HENRY, ROBERT, D.D. 



HERACUTUS. 



81 



HENRY. ROBERT. D.D., was the ion of a farmer in the parish of 

 8k Niniuu. Stirling.hire, when he was bom iu 1718. Having com 

 Dieted the luuil courve of education for the Scottish church at the 



Uuivenitv of Kdioburgb, he was licensed u a preacher in 1710, being 

 then mattrr of the burgh or grammar-school of Annan, iu Dumfries 

 hire. In 1748 ho was elected minuter of a Presbyterian congrega- 

 tion at Carlisle, with which he remained till August 1760, whon he 

 remorrd to a similar situation in the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed. 

 It is supposed to bar* been about this time that he conceived the 

 project of bis ' History of Great Britain, written on a new plan,' on 

 which his literary reputation rests. The same year that he established 

 himself iu Iterwick he married a Hiss Baldcrston, whose sister after- 

 wards married Gilbert Laurie, Esq., lord provost of Edinburgh ; and 

 this connection eventually led, in 1768, to Mr. Henry's removal to 

 that city. His first appointment was as minister of the church of the 

 New Grey Friars, which he retained till 1776, and then exchanged for 

 the easier charge of one of the ministers of the Old Church, in which 

 be continued till his death. His access to the libraries at Edinburgh 

 encouraged him to proceed with the design of his History, which 

 want of the necessary books had before almost induced him to 

 relinquish. The first volume, in 4to, appeared in 1771, the second in 

 1774, the third in 1777, the fourth iu 1781, and the fifth, bringing 

 down the narrative to the accession of Henry VII., in 1785. The 

 author, upon whom the degree of D.D. had been conferred by th 

 University of Edinburgh in 1770, died in 1790 ; but before his death 

 be had completed the greater part of another volume of his History, 

 extending to the accession of Edward TL, which was published in 

 1793 under the superintendence of Malcolm Laing, Esq., who supplied 

 the chapters that were wanting, and added on Appendix. Dr. Henry's 

 History has, since its completion, been repeatedly reprinted in twelve 

 volumes Svo. The author had published the successive quarto volumes 

 on his own account ; but when the first octavo edition was proposed 

 in 1786, he sold the property of the work to a publishing house for 

 lOOOi, besides which the profits it had already yielded him amounted 

 to 23001 In 1781, on the unsolicited application of Lord Mansfield, 

 a pension of 1002. a year was granted to Dr. Henry by the king. 



These facts are extracted from a biographical memoir of some length 

 which appeared with the posthumous volume of the History, and in 

 which may be also found a diffuse account of Dr. Henry as a private 

 member of society, in which character he appears to much advantage. 

 His only other publication was a Sermon preached before the (Scottish) 

 Society for propagating Christian Knowledge, in 1773. The early 

 volumes of his History were assailed with unusual virulence as they 

 successively appeared by Dr. Gilbert Stuart, well known as the author 

 of various able and learned historical works. Stuart was a man of 

 bad temper and little principle, and he was probably actuated in this 

 affair by feelings of personal animosity to Dr. Henry or some of big 

 friends ; but he was a person of genuine learning and original research, 

 as well as of great acuteness, and in many of his objections to the 

 History there was much force and justice. Henry's cause, on the 

 other hand, wai taken up by his friends, and there is printed in the 

 ' Memoir of his Life ' a very encomiastic character of his work (so 

 far as it had proceeded), which is said to be " by one of the most 

 eminent historians of the present age, whose history of the same 

 period justly possesses the highest reputation," and " who died before 

 the publication of the third volume," words which we suppose 

 describe Mr. Hume. The work had certainly considerable merit aa 

 the first attempt to write a History of England upon so extended a 

 plan, combining the history of society and the general civilisation of 

 the country with that of public events; and the author has collected 

 a great mass of curious matter, a large portion of which is not to be 

 found in any of our common histories ; but it has no pretensions to 

 be considered as executed either classically or critically. It abounds 

 in statements derived from sources of no authority, and in other 

 negligences and inaccuracies, partly arising from the character of the 

 author's mind and acquirements, partly the consequence of his pro- 

 vincial situation and want of acquaintance with or access to the best 

 sources of information. In every one of the departments into which 

 it is divided it is now very far indeed behind the state to which 

 historical and archaeological knowledge hag advanced. 



ENRY, WILLIAM, was the son of Mr. Thomas Henry of Man- 

 chester, who was a zealous cultivator of chemical science. Dr. Henry 

 was born on the 12th of December 1775. His earliest instructor was 

 the Rev. Ralph Harrison, who on the establishment of an academy in 

 Manchester, afterwards removed to York, was chosen to fill the chair 

 of classical literature. Immediately after leaving the academy he 

 became an inmate in the house of Dr. Percival, whose character as an 

 able and enlightened physician is well known. Here he remained for 

 some years, and in 1795 he studied at Edinburgh, where the chair of 

 chemistry was occupied by the venerable Dr. Black. After remaining 

 there only one year however, ho was obliged from prudential motives 

 to quit the university. On visiting Edinburgh again in 1807 he 

 received the diploma of Doctor in Medicine, and although he subse- 

 quently and successfully practised 09 a physician in Manchester, he 

 was compelled to retire from it on account of the state of his health, 

 which from an accident in early life hod always been delicate. 



