MEMOIR OF HENRY MACKENZIE. BY SIR WALTER SCOTT For the biographical part of the following Memoir, we are chiefly indebted to a short sketch of the life of our distinguished contemporary, compiled from the most authentic sources, and prefixed to a beautiful duodecimo edition of The Man of Feeling, printed at Paris a few years since. We have had the further advantage of correcting and enlarging the statements which it contains, from undoubted authority. HENRY MACKENZIE, Esq. was born at Edinburgh in August 1745, on the same day on which Prince Charles Stuart landed in Scotland. His father was Doctor Joshua Mackenzie, of that city; and his mother, Margaret, the eldest daughter of Mr. Rose, of Kilravock, of a very ancient family in Nairnshire. After being educated at the High-School and University of Edinburgh, Mr. Mackenzie, by the advice of some friends of his father, was articled to Mr. Inglis, of Redhall, in order to acquire a knowledge of the business of the Exchequer, a law department, in which he was likely to have fewer competitors than in any other in Scotland. To this profession, although not perfectly compatible with that literary taste which he very early displayed, Mr. Mackenzie applied with due diligence; and, in 1765, went to London, to study the modes of English Exchequer practice, which, as well as the constitution of the court, are similar in both countries. While there, his talents induced a friend to solicit his remaining in London, and qualifying himself for the English bar. But the anxious wishes of his family that he should reside with them, and the moderation of an unambitious mind, decided his return to Edinburgh: and here he became, first, partner, and afterwards successor, to Mr. Inglis, in the office of the Attorney for the Crown. His professional labor, however, did not prevent his attachment to literary pursuits. When in London, he sketched some part of his first, and very popular work, The Man of Feeling, which was published in 1771, without his name; and was so much a favorite with the public, as to become, a few years after, the occasion of a remarkable literary fraud. A young clergyman, Mr. Eccles, of Bath, observing that this work was unaccompanied by an author's name, laid claim to it, transcribed the whole in his own hand, with blottings, interlineations, and corrections; and maintained his assumed right with such plausible pertinacity, that Messrs. Cadell and Strachan (Mr. Mackenzie's publishers) found it necessary to undeceive the public by a formal contradiction. This impostor was afterwards drowned while bathing in the river Avon. In a few years after this, Mr. Mackenzie published his Man of the World, which seems to be intended as a second part to The Man of Feeling. It breathes the same tone of exquisite moral delicacy, and of refined sensibility. In his former fiction, he imagined a hero constantly obedient to every emotion of his moral sense; in The Man of the World, he exhibited, on the contrary, a person rushing headlong into guilt and ruin, and spreading misery all around him, by pursuing a selfish and sensual happiness which he expected to obtain in defiance of the moral sense. His next production was Julia de Roubigné, a novel in a series of letters. The fable is deeply interesting, and the letters are written with great elegance and propriety of style In 1776, Mr. Mackenzie was married to Miss Penuel Grant, daughter of Sir Ludovick Grant, of Grant, Bart., and Lady Margaret Ogilvy, by whom he has a numerous family; the eldest of whom Mr. Henry Joshua Mackenzie, has been called to the situation of a Judge of the Supreme Court of Session, with the unanimous approbation of his profession and his country. In 1777, or 1778, a society of gentlemen, of Edinburgh, were accustomed at there meetings to read short essays of their comDosition, in the manner of the Spectator, and Mr. Mackenzie being admitted a member, after hearing several of them read, suggested the advantage of giving greater variety to their compositions, by admitting some of a lighter kind, descriptive of common life and manners; and he exhibited some specimens of the kind in his own writing. From this arose the Mirror,* a well-known periodical publication, to which Mr. Mackenzie performed the office of editor, and was also the principal contributor. The success of the Mirror naturally led Mr. Mackenzie and his friends to undertake the Lounger,† upon the same plan, which was not less read, admired, and generally circulated. When the Royal Society of Edinburgh was instituted, Mr Mackenzie became one of its most active members, and he has occasionally enriched the volumes of its Transactions by his valuable communications; particularly by an elegant tribute to the memory of his friend, Judge Abercromby, and a memoir on German Tragedy. He is one of the original members of the Highland Society; and by him have been published the volumes of their Transactions, to which he has prefixed an account of the Institution and principal proceedings of the Society, and an interesting account of Gaelic poetry. In the year 1792 he was one of those literary men who contributed some little occasional tracts to disabuse the lower orders of the people, led astray at that time by the prevailing frenzy of the French Revolution. In 1793, he wrote the Life of Dr. Blacklock, at the request of his widow, prefixed to a quarto edition of that blind poet's