HENLEY, WILLIAM ERNEST , British poet, critic and editor, was born at Gloucester and educated at the Crypt grammar school where he had the good fortune to have T. E. Brown (q.v.) as headmaster for a time. Henley contracted tuberculosis as a child, and one foot had to be amputated. He was placed in Edinburgh infirmary in 1874, to be under Lister's care, and from his bed there he sent to the Cornhill Magazine poems in irregular rhythms, describing with poignant force his experiences in hospital. Leslie Stephen, then editor, being in Edinburgh, took Robert Louis Stevenson, another recruit of the Cornhill, to see him in hospital. This meeting was the beginning of a famous friend ship. In 1877 Henley went to London and began a long and dis tinguished journalistic career. He edited London (1877-82), the Magazine of Art (1882-86), and in 1888 became literary editor and in 1889 editor of the Scots Observer, transferred to London as the National Observer. In this paper appeared Kipling's Barrack Room Ballads. In 188o appeared Henley's own Book of Verse, which included the verses written in hospital at Edinburgh, and in 1890 Views and Reviews. The criticisms, covering a wide range of authors (except Heine and Tolstoy, all English and French), though wilful and often one-sided were terse, trenchant and pic turesque. There followed The Song of the Sword (1892) , another volume of verse renamed in 1893 London Voluntaries; three plays in 1892 written with Stevenson-Beau Austin, Deacon Brodie and Admiral Guinea; and Macaire (1895) . In 1898 Henley published a collection of his Poems and in 1901 a second volume of collected poetry with the title Hawthorn and Lavender. He projected the excellent series of "Tudor Translations" and was engaged on the preface to the Authorized Version of the Bible in that edition when he died. He also prepared, with T. F. Henderson, the cen tenary edition of the poems of Robert Burns, contributing an essay on the poet to the last volume. He died on July it, 19o3. A portrait-bust of him by Rodin was presented by his widow to the National Portrait Gallery in 1913. His fame rests on his poetry. He excelled alike in his delicate experiments in complicated metres, and the strong impressionism of Hospital Sketches and London Voluntaries. The influence of Heine may be discerned in these "unrhymed rhythms" ; but he was perhaps a truer and more suc cessful disciple of Heine in his snatches of passionate song, the best of which should retain their place in English literature.
See also references in Stevenson's Letters; Cornhill Magazine (1903) (Sidney Low) ; Fortnightly Review (Aug. 1892) (Arthur Symons) ; and for bibliography, English Illustrated Magazine, vol. xxix. p. 548.