Though the period between bin two academical residences was passed 

 in the engrossing occupations of hi) profession, and the superintend- 



enoe of a chemical business established by his father, he nevertheless 

 both zealously and successfully attended to the science of chemistry, 

 and from that period until 1836, the year in which he died, he con- 

 tributed a great number of important papers to the Royal Society, tho 

 Philosophical Society of Manchester, and to various philosophical 

 journals. In 1797 he communicated to the Royal Society an experi- 

 mental memoir, the design of which was to re-establish, in opposition 

 to the conclusions drawn by Dr. Austin, and sanctioned by the approval 

 of Dr. lieddoes and other eminent chemists, the title of carbon to be 

 ranked among elementary bodies, although his proofs indeed contained 

 a fallacy, which in a subsequent paper he himself corrected. In 1800 

 he published iu the ' Philosophical Transactions ' researches on muriatic 

 acid gas. These experiments were undertaken in the hopes of detaching 

 the imaginary element, which, in accordance with the prevailing theory, 

 was supposed with oxygen to constitute the acid in question. It was 

 not till many yean afterwards that the true nature of this acid was 

 ascertained by Davy, and to the new doctrine Dr. Henry was an early 

 convert. 



In 1803 Dr. Henry made known to the Royal Society his elaborate 

 experiments on the quantity of gases absorbed by water at different 

 temperatures, and he arrived at the simple law, " that water takes up 

 of gas condensed by one, two, or more additional atmospheres, a 

 quantity which ordinarily compressed would be equal to twice, thrice, 

 Sic., the volume absorbed under the common pressure of the atmos- 

 phere." In 1808 he published in the same work a form of apparatus 

 adapted to the combustion of larger quantities of gas than could be 

 fired in eudiometric tubes. In the same year he was elected a Fellow 

 of the Royal Society, aud in the year following he received, by the 

 award of the president and council, Sir Godfrey Copley's donation, as 

 a mark of their approbation of his valuable communications to the 

 society. He published various other papers, both iu the ' Manchester 

 Memoirs ' and in the ' Philosophical Transactions.' His latest com- 

 munication to tho Royal Society was a paper in 1824, in which he 

 succeeded in overcoming the only difficulty he had not before con- 

 quered, that of ascertaining by chemical means the exact proportions 

 which the gases left after the action of chlorine on oil and coal gas 

 bear to each other. This he effected by availing himself of the 

 property which had been recently discovered by Doberciner in finely- 

 divided platina, of determining gaseous combination. All his com- 

 munications afford admirable examples of inductive research, great 

 philosophical acumen, aud almost unequalled precision in manipulating. 

 Dr. Heury was also the author of a most valuable and useful work, 

 entitled ' Elements of Experimental Chemistry," which has reached 

 the eleventh edition. He was a man of great general information, and 

 considerable literary attainments and ability, as shown by the very 

 superior style of his scientific papers. In his private character he was 

 in every respect estimable. 



Dr. Henry's frame, originally delicate, worn out by illness and dis- 

 tracted by loss of sleep, at lost gave way, aud he died on the ^ud of 

 September 1836 in his sixty-first year. 



HENRYSON, HUBERT, a Scottish poet of much merit, lived in 

 the latter part of tho 15th century. Of his life hardly anything is 

 known. He is supposed to have been the Robert Henryson whose 

 signature as notary-public is attached to a charter granted iu 147S by 

 the abbot of Dunfermlinc, iu Kifeshire ; aud ho is elsewhere said to 

 have been a schoolmaster in that town. It has b^en inferred that he 

 must have ,been aa ecclesiastic, and it has been conjectured that he 

 may have been a Benedictine monk. In a poem of Dunbar, printed in 

 1508, he is spoken of as dead : and iu one of his poems he had 

 described himself as a ' man of age.' His tale of ' Orpheus Kyng, and 

 liow he yeid to hewyn aud to hel to seik his queue,' was printed at 

 Edinburgh, in 1508 : and in 1593 there was printed his ' Testament of 

 Faire Creseide,' which had been suggested by the "f roilus and Creseide ' 

 of Chaucer, and is found in the common editions of that poet's works. 

 His beautiful pastoral of 'Robin and Mokyue' is known to most 

 readers from Percy's 'Reliques.' Other specimens of Henrysou's 

 poems are in Sibbald's ' Chronicle of Scottish Poetry,' Dr. Irving'a 

 Lives of the Scottish Poets,' Lord Hailes's ' Ancient Scottish Poems,' 

 Ellis's ' Specimens,' and more recent collections. His thirteen poems, 

 called 'Fables,' were edited by Dr. Irving in 1832, for tho Bannatyne 

 club, and for that club, iu 1824, Mr. George Chalmers had edited the 

 ' Testament of Creseide,' and ' Robin and Makyne.' Henryaou writes 

 with much greater purity and correctness than most Scotsmen of his 

 time : his versification is good, and his poetical fancy rich aud lively. 



HEPH^E'STION, a grammarian of Alexaudria, lived about the 

 middle of the 2nd century of the Christian era. He is said to have 

 nstructed the emperor Verus, (Julius Capitolinus, c. 2.) He wrote a 

 .realise on Greek metres, which was printed for the first time at 

 Florence iu 152(3 : but the best edition is by Gaisford, 8vo., Oxford, 

 .810, with the ' Chrestomathia ' of Proclus, reprinted at Leipzig, 1832. 

 An English translation of this work, with prolegomena aud notes by 

 ". H. Barnaul, appeared at Cambridge in 1843. 



HKl'H.ESTION. [ALEXANDER II1.J 



HERACLITUS of Ephesus, surnamed the Naturalist, belongs to 



.he dynamical school of the Ionian philosophy. He is said to have 



>ecn born nbout ii.c. 600, aud, according to Aristotle, died iu the 



ixtieth year of his ago. The title be assumed of ' self-tiught ' refutes 



at ouce the claims of the various masters whom he is said to have 



