The older brother to whom these comments were addressed was living in London, apparently a fairly successful man of business. Henry permitted himself to indulge his pedagogical and ministerial instincts for the benefit and improvement of his kinsman. They seem to have carried on a mutual recrimination in their letters: Neville was inclined to belittle the divine calling of poets in their teens; while Henry deplored his brother's unwillingness to write at length and upon serious and "instructive" topics. Alas, the ill-starred young man had a mania for self-improvement. If our great-grandparents were all like that what an age it had been for the Scranton correspondence courses! "What is requisite to make one's correspondence valuable?" asks Henry. "I answer, sound sense." (The italics are his own.) "You have better natural abilities than many youth," he tells his light-hearted brother, "but it is with regret I see that you will not give yourself the trouble of writing a good letter. My friend, you never found any art, however trivial, that did not require some application at first." He begs the astounded Neville to fill his letters with his opinions of the books he reads. "You have no idea how beneficial this would be to yourself." Does one not know immediately that Henry is destined to an early grave?
Henry's native sweetness was further impaired by a number of prizes won in magazine competitions. A silver medal and a pair of twelve-inch globes shortly became his for meritorious contributions to the Monthly Mirror. He was also admitted a member of a famous literary society then existing in Nottingham, and although the youngest of the sodality he promptly announced that he proposed to deliver them a lecture. With mingled curiosity and dismay the gathering assembled at the appointed time, and the inspired youth harangued them for two hours on the subject of Genius. The devil, or his agent in Nottingham, had marked Henry for destruction.
In such a career there can be no doubt as to the next step. He published a book of poems. His verses, dealing with such topics as Consumption, Despair, Lullaby of a Female Convict to Her Child the Night Previous to Execution, Lines Spoken by a Lover at the Grave of His Mistress, The Eve of Death, and Sonnet Addressed by a Female Lunatic to a Lady, had been warmly welcomed by the politest magazines of the time. To wish to publish them in more permanent form was natural; but the unfortunate young man conceived the thought that the venture might even be a profitable one. He had found himself troubled with deafness, which threatened to annul his industry in the law; moreover, his spirit was canting seriously toward devotional matters, and thoughts of a college career and then the church were lively in his mind.
The winter of 1802-3 was busily passed in preparing his manuscript for the printer. Probably never before or since, until the Rev. John Franklin Bair of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, set about garnering his collected works into that volume which is the delight of the wicked, has a human heart mulled over indifferent verses with so honest a pleasure and such unabated certainty of immortality. The first two details to be attended to were the printing of what were modestly termed Proposals—i.e., advertisements of the projected volume, calling for pledges of subscription—and, still more important, securing the permission of some prominent person to accept a dedication of the book. The jolly old days of literary patronage were then in the sere and saffron, but it was still esteemed an aid to the sale of a volume if it might be dedicated to some marquis of Carabas. Accordingly the manuscript was despatched to London, and Neville, the philistine brother, was called upon to leave it at the residence of the Duchess of Devonshire. A very humble letter from honest Henry accompanied it, begging leave of her Grace to dedicate his "trifling effusions" to her.
Henry's letters to Neville while his book was in preparation are very entertaining, as those of minor poets always are under such circumstances. Henry was convinced that at least 350 copies would be sold in Nottingham. He writes in exultation that he has already got twenty-three orders even before his "proposals" are ready:
"I have got twenty-three, without making the affair public at all, among my immediate acquaintance: and mind, I neither solicit nor draw the conversation to the subject, but a rumour has got abroad, and has been received more favourably than I expected."
But the matter of the dedication unfortunately lagged far behind the poet's hopes. After the manuscript was left at the house of her Grace of Devonshire there followed what the Ancient Mariner so feelingly calls a weary time. Poor Henry in Nottingham hung upon the postman's heels, but no word arrived from the duchess. She was known to be assaulted from all sides by such applications: indeed her mail seems to have been very nearly as large as that of Mary Pickford or Theda Bara. Then, to his unspeakable anxiety, the miserable and fermenting Henry learned that all parcels sent to the duchess, unless marked with a password known only to her particular correspondents, were thrown into a closet by her porter to be reclaimed at convenience, or not at all. "I am ruined," cried Henry in agony; and the worthy Neville paid several unsuccessful visits to Devonshire House in the attempt to retrieve the manuscript. Finally, after waiting four hours in the servants' hall, he succeeded. Even then undaunted, this long-suffering older brother made one more try in the poet's behalf: he obtained a letter of introduction to the duchess, and called on her in person, wisely leaving the manuscript at home; and with the complaisance of the great the lady readily acquiesced in Henry's modest request. Her name was duly inscribed on the proper page of the little volume, and in course of time the customary morocco-bound copy reached her. Alas, she took no notice of it, and Mr. Southey surmises that "Involved as she was in an endless round of miserable follies, it is probable that she never opened the book."
"Clifton Grove" was the title Henry gave the book, published in 1803.
It is not necessary to take the poems in this little volume more seriously than any seventeen-year-old ejaculations. It is easy to see what Henry's reading had been—Milton, Collins, and Gray, evidently. His unconscious borrowings from Milton do him great credit, as showing how thoroughly he appreciated good poetry. It seeped into his mind and became part of his own outpourings. Il Penseroso gushes to the surface of poor Henry's song every few lines; precious twigs and shreds of Milton flow merrily down the current of his thought. And yet smile as we may, every now and then friend Henry puts something over. One of his poems is a curious foretaste of what Keats was doing ten years later. Every now and then one pauses to think that this lad, once his youthful vapours were over, might have done great things. And as he says in his quaint little preface, "the unpremeditated effusions of a boy, from his thirteenth year, employed, not in the acquisition of literary information, but in the more active business of life, must not be expected to exhibit any considerable portion of the correctness of a Virgil, or the vigorous compression of a Horace."
The publishing game was new to Henry, and the slings and arrows found an unshielded heart. When the first copies of his poor little book came home from the printer he was prostrated to find several misprints. He nearly swooned, but seizing a pen he carefully corrected all the copies. After writing earnest and very polite letters to all the reviewers he dispatched copies to the leading periodicals, and sat down in the sure hope of rapid fame. How bitter was his chagrin when the Monthly Review for February, 1804, came out with a rather disparaging comment: in particular the critic took umbrage at his having put boy to rhyme with sky, and added, referring to Henry's hopes of a college course, "If Mr. White should be instructed by alma mater, he will, doubtless, produce better sense and better rhymes."