r, he said what he had to say in the
plainest language. He roared his adversary down in good, strong,
picturesque English, if that was any consolation, and with a splendidly
rugged eloquence.

I wish I could remember the words as well as the roar. Henley's
eloquence cannot be forgotten by those who ever once listened to him,
but his wit was not, like Whistler's, so keen nor his thrust so direct
that the phrase, the one word of the retort or the attack, was
unforgettable. He had his little affectations of speech as of style, and
they added to its picturesqueness. But it was what he said that counted,
the talk itself that probably inspired more sound thought and sound
writing than most talk heard in the England of the Nineties. But it fell
unrecorded on paper and memory could not be trusted after all these
years.

It is the greater pity because his books are few. He was poor when he
started in life; almost at once he married; he was generous to a fault,
and the generous man never yet lived who was not pursued by parasites;
and as he was obliged to earn money and as his books were not of the
stuff that makes the "best sellers," his criticism of life and art was
expressed mainly in journalism.

Unfortunately, no just idea of the amount or the quality of his
journalistic work is now to be had even from the files of the _National
Observer_. He had a way of editing every article sent in to him until it
became more than a fair imitation of his own. I can sympathize with his
object--the artist's desire for harmony, for the unity of the paper as a
whole. But if he succeeded, as he did, it was at the sacrifice of the
force, the effect, the character of individual contributions, and nobody
can now say for sure which were Henley's save those he re-published in
book form. When articles I wrote for him appeared in print, it was an
open question with me whether I had the right to call them mine and to
take any money for them. His _Views and Reviews_ gathered from the
_National Observer_ and other papers and periodicals, his three or four
small volumes of verse, the plays he wrote with Stevenson, an anthology
or two, a few books of his editing, are scarcely sufficient to explain
to the present generation his importance in his day and why his
influence made itself felt in literature as keenly as Whistler's in
art, through all the movements and excitements and enthusiasms of the
Nineties. The joyous wars that marked the beginning of my