O great restorer of the good old stage,
Preacher at once and zany of the age!
O worthy thou of Egypt's wise abodes,
A decent priest where monkeys were the gods."
Book iii., v. 199.
Pope says he had a "gilt tub," and insinuates that he sometimes got drunk. Among the sleeping worthies in the 'Dunciad,'
"—— Henley lay inspired beside a sink,
And to mere mortals seemed a priest in drink."
A contemporary journalist, who says that the fame of Henley induced him to be present at one of the lectures in Newport Market, describes him as entering like a harlequin by a door behind the pulpit, and "at one large leap jumping into it, and falling to work." "His notions," he says, "the orator beat into the audience with hands, arms, legs, and head, as if people's understandings were to be courted and knocked down with blows." The price of admission was a shilling. The following are samples of Henley's extraordinary advertisements:—
"At the Oratory in Newport Market, to-morrow, at half-an-hour after ten, the sermon will be on the Witch of Endor. At half-an-hour after five, the theological lecture will be on the conversion and original of the Scottish nation, and of the Picts and Caledonians; St. Andrew's relics and panegyric, and the character and mission of the Apostles.