The friend and biographer of Cowper, and grandson of William Hayley, dean of Chichester, was born in that city on the 9th November, 1745…. After some years’ private tuition he pursued his studies at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1766 he procured a certificate of admission to the Middle Temple, London, but a short trial of legal studies was sufficient to dissipate the unexperienced preference which he had cherished for the profession of law. After his marriage in 1769, he stayed for some years chiefly in London, but in 1774 he retired to his patrimonial estate of Eartham in Sussex, resolved to spend the remainder of his days in rural quiet, with only such an amount of literary activity as might defy ennui and give a zest to life. Hayley made more than one attempt to succeed as a dramatic author, but first won fame by his poetical “Essays on Painting,” “History and Epic Poetry,” and by his poem the “Triumph of Temper.”… On the death of Warton, Hayley was offered the laureateship, but declined it. In 1792 he made the acquaintance of the poet Cowper; and this acquaintance ripened into a friendship which remained unbroken until Cowper’s death in 1800. This bereavement was separated by only a week from that caused by the death of Hayley’s natural son Thomas Alphonso, who had given great promise of excellence as a sculptor; and, shrinking from the associations now connected with Eartham, Hayley retired to what he called a “marine hermitage,” which he had built at Feltham, and there resided till his death, November 20, 1820. Besides the “life of Cowper,” published in 1803, Hayley was the author of a number of works in prose, which were not, however, so successful as his early poetical productions…. The “Memoirs of Hayley,” 2 vols., for writing which, to be published posthumously, he received a considerable allowance during the last twelve years of his life, appeared in 1823.

Personal

  He was considerably above the middle stature, had a countenance remarkably expressive of intellect and feeling, and a commanding air and deportment that reminded the beholder rather of a military officer, than of the character he assumes in the close of his epistolary addresses (he used to sign himself the Hermit). The deplorable infirmity, however, of his early years, had left a perceptible lameness, which attended him through life, and induced a necessity of adventitious aid, towards procuring him the advantage of a tolerably even walk. As to his personal qualities, of a higher order, these were cheerfulness and sympathy in a very eminent degree; so eminent, indeed, that as no afflictions of his own could divest him of the former, so neither could the afflictions of others find him destitute of the latter. His temper also was singularly sweet and amiable, being not only free from ebullitions of anger, but from all those minor defects which it is needless to enumerate, and to which social peace and harmony are so repeatedly sacrificed.

  The book [Hayley’s “Memoirs”] itself is to me the most miserable, meagre, affected, ill-arranged string of common-places I ever yawned over. You are more tenderhearted and indulgent than I am. I cannot give Hayley credit for all the feeling he pretends to. Feeling does not thrust itself into notice so perpetually: feeling does not flow into verse, or even words, at the first moment of excitement, though I know that, when it subsides into calm melancholy, poetry is its natural language. Hayley wrote epitaphs upon his dearest friends before their eyes were well closed—a sort of poetical carrion crow! I never could have endured that man, with all his tender epitaphs. I daresay he helped to drive his poor wife mad—“his pitiably irritable Eliza.” There is something very unsatisfactory even in his attention to the poor youth, his son. How strange that he should choose only to visit him in the day-time, making Felpham his own residence. But all the particulars of Hayley’s life did not bear telling.

  He made this residence a delightful spot. Gibbon called it the little Paradise of Eartham. “His place (said the historian) though small, is as elegant as his mind, which I value much more highly;” and communicating to Lord Sheffield a wish which Hayley had expressed to become acquainted with him; he adds, that this was “no vulgar compliment.” Hayley is now estimated only by his writings, and these, because they were greatly overrated in their day, have perhaps, been depreciated since in proportion. But the person of whom Gibbon could speak thus, must have been no ordinary man. Literary acquirements like his were rare at that time, and are not common now; and these were not his only accomplishments. All who knew him, concur in describing his manners as in the highest degree winning, and his conversation as delightful. It is said that few men have ever rendered so many essential acts of kindness to those who stood in need of them. His errors were neither few nor trifling; but his good qualities greatly preponderated. He was a most affectionate father, a most warm and constant friend; and his latter days of infirmity and pain were distinguished by no common degree of cheerful fortitude and Christian resignation.

  If Hayley was always romancing, as it were, which his position in life allowed; always living in a fool’s paradise of ever-dispelled, ever-renewed self-deceptions about the commonest trifles; seeing all men and things athwart a fog of amiability; it was not in the main a worse world than common, and sometimes it was a useful life to others. The pension his bustling energy obtained for Cowper outweighs many an absurdity and inanity. He was surely an endurable specimen, for variety sake, among corn-law and game-preserving squires. A sincere, if conventional love of literature, independence of the great world, and indifference to worldly distinctions, are, after all, not criminal foibles. Pertinacious, wrongheaded, and often foolish in his actions; weakly, greedy of applause, as ready to lavish it; prone to exaggeration of word and thought; without reticence; he was also an agreeable companion, really kind-hearted and generous; though vanity mixed itself with all he did; for ever going out of his way to befriend some one, to set in motion some well-intended, ill-considered scheme. For Blake,—let us remember, to the hermit’s honour,—Hayley continued to entertain unfeigned respect. And the self-tutored, willful visionary must have been a startling phenomenon to so conventional a mind. During the artist’s residence at Felpham his literary friend was constantly on the alert to advance his fortunes.

  Hayley was a mediocre poet, who had for a time obtained distinction above his merits. Afterwards his star had declined, but having an excellent heart, he had not been in the least soured by the downfall of his reputation. He was addicted to a pompous rotundity of style; perhaps he was rather absurd; but he was thoroughly good-natured, very anxious to make himself useful, and devoted to Cowper, to whom, as a poet, he looked up with an admiration unalloyed by any other feeling.

