The Man of Feeling

The Man of Feeling

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Man of Feeling, by Henry
Mackenzie (#1 in our series by Henry Mackenzie)
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Title: The Man of Feeling
Author: Henry Mackenzie
Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5083] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on April 18,
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE MAN
OF FEELING ***

Transcribed by David Price, email [email protected], from the
1886 Cassell & Company edition.

THE MAN OF FEELING

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

Henry Mackenzie, the son of an Edinburgh physician, was born in
August, 1745. After education in the University of Edinburgh he went
to London in 1765, at the age of twenty, for law studies, returned to
Edinburgh, and became Crown Attorney in the Scottish Court of
Exchequer. When Mackenzie was in London, Sterne's "Tristram
Shandy" was in course of publication. The first two volumes had
appeared in 1759, and the ninth appeared in 1767, followed in 1768,
the year of Sterne's death, by "The Sentimental Journey." Young
Mackenzie had a strong bent towards literature, and while studying law
in London, he read Sterne, and falling in with the tone of sentiment
which Sterne himself caught from the spirit of the time and the example
of Rousseau, he wrote "The Man of Feeling." This book was published,
without author's name, in 1771. It was so popular that a young
clergyman made a copy of it popular with imagined passages of erasure
and correction, on the strength of which he claimed to be its author, and
obliged Henry Mackenzie to declare himself. In 1773 Mackenzie
published a second novel, "The Man of the World," and in 1777 a third,
"Julia de Roubigne." An essay-reading society in Edinburgh, of which
he was a leader, started in January, 1779, a weekly paper called The
Mirror, which he edited until May, 1780. Its writers afterwards joined
in producing The Lounger, which lasted from February, 1785, to
January, 1787. Henry Mackenzie contributed forty-two papers to The

Mirror and fifty-seven to The Lounger. When the Royal Society of
Edinburgh was founded Henry Mackenzie was active as one of its first
members. He was also one of the founders of the Highland Society.
Although his "Man of Feeling" was a serious reflection of the false
sentiment of the Revolution, Mackenzie joined afterwards in writing
tracts to dissuade the people from faith in the doctrines of the
Revolutionists. Mackenzie wrote also a tragedy, "The Prince of Tunis,"
which was acted with success at Edinburgh, and a comedy, "The White
Hypocrite," which was acted once only at Covent garden. He died at
the age of eighty-six, on the 13th June, 1831, having for many years
been regarded as an elder friend of their own craft by the men of letters
who in his days gave dignity to Edinburgh society, and caused the town
to be called the Modern Athens.
A man of refined taste, who caught the tone of the French sentiment of
his time, has, of course, pleased French critics, and has been translated
into French. "The Man of Feeling" begins with imitation of Sterne, and
proceeds in due course through so many tears that it is hardly to be
called a dry book. As guide to persons of a calculating disposition who
may read these pages I append an index to the Tears shed in "The Man
of Feeling."

AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

My dog had made a point on a piece of fallow-ground, and led the
curate and me two or three hundred yards over that and some stubble
adjoining, in a breathless state of expectation, on a burning first of
September.
It was a false point, and our labour was vain: yet, to do Rover justice
(for he's an excellent dog, though I have lost his pedigree), the fault