128 MEMOIR OF THE LATE DR. HENRY. 
mind had been early nurtured with the choicest 
fruits of our national poetry:—and the same 
purity of taste and affections, which in music 
made him peculiarly accessible to the simpler 
melodies, guided him to the fresh and gentle 
beauties of our earlier poets. He often com- 
mended as a happy imitation of their manner, 
“the Castle of Indolence,” a poem, which he 
more than once read to his domestic circle, 
with that delicacy and truthfulness of intonation 
which are inspired only by deep and intuitive 
perceptions of excellence. 
In determining the literary merits of the 
works of others, and still more in the expression 
of his own thoughts, Dr. Henry was guided by a 
correct, or rather a severe taste, which might 
have rendered him over-fastidious; had not his 
critical judgments beenattempered by the fervour 
of his sympathies and by the comprehensiveness 
of his mental vision. An enemy of redundancy 
in expression or in ornament, he erased in the 
vigilant revisals, through which all his composi- 
tions had to pass, every superfluous term, reach- 
ing finally as complete condensation of style 
as was consistent with ease and distinctness. In 
strictly philosophical writing he was frugal from 
principle in the employment of imagery; aiming 
