His throne it will bless
With righteousness,
And we shall know where to find him."
This must be what the reviewers call a "favourable specimen."
"Sometimes," says the 'Lounger's Common-Place Book,' "one of his old Bloomsbury friends caught the speaker's eye; on these occasions, he could not resist the temptation to gratify his vanity and resentment; after a short pause he would address the unfortunate interloper in words to the following effect: 'You see, sir, all mankind are not exactly of your opinion; there are, you perceive, a few sensible people in the world, who consider me as not wholly unqualified for the office I have undertaken.'
"His abashed and confounded adversaries, thus attacked in a public company, a most awkward species of distress, were glad to retire precipitately, and sometimes were pushed out of the room by Henley's partizans."[243]
It is probable that Henley's partizans were sometimes necessary to secure him from the results of his imprudence, though his boldness appears to have been on a par with it. He once attracted an audience of shoemakers by announcing that he could teach them a method of making shoes with wonderful celerity. The secret consisted in cutting off the tops of old boots. His motto to the advertisement (omne majus continet in se minus, the greater includes the less) had a pleasantry in it, which makes the disappointment of the poor shoemakers doubly ludicrous.
Henley, on one occasion, was for several days in the custody of the King's messenger, having incurred the displeasure of the House of Lords. "Lord Chesterfield, at that time secretary of state," says the 'Lounger,' "amused himself and his associates in office by sporting with the hopes and fears of our restorer of ancient eloquence; during his examination before the privy council, he requested permission to sit, on account of a real, or, as it was supposed, pretended rheumatism. Occasioning considerable merriment by his eccentric answers, and sometimes by the oddity of his questions, he was observed to join heartily and loudly in the laugh he had himself created.
"The Earl having expostulated with him on the impropriety of ridiculing the exertions of his native country, at the moment rebellion raged in the heart of the kingdom, Henley replied, 'I thought there was no harm, my Lord, in cracking a joke on a red-herring:' alluding to the worthy primate of that name, who proposed, and, I believe, had actually commenced, arming and arraying the clergy.