245
the laws will not recognize and protect. The funds
which, in Scotland, were supplied by the annual
contribution of the clergy, enforced by act of parlia-
ment, depended, in the English institution, on the
social and provident spirit of its members. The
perseverance of Henry overcame many of the practi-
cal difficulties thus thrown in his way: the fund was
placed on a permanent footing in the year 1762, and
Henry, having for some years undertaken its man-
agement, had afterwards the satisfaction to see it
flourish, and increase in stability and usefulness as
he advanced in years. The design of his elaborate
history, which must have gradually developed itself
in the course of his early studies, is said to have been
finally formed during his residence in Berwick, and
he commenced a course of inquiry and reading, which
he found that the resources of a provincial town, and
the assistance of his literary friends in more favoured
situations, were quite incapable of supplying for a
subject so vast and intricate, as that of a com-
plete history of Britain from the invasion of Julius
Caesar. In this situation Dr. Henry found a useful
friend in Mr. Lawrie, provost of Edinburgh, who
had married his sister. The interest of this gentle-
man procured for his brother-in-law, in the year
1768, an appointment to the ministry of the new
Grayfriar's Church in Edinburgh, whence in 1776,
he was removed to the collegiate charge of the Old
Church.
In the extensive public libraries of Edinburgh Dr.
Henry found means of prosecuting his researches
with effect. The first volume of his history was pub-
lished in quarto in the year 1771, the second ap-
peared in 1774, the third in 1777, the fourth in 1781,
and the fifth in 1785. The method of treating the
subject was original and bold, and one the assump-
tion of which left the author no excuse for ignorance
on any subject which had the slightest connection
with the customs, intellects, and history of our fore-
fathers, or the constitution of the kingdom. The
subject was in the first place divided into periods,
which were considered separately, each period occu-
pying a volume. The volume was divided into seven
chapters, each containing a distinct subject, linked
to the corresponding subject in the next volume by
continuance of narrative, and to the other chapters
of the same volume by identity of the period dis-
cussed. The subjects thus separated were—1st, The
simple narrative of the civil and military transactions
of the country—2d, The ecclesiastical history—3d,
The information which is generally called constitu-
tional, narrating and accounting for the rise of the
peculiarities in the form of government, the laws, and
the courts of justice—4th, The state of learning, or
rather the state of literature which may be called
purely scholastic, excluding the fine arts and consti-
tutional and political information—5th, The history
and state of arts and manufactures—6th, A history of
commerce, including the state of shipping, coin, and
the prices of commodities; and lastly, The history
of the manners, customs, amusements, and costumes
of the people. The writer of a book on any subject
on which he is well informed will generally choose
that manner of explaining his ideas best suited to his
information and comprehension. It may be ques-
tioned whether the plan pursued by Henry was
adapted for the highest class of historical composi-
tion, and if the other great historians who flourished
along with him would have improved their works
by following his complicated and elaborate system.
It is true that mere narrative, uninterwoven with re-
flection and such information as allows us to look
into the hearts of the actors, is a gift entirely divested
of the qualities which make it useful; but there are
various means of qualifying the narrative—some have
given their constitutional information in notes, or de-
tached passages; others have woven it beautifully
into the narrative, and presenting us with the full
picture of the times broadly and truly coloured,
have prevented the mind from distracting itself by
searching for the motives of actions through bare
narrative in one part of the work, and a variety of
influencing motives to be found scattered through
another. The plan which we may say was invented
by Dr. Henry, has only been once closely imitated.
The imitator was a Scotsman, the subject he encount-
ered, a History of France, was still more extensive
than that of Henry, and the ignorance the author
displayed in some of its minute branches excited
ridicule. This is an instance of the chief danger of
the system. The acquisition of a sufficient amount
of information, and regularity in the arrangement,
are the matters most to be attended to; Henry's
good sense taught him the latter, his perseverance
accomplished the former, and the author made a
complete and useful work, inferior certainly, as a
great literary production, to the works of those more
gifted historians who mingled reflection with the
current of their narrative, but better suited to an in-
tellect which did not soar above the trammels of such
a division of subject, and which might have fallen
into confusion without them. Another imitation of
Henry's plan, but with several important modifica-
tions, was the Pictorial History of England. This
work, however, was the production not of one, but
of several writers, each taking the department with
which he was most conversant, and all the parts har-
monized into each other by a talented and competent
editor. A third work, an imitation of Henry's plan,
but rather in spirit than in form, is the Comprehensive
History of England. In this, the cumbrous divisions
and subdivisions are abandoned, while the more im-
portant parts of the subjects on which they treat are
given in a single chapter at the close of each epoch,
under the title of "The History of Society."
The circumstances of the first appearance of the
earlier volumes of this useful book are interesting to
the world, from their having raised against the author
a storm of hostility and deadly animosity almost
unmatched in the annals of literary warfare. The
chief persecutor, and grand master of this inquisition
on reputation, was the irascible Dr. Gilbert Stuart.
The cause of his animosity against a worthy and in-
offensive man can only be accounted for by those
whose penetration may find its way to the depths of
literary jealousy.
The letters of Stuart on the subject have been
carefully collected by D'Israeli, and published in his
Calamities of Authors, and when coupled with such
traces of the influence of the persecutor as are to be
found scattered here and there among the various
periodicals of the age, furnish us with the painful
picture of a man of intelligence and liberality made
a fiend by literary hate. Stuart commenced his dark
work in the Edinburgh Magazine and Review, estab-
lished under his auspices in 1773. Dr. Henry had
preached before the Society (in Scotland) for Pro-
moting Christian Knowledge a sermon, entitled
Revelation the most Effectual Means of Civilizing and
Reforming Mankind, and in pursuance of the custom
on such occasions, the sermon was published. The
sermon was as similar to all others of its class as any
given piece of mechanism can be to all others intended
for similar purposes; but Stuart discovered audacity
in the attempt, and unexpected failure in the execu-
tion; it required "the union of philosophy and poli-
tical skill, of erudition and eloquence, qualities which
he was sorry to observe appeared here in no eminent