New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1913-07-11
GOOD JOURNALISM
The Writings of the Late
William Ernest Henley.

William Ernest Henley.
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY. BY L.
Cope Cornford. Frontispiece l2mo,
PIP. V, 10. The HoughtOD Miffiin Com
pany
The best things said about the late
Mr. Henley in this little book are to be
found in a couple OF quoted passages.
When the memorial to him was I'M
yelled in the crypt of ST. Paurs
George Wyndham applied to him GER
tain of Walter Bagehot's words on
Shakespeare: This England lay be-
fore him, as II lies before us all, with
its green fields. and its long hedge
rows. and its many trees, and its great
towns, and its endless hamlets, and its
bold exploits and gathering power, and
he saw that they were good" There
could not be a happier suggestion of
the intensely English sentiment by
which Henley was governed, the love
Of race, the pride Of empire, which was
at the bottom of all that was most
wholesome in his work The other Dor
rowed fragment is from George Mer-
edith, who characterized his friend as
a critic with the rare combination Of
enthusiasm and wakeful judgment"
end praised him as "one of the main
supports Of good literature in our
time" There we have his role pretty
well defned-to be in full passionate
sympathy with his own people. and to
plead with them for what was right
and fine in letters. He played this
part we'll and he is worthy OF remem-
brance.
Mr.. Cornford, bespeaking for him an
undying fame, almost comically over
does the function of the faithful friend.
Henley was not great writer. nor did
he have the makings of one in his COM
position. The truth is that he produced
a good deal Of fustan, both in prose
and verse, having an incurable ten
dency, as Max Beerbohm said of Hall
Caine, TO write at the top OF his voice.
He had, too the sophomorical trait Of
praising old things, as well as new,
with too much Of the air Of the dis
coverer; and with that foible there
went, inevitably, the provincial habit
Of assuming that everybody who dis
agreed with him was necessarily a
Philstine, IL not fool. The pernicious
4,A hn avarrtcad s,t
mate followers can only be realized to
the full by tn Sc who watched their
divagations in the 90's, when THE Ma
tional Observer" was in full swing and
Henley, as editor, was beating the
drum in advocacy Of plain speaking;
but later observers may get some idea
Of the i'll effects Of his teaching from
Mr.. Cornford's perferyid pages. This
ecstatic disciple. with his superlatives,
his warped sense Of proportion and his
whole tone Of humorless hero worship
painfully illustrates the Henleyan ny
pothesis at its worst. But the only
fair thing TO do where Henley himself
10 concerned, is promptly TO reckon
with what was foolish in him and have
done with it, then going on 10 hearty
enjoyment of his better qualities.
These vsre the qualities Of a clever
writer with a zest for delightful sensa-
tons in literature and art. Momenta-
rily there seems something pathetic
about his gusto, when one pauses on
the stories Of his Ill health and other
hardships. Admiration for his joyous
courage is strongly tinctured with sad
ness. He had a hard life. But that,
too. Is point TO be ignored in the pres
ence Of his journalism. There you find
nothing that is sorrowful or sick; you
find only hot appreciat on, expressed in
a style so vigorous and clear that 1t
triumphed over the sheer buster which
was always creeping into IT. He had,
undeniably, way Of making the
reader like what ne liked. MIR. Corn
ford, who quantity finds Matthew Ar
mold a prig, is in terrible taking over
the state Of English criticism at the
time when Henley rode into view, and
we gather that for him his hero's origi-
nality was epoch making. II was. OF
course, nothing of the sort. Henley
had no creative genius, as his clever
but in no wise remarkable verse clearly
shows, and in his criticism he devel-
oped no general ideas, no signal con-
structiVe principles. on the other
hand, when he set out to Interpret the
artist or the author who had stirred
him he had something enkindling about
him. and since he had plenty Of good
taste--along with much that If not pre-
cisely bad was certainly not impecca
ble-he n.ade himself indeed what
Meredith called him. zone Of the main
supports OF good literature in our