Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/408

H learning.’ When Boswell sauntered with him in the walks of Merton College (12 June 1784) he proved ‘a very learned and pious man.’ William Agutter [q. v.], his fellow-collegian and intimate friend, furnished Boswell with a note of a dialogue about nonjurors between Johnson and Henderson. Gradually Henderson's character deteriorated. He dressed in a peculiar fashion, went to bed at daybreak and rose in the afternoon. Not infrequently he would strip himself to his waist, sluice himself with water at the pump near his rooms, and, after putting on a shirt which he had made perfectly wet, go to his bed. He smoked nearly all day long, took opium, and was not always temperate in the use of wines and spirits. On one occasion he was known to abstain from eating for five days. He took his degree of B.A. on 27 Feb. 1786, and shortly after left the college. His friends urged him to adopt the clerical or medical profession, but he refused. He withdrew from all social intercourse, abandoning himself to the study of Lavater, and believing in the possibility of holding correspondence with the dead. He died while on a visit to Pembroke College, Oxford, on 2 Nov. 1788. A prophetic dream of his death is narrated in ‘Notes and Queries,’ 1854, 1st ser. x. 26–7. The body was buried in the churchyard of St. George's, near Bristol, on 18 Nov. His father, who was so much affected by his death that he caused the body to be exhumed a few days after its interment, died on 14 Feb. 1792, aged 55. His mother, Charlotte Henderson, died 20 Dec. 1775. They were all laid together in the same churchyard.

Hannah More deplored Henderson's unprofitable way of life, and Wesley wrote in his ‘Journal’ that ‘with as great talents as most men in England he had lived two and thirty years and done just nothing.’ A story is told, however, that during his stay at Oxford the manuscripts which he had left in an unlocked trunk in his father's house at Hanham were used by a servant as materials to light the fire. Two letters from Henderson to Dr. Priestley are printed in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ for April 1789, and were afterwards reprinted in the ‘Monthly Repository,’ vii. 286–92, and in Rutt's ‘Correspondence of Priestley,’ i. 235–7, 304–7. He was the ‘learned and ingenious friend’ who contributed to the third volume of ‘Miscellaneous Companions, 1786,’ by William Matthews, a postscript (pp. 111–15) to a dissertation on everlasting punishment, and he is said to have been a member of the ‘Burnham Society,’ from the minutes and correspondence of which a volume on the ‘Pre-existence of Souls’ was published in 1798. A Latin letter from him to J. Uri is printed in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ for 1799, pp. 752–3, as well as an English translation (1801, pp. 788–9). An anonymous volume by Joseph Cottle of ‘Poems, containing John the Baptist, a Monody to John Henderson, and a Sketch of his Character,’ was published in 1795. The pieces relating to Henderson were included by Cottle in his later volumes of ‘Malvern Hills and other Poems,’ to the fourth edition of which is added a letter from Hannah More to Henderson. Charles Lamb pronounced the ‘Monody’ to be ‘immensely good.’ Agutter's sermon, preached at St. George's, Kingswood, on 23 Nov., and at Temple Church, Bristol, on 30 Nov. 1788, on Henderson's life and death, was printed in that year, and a poetical epitaph by Amos Cottle is inserted in the ‘Malvern Hills,’ p. 238. A print of his portrait by W. Palmer, taken at the age of twenty-five, is prefixed to the fourth edition of the last-mentioned work, and a large oval print from the same portrait was published by Hogg in 1792. Another engraving by J. Condé, from a miniature in the possession of John Tuffin, is in the ‘European Magazine,’ 1792. 

HENDERSON, JOHN (1804–1862), architect, son of John Henderson, gardener at Brechin Castle, and ‘his wife Agnes Thomson,’ was born at Brechin on 14 June 1804. In 1814 his father took some land at the Den, Brechin, and started in business as a nurseryman. The firm styled John Henderson & Sons still exists. After serving an apprenticeship in carpentry in his native town, and studying drawing and construction, John became assistant in the office of Thomas Hamilton [q. v.] the architect, and afterwards practised in Edinburgh on his own account. He made a special study of Gothic architecture, and his works are almost exclusively in the pointed style.

Among his ecclesiastical works may be mentioned the spire of the old abbey or parish church, Arbroath, 1831; St. Mary's Established Church, Dumfries, 1837–9 (which was renovated and reseated in 1879); Morningside parish church, 1838; Trinity Episcopal Church, Dean Bridge, Edinburgh,