Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/264

 Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Andrew Lang, Arthur Morrison, (Sir) Gilbert Parker, G. S. Street, G. W. Steevens, R. L. Stevenson, H. G. Wells, and W. B. Yeats. Exacting as an editor, Henley was yet a benevolent autocrat, and stimulated his contributors by his strong literary enthusiasm and blend of friendly correction with generous praise. After retiring from the editorship of the 'National Observer' in 1894 he was until 1898 editor of a monthly magazine, the 'New Review,' which, notwithstanding notable contributions in fiction and essays, was a financial failure. From 1899 till his death he contributed occasionally a literary article to the 'Pall Mall Magazine.'

Meanwhile, he had, in 1888, obtained reputation as a poet, though more instantly and widely in America than in England, by a 'Book of Verses,' which embraced the whole graphic hospital series, of which the more poignant, in the unrhymed form, had been refused admission to the 'Cornhill Magazine'; the 'Bric-a-Brac Poems,' some in the sonnet form and the majority in the modish forms of old French verse, but often wrought with such deft command of phrase, and so alive with poetic fancy, or emotion, that all sense of artificiality disappears; and various other verses entitled 'Echoes,' the majority of which accord with his own definition of a lyric, 'a single emotion temperamentally expressed in terms of poetry' (Preface to English Lyrics, p. 1). In 1892 he published the 'Song of the Sword and other Verses,' including the 'London Voluntaries'; and in 1893 a second edition, with additions, appeared under the title ' London Voluntaries and other Verses.' In the 'Voluntaries,' 'a rich and lovely verbal magic,' wrote Francis Thompson, 'is mated with metre that comes and goes like the heaving of the Muse's bosom' (Academy, 18 July 1903). The technical accomplishment attains here its most difficult triumphs. In 1898 the two collections of verse were reprinted in a definitive edition, with omissions, additions and changes under the title 'Poems,' with a photograviure of the author's bust by Rodin. A series of drawings of London types by William Nicholson with picturesque quatorzains by Henley appeared in the same year; and in 1900 he published a small volume of verse entitled 'For England's sake: Verses and Songs in Time of War,' voicing his patriotic fervour during the Boer struggle. The two most notable poems are 'Pro Rege Nostro,' which has been set to music as a song by Miss Frances Allitsen, and for choral purposes by Mr. Ernest Dicks, and 'Last Post,' set to music for chorus and orchestra by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. The lyric sequence, 'Hawthorn and Lavender' (1901, first printed in the 'North American Review'), a kind of parable of the spring, summer, autumn, and winter of manhood, contains a more intimate revelation of himself than the earlier poems. This volume also includes among other pieces the 'Threnody for Queen Victoria' which, first appearing in the 'Morning Post,' was printed for private circulation as a broadside. 'Hawthorn and Lavender' he intended to be his last poetic utterance; but his first experience of the delights of motoring inspired him to write 'A Song of Speed,' which appeared in the 'World's Work' in April 1903, and shortly afterwards was published separately, Henley's verse was the occasional recreation of a life mainly occupied with editing and the criticism of literature and art. In 1890 he published 'Views and Reviews,' described by himself as 'a mosaic of scraps and shreds from the shot rubbish of some fourteen years of journalism,' and consisting mainly of vignette impressions of the great English and French writers. A companion volume on art appeared in 1902, selected from the memorial catalogue (1887) of the loan collection of French and Dutch pictures in the Edinburgh International Exhibition (1886), from the 'Century of Artists' (1889), prepared as a memorial of the art portion of the Glasgow Exhibition of 1888, and from the catalogue (1889) of the loan collection of pictures of the great French and Dutch romanticists of the nineteenth century, prepared for the art publishers, Messrs. Dowdeswell. For the last catalogue he wrote an elaborate note on 'Romanticism.' The volume also includes a study of Sir Henry Raeburn, which prefaced a sumptuous book, published in 1890, by the Association for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Scotland, as well as a study of two modern artists (Charles Keene and Rodin) contributed to the 'National Observer' in 1890; and a tribute to R. A. M. Stevenson from the 'Pall Mall Magazine' in July 1900.

'As critic,' wrote Meredith of Henley, 'he had the rare combination of enthusiasm and wakeful judgment. Pretentiousness felt his whip smartly, the accepted imbecile had to bear the weight of his epigrams. But merit under a cloud, or just emerging, he sparkled on or lifted to the public view. He was one of the main supports of good literature in our time' (The Henley