great self, sedately wise; Collected and prepared in every stage To scorn a courting world, or bear its rage. |
But wit which the “Spectator” has sent down to posterity, and poetry which gave the promise of excellence, did not bound the noble ambition of Henley; ardent in more important labours, he was perfecting himself in the learned languages, and carrying on a correspondence with eminent scholars.
He officiated as the master of the free-school at his native town in Leicestershire, then in a declining state; but he introduced many original improvements. He established a class for public elocution, recitations of the classics, orations, &c.; and arranged a method of enabling every scholar to give an account of his studies without the necessity of consulting others, or of being examined by particular questions. These miracles are indeed a little apocryphal; for they are drawn from that pseudo-gospel of his life, of which I am inclined to think he himself was the evangelist. His grammar of ten languages was now finished; and his genius felt that obscure spot too circumscribed for his ambition. He parted from the inhabitants with their regrets, and came to the metropolis with thirty recommendatory letters.
Henley probably had formed those warm conceptions of patronage in which youthful genius cradles its hopes. Till 1724 he appears, however, to have obtained only a small living, and to have existed by translating and writing. Thus, after persevering studies, many successful literary efforts, and much heavy taskwork, Henley found he was but a hireling author for the booksellers, and a salaried “Hyp-doctor” for the minister; for he received a stipend for this periodical paper, which was to cheer the spirits of the people by ridiculing the gloomy forebodings of Amhurst’s “Craftsman.” About this time the complete metamorphosis of the studious and ingenious John Henley began to branch out into its grotesque figure; and a curiosity in human nature was now 62 about to be opened to public inspection. “The Preacher” was to personate “The Zany.” His temper had become brutal, and he had gradually contracted a ferocity and grossness in his manners, which seem by no means to have been indicated in his purer days. His youth was disgraced by no irregularities—it was studious and honourable. But he was now quick at vilifying the greatest characters; and having a perfect contempt for all mankind, was resolved to live by making one half of the world laugh at the other. Such is the direction which disappointed genius has too often given to its talents.
He first affected oratory, and something of a theatrical attitude in his sermons, which greatly attracted the populace; and he startled those preachers who had so long dozed over their own sermons, and who now finding themselves with but few slumberers about them, envied their Ciceronian brothers.
| Tuning his voice, and balancing his hands. |
It was alleged against Henley, that “he drew the people too much from their parish churches, and was not so proper for a London divine as a rural pastor.” He was offered a rustication, on a better living; but Henley did not come from the country to return to it.
There is a narrative of the life of Henley, which, subscribed by another person’s name, he himself inserted in his “Oratory Transactions.”[47] As he had to publish himself this highly seasoned biographical morsel, and as his face was then beginning to be “embrowned with bronze,” he thus very impudently and very ingeniously apologises for the panegyric:—
“If any remark of the writer appears favourable to myself, and be judged apocryphal, it may, however, weigh in the opposite scale to some things less obligingly said of me; false praise being as pardonable as false reproach.”[48]
63
In this narrative we are told, that when at college—
“He began to be uneasy that he had not the liberty of thinking, without incurring the scandal
