Robert Henry, the author of the “History of Great Britain written on a new plan,” was the son of a farmer, and was born in the parish of St. Ninians, near Stirling, 18th February 1718. He received his early education at the school of his native parish, and at the grammar school of Stirling, and after completing a course of study at Edinburgh University became master of the grammar school of Annan. In 1746 he was licensed to preach by the Annan presbytery, shortly after which he was chosen minister of a Presbyterian congregation at Carlisle, where he remained until 1760, when he was removed to a similar charge at Berwick-on-Tweed. It was during his stay at Berwick that the idea of his “History” first occurred to him, but the dearth of books and the difficulty of consulting original authorities compelled him to postpone the execution of his design till his removal to Edinburgh, as minister of New Greyfriars, in 1768. The first volume of his “History” appeared in 1771, and the others followed at irregular intervals until 1785, when the fifth was published, bringing down the narrative to the Tudor dynasty. The work was virulently assailed by Gilbert Stuart, but the attack was overdone, and although it for a time hindered the sale, the injury effected was only temporary. For the volumes published in his lifetime Henry realized as much as £3300, and through the influence of Lord Mansfield he was in 1781 rewarded with a pension of £100 a year from George III. In 1784 he received the degree of D.D. from the university of Edinburgh. He died in 1790 before his tenth volume was quite ready for the press. Four years after his death it was published under the care of Malcolm Laing, who supplied the entire chapters v. and vii., and added an index.
Personal
To-morrow morning Henry sets off for London, with immense hopes of selling his history. I wish he had delayed till our last review of him had reached your city. But I really suppose that he has little probability of getting any gratuity. The trade are too sharp to give precious gold for perfect nonsense. I wish sincerely that I could enter Holborn the same hour with him. He should have a repeated fire to combat with. I entreat that you may be so kind as to let him feel some of your thunder. I shall never forget the favour. If Whitaker is in London, he could give a blow. Patterson will give him a knock. Strike by all means. The wretch will tremble, grow pale, and return with a consciousness of his debility. I entreat I may hear from you a day or two after you have seen him. He will complain grievously of me to Strahan and Rose. I shall send you a paper about him—an advertisement from Parnassus, in the manner of Boccalini.
To proceed with our Literary Conspiracy, which was conducted by Stuart with a pertinacity of invention perhaps not to be paralleled in literary history. That the peace of mind of such an industrious author as Dr. Henry was for a considerable time destroyed; that the sale of a work on which Henry had expended much of his fortune and his life was stopped; and that, when covered with obloquy and ridicule, in despair he left Edinburgh for London, still encountering the same hostility; that all this was the work of the same hand perhaps was never even known to its victim. The multiplied forms of this Proteus of the Malevoli were still but one devil; fire or water, or a bull or a lion; still it was the same Proteus, the same Stuart.
Dr. Henry was one of those characteristic Moderates of the old school who were genial in society, humorous at table, and deplorably dry—and deliciously conscious of being dry—in the pulpit. He belonged to that class of ministers who, according to Lord Robertson, of facetious memory, “are better in bottle than in wood.”
History of Great Britain, 1771–90
He neither furnishes entertainment nor instruction. Diffuse, vulgar, and ungrammatical, he strips history of all her ornaments. As an antiquary, he wants accuracy and knowledge; and, as an historian, he is destitute of fire, taste, and sentiment. His work is a gazette, in which we find actions and events without their causes, and in which we meet with the names, without the characters, of personages. He has amassed all the refuse and lumber of the times he would record…. The mind of his reader is affected with no agreeable emotions; it is awakened only to disgust and fatigue.
His historical narratives are as full as those remote times seem to demand, and, at the same time, his inquiries of the antiquarian kind omit nothing which can be an object of doubt or curiosity. The one as well as the other is delineated with great perspicuity, and no less propriety, which are the true ornaments of this kind of writing; all superfluous embellishments are avoided; and the reader will hardly find in our language any performance that unites together so perfectly the two great points of entertainment and instruction.
DR. JOHNSON.—“I have heard Henry’s ‘History of Britain’ well spoken of: I am told it is carried on in separate divisions, as the civil, the military, the religious history: I wish much to have one branch well done, and that is the history of manners of common life.” DR. ROBERTSON.—“Henry should have applied his attention to that alone, which is enough for any man; and he might have found a great deal scattered in various books, had he read solely with that view. Henry erred in not selling his first volume at a moderate price to the booksellers, that they might have pushed him on till he had got reputation.”
The work of Dr. Henry is an ornament and an honour to his country.
Those parts of Henry’s history which profess to trace the progress of government are still more jejune than the rest of his volumes.
Much of this sort of information [respecting the early constitutional history of England], and of every other historical information, may be found in the “History” of Dr. Henry; but the same facts, when collected and printed in a modern dress, properly arranged, and to be read without difficulty, as they are in the work of Dr. Henry, no longer excite the same reflection nor obtain the same possession of the memory which they do when seen in something like their native garb, in their proper place, and in all the simplicity, singularity, and quaintness which belong to them.
Considerable merit in the execution, and complete originality in the plan, of his history.
To this great work Henry devoted the anxious labour of nearly thirty years; and he has certainly accumulated a vast store of useful information. But to write philosophically and entertainingly upon so many heterogeneous subjects exceeds man’s might. Even when the scope is far less ambitious, the charm of style possessed by a Hume, a Robertson, a Macaulay, a Prescott, or a Bancroft, can alone interest the desultory reader in historical details. For all practical purposes, Henry’s history has been superseded by the noble work published by Charles Knight.
A work valuable for the numerous facts it contains illustrative of manners and the state of society, which are not to be found in any of our previous general historians, but chiefly meritorious as having been our first English history compiled upon that plan.
For this history, Henry received the sum of 3200l. from the booksellers, and from the Crown a pension of 100l. a year—a reward not due to his style or even to the accuracy of the research, but to the growing interest among all classes in the domestic life of our ancestors and in the condition of the people. Henry was the first to direct attention to these themes. His idea has been carried out with a large amount of corrected and additional information in the popular history of England by Charles Knight.
As a popular and comprehensive history it has much merit, but it lacks original research; while its style and method detracts from its literary value.
