2. “At five—1. The postil will be on this point:—In what language our Saviour will speak the last sentence to mankind.
3. “The lecture will be on Jesus Christ’s sitting at the right hand of God; where that is; the honours and lustre of his inauguration; the learning, criticism, and piety of that glorious article.
“The Monday’s orations will shortly be resumed. On Wednesday the oration will be on the skits of the fashions, or a live gallery of family pictures in all ages; ruffs, muffs, puffs manifold; shoes, wedding-shoes, two-shoes, slip-shoes, heels, clocks, pantofles, buskins, pantaloons, garters, shoulder-knots, periwigs, head-dresses, modesties, tuckers, farthingales, corkins, minnikins, slammakins, ruffles, round-robins, fans, patches; dame, forsooth, madam, my lady, the wit and beauty of my granmum; Winnifred, Joan, Bridget, compared with our Winny, Jenny, and Biddy: fine ladies and pretty gentlewomen; being a general view of the beau monde from before Noah’s flood to the year ’29. On Friday will be something better than last Tuesday. After each a bob at the times.”
This very year, 1729, the Dunciad was published, and in it this Rabelais of the pulpit had, of course, his niche. Pope had been accused of taking the bread out of people’s mouths. He denies this, and asks if “Colley (Cibber) has not still his lord, and Henley his butchers;” and ends with these lines, which, however, had no effect, for Henley went on ranting for eighteen years longer—
“But where each science lifts its modern type,
History her pot, Divinity his pipe;
While proud Philosophy repines to show,
Dishonest sight! his breeches rent below,—
Imbrown’d with native bronze, lo! Henley stands,
Tuning his voice and balancing his hands.
How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue!
How sweet the periods, neither said nor sung!
Still break the benches, Henley, with thy strain,
While Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson preach in vain.
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 when monkeys were the gods.
But Fate with butchers placed thy priestly stall,
Meek modern faith to murder, hack, and maul,
And bade thee live to crown Britannia’s praise
In Toland’s, Tindal’s, and in Woolston’s days.”[603]
In another place he says—
“Henley lay inspired beside a sink,
And to mere mortals seemed a priest in drink.”
Pope often attacked Henley in the Grub Street Journal, and the Orator retaliated. A year or two after the Essay on Man was published, Henley (Dec. 1737) announced a lecture, “Whether Mr. Pope be a man of sense, in one argument—‘Whatever is is right.’” If whatever is is right, Henley thought that nothing could be wrong; ergo, he himself was not a proper object of satire.
Henley’s pulpit was covered with velvet and gold lace, and over his altar was written, “The PRIMITIVE Eucharist.” A contemporary journalist describes him entering his pulpit suddenly, like a harlequin, through a sort of trap-door at the back, and “at one large leap jumping into it and falling to work,” beating his notions into the butcher-audience simultaneously with his hands, arms, legs, and head.
In one of his arrogant puffs, he boasts that he has singly executed what “would sprain a dozen of modern doctors of the tribe of Issachar;” that no one dares to answer his challenges; that he can write, read, and study twelve hours a day and not feel the yoke; and write three dissertations a week without help, and put the Church in danger. He struck medals for his tickets, with a star rising to the meridian upon them, and the vain superscription “Ad summa” (“To the heights”), and below, “Inveniam viam aut faciam” (“I will find a way or make one”).