  Hayley, though a bad poet, was a good friend.

General

  There are just appeared three new “Epistles on History,” addressed to Mr. Gibbon by Mr. Hayley. They are good poems, I believe, weight and measure, but, except some handsome new similes, have little poetry and less spirit. In short, they are written by Judgment, who has set up for herself, forgetting that her business is to correct verses, and not to write them.

  Who is this Mr. Hayley? His poetry has more merit than that of most of his contemporaries; but his whiggism is so bigoted, and his Christianity so fierce, that he almost disgusts one with two very good things.

  I hope you like Mr. Hayley’s poem; he rises with the subject, and since Pope’s death, I am satisfied that England has not seen so happy a mixture of strong sense and flowing numbers. Are you not delighted with his address to his mother? I understand that she was, in plain prose, every thing that he speaks her in verse.

  The epistles of Mr. Hayley on Painting, History, and Epic Poetry, would perhaps more properly have been thrown under the title Historical, had I thought it worth while thus to designate a column for the admission of a single writer. They inculcate however so much elegant and judicious criticism, and diffuse so much light over their respective subjects, that they may not unaptly find a place in the didactic compartment. The versification of these pieces is peculiarly smooth, correct, and flowing, but not unfrequently deficient in energy and compression. The characters are in general justly drawn, and several display a warmth of fancy and of beauty in illustration highly worthy of applause.

  As Hayley was too much extolled at the beginning of his poetical course, so was he undeservedly neglected or ridiculed at the close of it. The excessive admiration he at first met with, joined to that flattering self-opinion which a solitary life is apt to engender, made him too easily satisfied with what he had done. Perhaps he wrote worse after his acquaintance with Cowper; for, aiming at a simplicity which he had not power to support, he became flat and insipid. He had at no time much force of conception or language. Yet if he never elevates he frequently amuses his reader. His chief attraction consists in setting off some plain and natural thought or observation, by a sparkling and ingenious similitude, such as we commonly find in the Persian poets. To this may be added a certain sweetness of numbers peculiar to himself, without the spirit and edge of Pope, or the boldness of Dryden, and fashioned as I think to his own recitation, which though musical, was somewhat too pompous and monotonous. He was desirous that all his rhymes should be exact; but they are sometimes so only according to his own manner of pronouncing them. He holds about the same rank among our poets that Bertaut does among the French; but differs from him in this; that, whereas Bertaut was the earliest of a race analogous to the school of Dryden and Pope, so Hayley was the latest of the correspondent class among ourselves.

  The vain and silly egotism, and the tiresome load of epithets which clogs his style with sickly affectation, revolt me so much, that I have barely candour enough left to give Hayley credit for kindness of heart, and steadiness of attachment.

  On the 18th of the month, the tragedy of “Lord Russel,” by Mr. Hayley, was also represented at this theatre. He had written this, and one other tragedy, “Marcella,” for a private theatre, and it remained to be tried how compositions, so very sober and regular, would gratify the taste of a public auditory. I believe it answered the most sanguine expectations. The characters interested by their virtue: but the muse of Hayley was not, I think, vigorous enough for tragedy; his verses were too uniform in their structure, and his diction rather feeble and flat.

  If Hayley had not a high invention and forcible intellect, his mind was copiously enriched with multifarious acquisitions from study, a retentive memory, and a susceptible heart. He wanted compression; but his moral sentiments were always amiable and abundant, though languid; and surely the range of literature he had mastered, alone entitled him not only to respect but to distinction.

  Whether or not any of Hayley’s “Essays” have had the specific effect which he hoped to produce, they imparted, by help of the copious notes wherewith he elucidated them, much information in an agreeable form: his translated specimens of Dante, which were introduced in these notes, revived among us a taste for the Italian poets; and Spanish literature had been so long and so utterly neglected in this country, that he may be truly said to have introduced the knowledge of it to his contemporaries…. Perhaps the “Essays” were read more for the sake of the notes than of the poetry; but the poetry was praised in the highest terms.

  If Hayley was formerly over-rated, he is now under-valued.

  Hayley’s masterpiece, “The Triumphs of Temper,” published in 1781, was the “hit” of the day. Its author was a man of considerable culture and intellectual refinement, and, as his “Epistle to Romney” shows, of no contemptible artistic taste. It is impossible to read his warblings, with whatever amount of critical disdain for the warbler, without conceiving a genuine liking for the man. His nature had all the simplicity in which his art was so lamentably to seek, and his disposition was as modest as his Muse was pretentious. His geniality and good nature break out irresistibly even in his metrical attack upon Hume, and even in his letters to the egregious Miss Anna Seward he cannot heartily abuse even his rough Johnson, but is continually slipping in admiring epithets which his fair but fiercer correspondent amusingly entreats him to recall. But Johnson, omnivorous reader though he was, declared himself unable to get beyond the first two pages of “The Triumphs of Temper,” and posterity perhaps has never got so far. Its readability even to a seasoned critic is strictly limited to its interest as a deliberate imitation, sometimes declining into a downright parody, of its illustrious model…. Hayley is always faultlessly smooth in his versification, and careful in his workmanship, never slovenly, never inelegant. The errors of his poetic creed stand therefore conclusively proved in the hopeless reprobation of one, who, if poets could be saved by “correctness” alone, would occupy a high position among the blest.

  His verse itself is impossible and intolerable to any but the student of literary history, who knows that all things are possible, and finds the realisation of all in its measure interesting.