Cloth binding. Black lettering with gilt title on front cover.

The Man of Feeling is a sentimental novel published in 1771, written by Scottish author Henry Mackenzie. The novel presents a series of moral vignettes which the naïve protagonist Harley either observes, is told about, or participates in. This novel is often seen to contain elements of the Romantic novel, which became prolific in the years following its publishing.

The Man of Feeling details the fragmentary episodes of the life of Harley which exist within the remains of a manuscript traded to the initial narrator of the novel by a priest. The novel itself begins with these two latter figures hunting, whereas the manuscript is missing the first ten chapters and approximately thirty others at various locations throughout the manuscript’s entirety.

As a young boy, Harley loses his parents and is assigned several guardians who constantly disagree with each other. They do however agree that he should make an effort to acquire more wealth, and so they urge him to make an old distant relative amiable towards him to claim some inheritance. Harley fails in this endeavour, as he doesn’t cooperate with the relative’s attempts to warm to him.

Harley is then advised to acquire a patron; to sell his vote at an election for a lease of land. His neighbour Mr. Walton gives him a letter of introduction, and he leaves home (and Miss Walton) for London. He meets a beggar and his dog on the way, and after donating to them, hears the fortune-telling beggar’s story.

In the following (missing) chapters, Harley formally visits the baronet Mr. Walton recommended him to, because when the narrative continues, Harley is calling on him for the second time. The baronet however is away from London, and Harley meets another gentleman named Tom. They go for a stroll and then dine together, discussing pensions and resources with two older men.

Harley proceeds to visit Bedlam, and weeps for an inmate there, before dining with a scorned, cynical man and together they discuss honour and vanity. He then demonstrates his skill (or, as many argue, his lack of skill) in physiognomy by being charitable on behalf of an old gentleman, with whom Harley later plays cards. After losing money to them, Harley is informed the gentleman and his acquaintance are con men.

Approached by a prostitute, Harley takes her to a tavern and feeds her, despite having to hand the waiter his pocket watch as collateral for paying the bill, and then meets again with her the next morning to hear her story. At its conclusion her father arrives, and after a misunderstanding is reconciled with his daughter.

Upon discovering that his claim for the land lease has failed, Harley takes a stagecoach back home, discussing poetry and vice with a fellow passenger until they part ways and the coach reaches the end of its route. Harley continues on foot, and along the way meets Edwards, an old farmer from his village who has fallen on hard times and is returning from his conscription in the army. Together they approach the village, to find the schoolhouse destroyed, and two orphans who are actually the grandchildren of Harley’s companion. Harley takes the three of them home and provides some land for them.

After discussing corrupt military commanders with Edwards, Harley is informed to his dismay that Miss Walton is going to be married to Sir Harry Benson.

The Man of Feeling then jumps to an unconnected tale of a man named Mountford, who journeys to Milan as tutor to the young Sedley, where they meet with a count. They visit a debtors’ prison to find a man and his family living there at the behest of the count’s son, a man who had been so charming to the two gentlemen. Sedley pays the family’s debt, and then Mountford and Sedley leave Milan in disgust. Jamie is then renowned as the ‘Man of Feeling’ and is distressed to find that his entry is no longer there.

The narrative returns to the story of Harley. Miss Walton has not married Benson. She visits an unwell Harley (who has contracted a fever nursing Edwards and his grandchildren), who confesses his love to her. They hold hands and he dies.

Henry Mackenzie FRSE (August 1745 – 14 January 1831, born and died in Edinburgh) was a Scottish lawyer, novelist, and writer, sometimes seen as the Addison of the North. While remembered mostly as an author, his main income came from legal roles, which led in 1804–1831 to a lucrative post as Comptroller of Taxes for Scotland, whose possession allowing him to follow his interest in writing.

