not certain that I should not arrive too late to see him. But
I found him out of danger; and had the happiness of returning to London
at the end of the week, leaving him recovering. But I saw him no more.
He died in November of the following year.

"You will wish to know what we read aloud. Chiefly manuscript poems and
plays of Mr. Hayley's, and modern publications. One of the former was a
sensible, just, and, as he read it, an apparently well-written Epistle
to a Socinian friend on the errors of his belief. You know, I suppose,
that our friend always read the Bible and Testament before he left his
chamber in a morning." Hayley's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 204. The epistle,
of which Mrs. Opie speaks, was printed with a few other "Poems on
serious and sacred Subjects," to be distributed among the friends of the
author, two years before his death.

His person and character are well described by the Rev. Doctor Johnson,
in the following words: "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. It was the most even in its exercise, that the
writer of this brief account of him ever witnessed. Whether this regular
flow of good humour was owing to the native cheerfulness of his mind, to
the habit which he had contracted of viewing every adverse circumstance
on its bright side, to a course of self discipline, which he did not
avow to others, or to the joint operation of all these, it is not
possible to say; but certain it is that it was one of his most striking
peculiarities.

"In all these respects there can be no doubt that the character of
Hayley was worthy of imitation; and the Editor feels that he should be
deficient in a becoming attention to the expressed wish of the author,
in the close of his Memoir, if he did not briefly advert to the
importance, both to individual and social happiness, of endeavouring to
cultivate to the utmost those eminent ingredients of a beneficial life,
cheerfulness, sympathy, and good temper.

"Closely connected with these was a rich assemblage of amiable
qualities, which the Editor cannot do better than display in the
following extract, from the before-mentioned sketch, by the Rev. Samuel
Greatheed. 'Hayley retained, I believe, throughout his life, a high
sense of honour, inflexible integrity, a warmth of friendship, and
overflowing benevolence. The last was especially exerted for the
introduction of meritorious young persons into useful and respectable
situations; and it was usually efficient, as it never relaxed while they
justified his patronage. He did not, indeed, scruple, while it was in
his power, to entrust them with large sums, when there appeared a
prospect of their future ability for repayment; but as this prospect not
seldom failed, either through death or unavoidable impediments, his
property was greatly reduced by such beneficence.

"Another distinctive mark of the character of Hayley, which few possess
by nature, and still fewer attain to by art, was an eminently great
conversational ability. It was scarcely possible for any one to be in
his company an hour, how distinguished soever his own gifts or
acquirements might be in the possession and exercise of colloquial
powers, without being conscious of his superiority in this respect. It
has been a subject of repeated astonishment to the Editor, that in a
soil so unfavourable to the growth of this faculty, as seclusion must
necessarily be, it should yet have arrived at such a pitch of
exuberance, in the case of the retired subject of this Memoir, as only
an interchange of the best informed minds, and that continually
exercised, could be supposed capable of producing. He can only attempt
to account for it from the opportunities which the author enjoyed,
through the advantage of one of the finest private libraries in the
kingdom, of conversing at all hours, and in all conceivable frames of
mind, with the illustrious dead of every age and nation. But the
solution of the difficulty is still incomplete, for although these
literary "Pleiades" could furnish as it were "the sweet influences of
rain and sunshine," to foster his native talent; yet, breath being
denied them, its improvement is more than his friend Cowper could have
accounted for, without violating his poetical axiom, that

                              --Ev'n the oak
  Thrives by the rude concussion of the storm.

"As to the defects of the character of Hayley, perhaps the most
prominent feature was a pertinacity of determination with regard to his
modes of action, which has been seldom exemplified to the same extent in
the case of others. When, in the contemplation of supposed advantage,
whether to himself or his friends, he had once matured his purpose, it
was an attempt of no ordinary difficulty to divert him from the pursuit
of it. To this may, perhaps, be attributed the perpetual disappointments
with which his life was chequered. Certain it is, that his matrimonial
infelicities may be traced to this source. His first adventure of the
kind alluded to, had the warning voice of his surviving parent against
it, and it may naturally be supposed, the dissuasive arguments of all
his thinking and judicious friends. And as to the similar connexion he
formed in the decline of life, he must have overcome obstacles both
numerous and weighty, with respect to his own situation and habits in
accomplishing that object of his wishes. Instead of entering into a
detail of these, however, it will be more profitable to secure the good
effect that may arise from the contemplation of the former part of his
character, from the danger of being neutralized by the present
exhibition of it. This may, perhaps, be accomplished by reminding the
reader of that principle of our lapsed nature, which inclines us, too
often, to confound evil with good. The good, in Hayley's case, appears
to have been the viewing, through his native cheerfulness, every
_dispensation of Providence_ on its bright side; and the evil, his
applying this rule to what might be not improperly designated _the
dispensation of his own will_. There can be no doubt that his example in
the first instance and his mistake in the last, are equally to be
followed and avoided.

"Another failing observable in the character of Hayley, was the little
attention he paid to public opinion, in regard to his modes and habits
of life. During his long residence in his paternal seat of Eartham,
though he occasionally received friends from a distance, and especially
the votaries of literature and the fine arts, yet to the families in his
vicinity he was not easily accessible. He seems, indeed, to have been
almost an insulated mortal among them; and one who, discharging himself
from the obligation of what is commonly called _etiquette_, made it
impossible to maintain with him the reciprocities of intercourse. It is
true, indeed, that the attention of the possessor of Eartham was
considerably engrossed by meditation and study; but this increased
rather than lessened his adaptation to society, and made the effect of
his seclusion the more to be lamented." Hayley's Memoirs, vol. ii. p.
220.

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
amongst ourselves.

In one respect he is deserving of most honourable notice. During the
course of a long literary life, I doubt whether he was ever provoked to
use a single word of asperity or sarcasm towards any of his
contemporaries. This was praise which alone ought to have exempted him
from the harsh and unmerited censure of Porson, by whom he was called
Criticorum et Poetarum pessimus. He sometimes on the other hand,
indulged himself too much in a lavish and indiscriminate commendation of
contemporary writers. But from whatever might appear like flattery of
the great, he scrupulously abstained. When the Princess Charlotte
visited him at Felpham, he would not present some verses he had written
on her, lest he should be thought capable of that meanness.

His Essays on Painting, History, and Poetry, contain much information
that may be useful to young artists and students. That on Sculpture is
very inferior to the rest; as the Triumph of Music is to the Triumphs of
Temper. The last of these is a poem that still continues to interest a
class of readers, whose studies are intimately connected with the
happiness and well being of society. The design of it, which is to shew
the advantages of self-control to the mind of a well-educated girl, is
much to be commended. The machinery though it required no great effort
in the production, yet suffices to give some relief to the story. It has
been remarked that the trials of the Heroine are too insignificant. But
of one of them, at least, the calumny in the newspaper, this cannot
properly be said. Nor would the purpose of the writer have been so well
answered, if he had been more serious, and had uttered his oracles from
behind a graver mask.

The taste which has been lately excited amongst us for Spanish and
Italian literature, after having slept nearly since the age of
Elizabeth, may be attributed in a great measure to the influence of his
example. Gray, Hurd, and the two Wartons, had done something towards
awakening it, but the spell was completed by him. The decisive impulse
was given by the copious extracts from the great poets in those
languages, which he inserted in the notes to his Essay on Epic Poetry,
and which he accompanied by spirited translations. Lord Holland, the
best informed and most elegant of our writers on the subject of the
Spanish theatre, declared that he had been induced to learn that
language by what Hayley had written concerning the poet Ercilla.

I have heard his Greek scholarship questioned in consequence