Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/265

 Memorial, p. 7). Impressionist and emotional, Henley's criticism represents artistic sensibilities that are exceptionally keen. In painting he proposed to ignore any qualities except those strictly pictorial, and sculpture he pronounced to be ‘wholly a matter of form, surface and line.’ His literary sympathies were restricted by peculiarities of temperament, but realist and humorist as well as poet, he was an expert critic of those forms of literature that deal primarily with concrete human nature. His prose style, elaborately polished and occasionally mannered, is notable for elasticity, and vivid appositeness of phrase.

Henley collaborated with R. L. Stevenson in four plays, ‘Deacon Brodie’ (privately printed in 1880, and in a finished version in 1888), ‘Beau Austin’ and ‘Admiral Guinea’ (both printed in 1884), and ‘Macaire’ (in 1885). A collected edition of the first three plays was published in 1892, and ‘Macaire’ was added in 1894. ‘Deacon Brodie’ was produced at Pullan's Theatre of Varieties, Bradford, on 28 Dec. 1882, and was performed at the Prince's Theatre, London, on 2 July 1884, and in the same year at Edinburgh. With the finished version, which has not been performed in this country, Henley's brother, Edward John, made a successful tour in America in 1888. ‘Beau Austin’ was produced by Mr. (now Sir) Beerbohm Tree at the Haymarket Theatre, London, on 3 Nov. 1890. ‘Admiral Guinea,’ first produced on 29 Nov. 1897, was revived at the Royalty Theatre, Glasgow (the Repertory Theatre) on 19 April 1909 and at His Majesty's Theatre, London, on 4 June of the same year. ‘Macaire’ was played twice by the Stage Society, London (on 4 Nov. 1900 at the Strand Theatre, and on 8 Nov. at the Great Queen Street Theatre). ‘Beau Austin’ and ‘Macaire’ were performed at a matinee in Her Majesty's Theatre on 3 May 1901 on behalf of the Prince of Wales's Hospital Fund, all the parts being filled by leading actors and actresses. ‘Deacon Brodie’ is dramatically the most effective of the four pieces, none of which attained popular success, though all helped to promote a higher ideal of playwriting in Great Britain.

Henley was also the author of ‘A new and original travestie by Byron M'Guiness,’ entitled ‘Mephisto,’ new music by Mr. D. Caldicott and Mr. Ernest Bucalossi, which, produced on Whit Monday, 14 June 1887, was played for some weeks as an after piece at the Royalty Theatre, London; his brother taking the part of Mephisto, and Miss Constance Gilchrist that of Marguerite.

A warm admirer of Elizabethan prose, Henley projected the republication of a series of Tudor translations which, edited and prefaced by special scholars and begun in 1892 with Florio's translation of Montaigne's ‘Essays,’ was completed by the issue of the Tudor Bible, the preface for which he did not live to finish. With Mr. J. S. Farmer he was engaged for many years in compiling a ‘Dictionary of Slang and its Analogues,’ issued in parts only to subscribers (1894–1904), which was almost finished at the time of his death. With Mr. T. F. Henderson he prepared the centenary edition of the poetry of Robert Burns, in four vols. (1896–7), contributing to the last volume an elaborate essay, which was also published separately, on the poet's ‘life, genius and achievement.’ An edition of ‘Byron's Letters and Verse,’ volume i., with vivid biographical sketches of Byron's friends and other persons mentioned in the letters, appeared in 1897; but, owing to copyright difficulties, the project was abandoned. In 1901 he edited the Edinburgh folio Shakespeare. He contributed a preface to the poetry of Wilfrid Blunt (1895), and to the collected edition of the poems of T. E. Brown (1900); introductory essays to editions of Smollett (1899), Hazlitt (1902–4), and Fielding (1903); and prefaces to various novels in the American edition de luxe of the works of Charles Dickens. Amongst his latest essays was that on ‘Othello,’ for the Caxton Shakespeare (1910), edited by Sir Sidney Lee. In 1891, under the title of ‘Lyra Heroica,’ he published a selection of English verse ‘commemorative of heroic action or illustrative of heroic sentiment,’ of which a school edition with notes by L. Cope-Cornford and W. W. Greg was printed in 1892; in 1894 with Mr. Charles Whibley, a ‘Book of English Prose’; in 1895 a ‘London Garland from Four Centuries of Verse,’ and in 1897 ‘English Lyrics: Chaucer to Pope.’

In 1893 Henley received the degree of LL.D. from the University of St. Andrews; in 1898 he was granted a civil list pension of 225l. a year. Considerations of health induced him, after experimenting with various suburban residences about London, to remove in 1899 to Worthing, though he retained a flat in London, which he occupied at intervals. In 1901 he removed to Woking. A nervous shock, due to an accident while leaving a moving railway carriage, seriously affected his health,