 Mackenzie was born at Liberton Wynd in Edinburgh on 26 July 1745. His father, Dr Joshua Mackenzie, was a distinguished Edinburgh physician and his mother, Margaret Rose, belonged to an old Nairnshire family. Mackenzie’s own family descended from the ancient Barons of Kintail through the Mackenzies of Inverlael.

Mackenzie was educated at the High School and studied law at University of Edinburgh. He was then articled to George Inglis of Redhall (grandfather of John Alexander Inglis of Redhall), who was attorney for the crown in the management of exchequer business. Inglis had his Edinburgh office on Niddry Wynd, off the Royal Mile, a short distance from Mackenzie’s family home.

In 1765 he was sent to London for his legal studies, and on his return to Edinburgh he set up his own legal office at Cowgatehead off the Grassmarket, apparently as a partner with Inglis (but appearing in directories more as a rival), while he concurrently acted as attorney for the Crown.

Mackenzie had tried for several years to interest publishers in what would become his first and most famous work, The Man of Feeling, but they rejected it. Finally, Mackenzie published it anonymously in 1771, but to instant success. The “Man of Feeling” is a weak creature, dominated by futile benevolence, who goes up to London and falls into the hands of those who exploit his innocence. The sentimental key in the book shows the author’s acquaintance with Sterne and Richardson, but in Sir Walter Scott’s summary assessment, his work lacked the story construction, humour and character of those writers.

A clergyman from Bath named Eccles claimed authorship of the book, supporting his pretensions with a manuscript full of changes and erasures. Mackenzie’s name was then officially announced, but Eccles appears to have convinced some people. In 1773 Mackenzie published a second novel, The Man of the World, whose hero was as consistently bad as the Man of Feeling had been “constantly obedient to every emotion of his moral sense”, as Sir Walter Scott put it. Julia de Roubigné (1777) is an epistolary novel.

The first of his dramatic pieces, The Prince of Tunis, was staged in Edinburgh in 1773 with some success, but others failed. Mackenzie belonged to an Edinburgh literary club in Edinburgh, where papers in the manner of The Spectator were read. This led to the establishment of the weekly Mirror (23 January 1779 – 27 May 1780), of which Mackenzie was editor and chief contributor. It was followed in 1785 by a similar paper, the Lounger, which ran for nearly two years and included one of the earliest tributes to Robert Burns.

In 1783, Mackenzie was a joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He became its Literary President in 1812–1828 and Vice President in 1828–1831. At this stage he was listed as an “attorney at the exchequer” living at Browns Square off the Grassmarket.

Mackenzie was an ardent Tory. He wrote many tracts intended to counteract doctrines of the French Revolution, contributing to the Edinburgh Herald under the pseudonym “Brutus”. Most remained anonymous, but he acknowledged his Review of the Principal Proceedings of the Parliament of 1784, a defence of the policy of William Pitt written at the desire of Henry Dundas. He was rewarded in 1804 with the office of comptroller of the taxes for Scotland.

In 1776 Mackenzie married Penuel, daughter of Sir Ludovich Grant of Grant. They had eleven children. He was in later years a notable figure in Edinburgh society, nicknamed the Man of Feeling, but in fact a hard-headed man of affairs with a kindly heart. Some of his literary reminiscences appeared in his Account of the Life and Writings of John Home, Esq. (1822). He also wrote a Life of Doctor Blacklock, prefixed to the 1793 edition of the poet’s works.

In 1805 Mackenzie was living in a townhouse at 55 George Square. In 1806 he moved to the newly completed house at 6 Heriot Row, where he lived as its first occupant until his death. All Heriot Row houses are relatively large, but No. 6 has four bays, not three, making it a third larger than its neighbours.

In 1807 The Works of Henry Mackenzie were published surreptitiously, and he then himself superintended the publication of his Works (8 vols., 1808). There is admiring but discriminating criticism of his work in a Prefatory Memoir affixed by Sir Walter Scott to an edition of Mackenzie’s novels in Ballantyne’s Novelist’s Library (vol. v., 1823).