works. His intimacy with Blacklock gave him an opportunity of knowing the habits of his life, the bent of his mind, and the feelings peculiar to the privation of sight, under which that amiable and interesting poet labored. The literary society of Edinburgh, in the latter part of last century, whose intimacy he enjoyed, is described in his Life of John Home, which he read to the Royal Society in 1812 and, as a sort of Supplement to that Life, he then added some Critical Essays, chiefly on Dramatic Poetry, which have not been published. He has since contributed to the Society a curious Essay on Dreaming, which was heard with much interest. * Begun the 23d January 1779; ended 27th May 1780. In 1808, Mr. Mackenzie published a complete edition of his works, in eight volumes octavo; including a tragedy, The Spanish Father, and a comedy, The White Hypocrite, which last was once performed at the Theatre-Royal, Covent-Garden. The tragedy had never been represented, in consequence of Mr. Garrick's opinion, that the catastrophe was of too shocking a kind for the modern stage; though he owned the merit of the poetry, the force of some of the scenes, and the scope for fine action in the character of Alphonso, the leading person of the drama. In this edition also is given a carefully corrected copy of the tragedy of The Prince of Tunis, which had been represented at Edinburgh in 1763 with great success. Among the prose compositions of Mr. Mackenzie, is a political tract, An Account of the Proceedings of the Parliament of 1784, which he was induced to write at the persuasion of his old and steady friend, Mr. Dundas, afterwards Lord Melville. It introduced him to the countenance and regard of Mr. Pitt, who revised the work with particular care and attention, and made several corrections in it with his own hand. Some years after, Mr. Mackenzie was appointed, on the recommendation of Lord Melville and the Right Hon. George Rose, also his particular friend, to the office of Comptroller of the Taxes for Scotland, an appointment of very considerable labor and responsibility, and in discharging which this fanciful and ingenious author has shown his power of entering into and discussing the most dry and complicated details, when such labor became a matter of duty. The time, we hope, is yet distant, when speaking of this author as of those with whom his genius ranks him, a biographer may with delicacy trace his personal character and peculiarities, or record the manner in which he has discharged the duties of a citizen. When that hour shall arrive, we trust few of his own contemporaries will be left to mourn him; but we can anticipate the sorrow of a later generation, when deprived of the wit which enlivened their hours of enjoyment, the benevolence which directed and encouraged their studies, and the wisdom which instructed them in their duties to society. It is enough to say here, that Mr. Mackenzie survives, venerable and venerated, as the last link of the chain which connects the Scottish literature of the present age with the period when there were giants in the land-the days of Robertson, and Hume, and Smith, and Home, and Clerk, and Fergusson; and that the remembrance of an era so interesting could not have been intrusted to a sounder judgment, a more correct taste, or a more tenacious memory. It is much to be wished, that Mr. Mackenzie, taking a wider view of his earlier years than in the Life of Home, would place on a more permanent record some of the anecdotes and recollections with which he delights society. We are about to measure his capacity for the task by a sirgular standard, but it belongs to Mr. Mackenzie's character. He has, we believe, shot game of every description which Scotland contains (deer, and probably grouse, excepted,) on the very grounds at present occupied by the extensive and splendid streets of the New Town of Edinburgh; has sought for hares and wild-ducks, where there are now palaces, churches, and assembly-rooms; and has witnessed moral revolutions as surprising as this extraordinary change of local circumstances. These mutations in manners and in morals have been gradual indeed in their progress, but most important in their results, and they have been introduced into Scotland within the last half century. Every sketch of them, or of the circumstances by which they were produced, from the pen of so intelligent an observer, and whose opportunities of observation have been so extensive, would, however slight and detached, rival in utility and amusement any work of the present time. As an author, Mr. Mackenzie has shown talents both for poetry and the drama. Indeed we are of opinion, that no man can succeed perfectly in the line of fictitious composition, without most of the properties of a poet, though he may be no writer of verses; but Mr. Mackenzie possesses the powers of melody in addition to those of poetical conception. He has given a beautiful specimen of legendary poetry, in two little Highland ballads, a style of composition which becomes fashionable from time to time, on account of its simplicity and pathos, and then is again laid aside, when worn out by the commonplace productions of mere imitators, to whom its approved facility offers its chief recommendation. But it is as a Novelist that we are now called on to consider our author's powers; and the universal and permanent popularity of his writings en |