Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 4.djvu/290

32 blow. An inquiry at Cadell's will give this. When you have an enemy to attack, I shall in return give my best assistance, and aim at him a mortal blow; and rush forward to his overthrow, though the flames of hell should start up to oppose me."

Henry was not in possession of the poisoned weapons which would have enabled him to retaliate, and his good sense and equanimity of mind were no permanent protection against assaults so unceasing and virulent. He felt himself the personal subject of ridicule and perversion, his expected gains denied, and the fame which he expected from years of labour and retirement snatched from his grasp by the hand of a ruffian. In the midst of these adversities Henry went to London for actual shelter, but the watchful enemy observed his motions attacks were inserted in one print and copied into another the influence of his persecutor is widely perceptible in the periodical literature of the age. The Critical Review had praised the first volume of his history. The second meets with a very different reception: "it is with pain the reviewer observes, that in proportion as his narrative and inquiries are applied to cultivated times, his diligence and labour seem to relax," and a long list of alleged inaccuracies, chiefly on minute and disputed points, follows: the style is evidently not the natural language of the pompous Stuart, but it is got up in obedience to his directions on the vulnerable points of the historian, and the minuteness hints at the hand of Whitaker. Henry answered by a moderate letter defending his opinions, and acknowledging one mistake. The reviewer returns to his work with renovated vigour, and among other things accuses the historian of wilfully perverting authority. The charge of dishonesty rouses the calm divine, and with some severity he produces the words of the authority, arid the use he has made of them. The editor claims the merit of candour for printing the communication, and as there is no gainsaying the fact it contains, appends an obscure hint which seems to intimate he knows more than he chooses to tell; a mode of backing out of a mistake not uncommon in periodical works, as if the editorial dignity were of so delicate a nature as not to bear a candid and honourable confession of error. Years aftei-Avards, it is singular to discover the Critical Review returning to its original tone, and lauding the presence of qualities of which it had found occasion to censure the want Stuart associated himself with his friend Whitaker in conducting the English Review in 1783, and it is singular, that amidst the devastation of that irascible periodical, no blow is aimed at Henry. But Stuart did not neglect his duty in the Political Herald, published in 1785, an able disturber of the tranquillity of literature, of which he was the sole conductor. Here he gave his last and deepest stab; accusing the venerable historian in terms the most bitter and vituperative, of a hankering after language and ideas, unworthy of his profession; concluding with the observation that "an extreme attention to smut in a presbyterian clergyman, who has reached the last scene of his life, is a deformity so shocking, that no language of reprobation is strong enough to chastise it." The heartless insinuation was probably dictated by the consciousness that, whether true or false, no charge would be more acutely felt by the simple-minded divine. Stuart had, however, a very acute eye towards the real failings of Henry, and in his Protean attacks, he has scarcely left one of them without a brand. It was not without reason that he said to his London correspondent, "If you would only transcribe his jests, it would make him perfectly ridiculous." Henry was fond of garnish-