several works in prose. In the Essay on Old Maids, published in 1785,
there is an agreeable combination of learning, sprightliness, and arch
humour. He now and then approaches to irreverence on sacred subjects,
but, as I am persuaded without any ill intention; the dedication of the
book to Mrs. Carter gave much offence to that lady. His Dialogues on
Johnson and Chesterfield, in 1787, contrast the character of these
writers in a lively manner and with some power of discrimination, but
the partiality of the author is very evident. He had himself
"sacrificed" too successfully to the Graces to be a fair umpire between
the rough scholar and the polished nobleman. The Young Widow, or the
History of Cornelia Sedley, a novel, was published without his name (as
the last-mentioned two books had also been) in 1789. For this he
received 200_l_. from Mr. Nichols. The purchaser found his bargain a
hard one: for the novel had little to recommend it, being deficient in
probability of incident and character. He made up for the loss by
presenting his bookseller with another anonymous work entitled the
"Eulogies of Howard, a Vision," in prose.[1] His "Life of Milton," was
intended for an edition of the poet to be published by Nichols the
King's printer; but an abridgement of it only was employed in 1794, for
the purpose, some passages being not thought courtly enough for the
royal eye. He afterwards published it without mutilation. The design of
this work, to which he devoted two years of diligent application, was to
vindicate Milton from the asperity of Johnson--a task, which according
to the general opinion, has since been more ably executed by Doctor
Symmons. He had, however, reason to be satisfied with this undertaking,
as it led to an acquaintance and friendship with Cowper, who was at the
same time engaged in writing notes to Milton. Eight years after, it fell
to his lot to write a Life of Cowper himself. This proved to him the
most lucrative of all his literary engagements; but its success was
owing principally not to the narrative but to the private letters of
Cowper which accompanied them. Of the Life and Letters he added another
volume in 1804; and in 1809 wrote the Life of Romney, which, having no
such attraction, did not recommend itself to the public notice.
From the time that he left London, in 1774, till his death, a period of
46 years, he was seldom long absent from his home, first at Eartham, and
afterwards at Felpham, a pleasant village on the sea-shore, distant only
a few miles from his former residence. Cowper, who visited him at
Eartham, in 1792, speaks of the house as "the most elegant mansion he
had ever inhabited, surrounded by the most delightful pleasure grounds
he had ever seen," and observes "he had no conception that a poet could
be the owner of such a paradise." The house was built, and the pleasure
grounds laid out by himself. Here I saw him in the next summer but one
after Cowper's visit. His habits appeared to me such as they were long
afterwards described by Mrs. Opie--those of extreme retirement, of
abstemiousness, and of family devotion. He was at that time employed on
his Life of Milton, and in educating his son, a promising boy, who under
the age of fourteen, had began to translate the Epistles of Horace into
tolerable blank verse. On accompanying me the next morning out of
"Paradise," the lad spoke to me with some sorrow of his father's refusal
to let him "join a pack of hounds in the neighbourhood." He died in his
20th year, a victim probably to the secluded life and the studious
habits to which his parent had so early devoted him. His mother, a
servant in the family, as I was told by Anna Seward, declared him to be
the son of a young orphan, named Howell, who having been benevolently
received by Hayley into his house, and through his means promoted in the
military service of the East India Company, soon after perished by
shipwreck. But the features of the boy told a different story, and one
more consonant to that of the poet, by whom he was always acknowledged
for his son. He was, for some time the pupil of Mr. Flaxman, who augured
highly of his abilities, and who, if the young man had lived, would
certainly have done all that could be done by example and instruction to
render him illustrious in his art and respectable as a man.
Considering his independence on any profession, the ease of his manners,
his talents for conversation, and his knowledge of modern languages, it
may be wondered that Hayley did not mix more in society, or visit other
countries besides his own. Once, indeed, when a young man he made an
excursion to Scotland; and, in the summer of 1790, passed three weeks at
Paris with his friends, Carwardine and Romney, from whence, much to the
scandal of the neighbourhood, he brought back a French governess for his
son. Mrs. Hayley had then left him, or rather had been gently forced out
of his house; and, afterwards when she begged for leave to return, was
denied it. From his own account of the matter, and from the letters that
passed between them, some of which he has published in his Memoirs, it
is difficult to acquit him of blame, and not to wish that he had endured
with more patience the foibles of a woman, who, though irreproachable in
her own conduct, was more indulgent than she need have been to his
frailties. He appears, however, to have been anxious for her happiness
after they were separated. She died in London in 1797, and received from
her husband, the empty honours of a funeral sermon and an epitaph. He
was loth to quit his home except on some errand of friendship, when he
was ever ready to run to the Land's End. I remember his quoting to me
the following line out of Aeschylus, on the advantage of a master's
presence in his own family.
[Greek: "Omma gar domon nomixo despton paronsian".]
He seems to have taken delight in the instruction of youth; besides his
own boy, he undertook to educate gratuitously two sons of his friend,
Mr. Carwardine, and one of his neighbour Lord Egremont. On the death of
Warton, he declined some advances that were made him through his
friends, towards an offer of the laureatship. Nothing but a high sense
of independence could have prompted this refusal; for, though no
courtier, he was not wanting in loyalty; and the stipend would have been
a welcome addition to an income which barely sufficed his own moderate
wants and his liberal contributions to the necessities of others.
He was not more fortunate in a second marriage than he had been in his
first. The vain confidence which he placed in his good stars on this
occasion shall be told in his own words, which are as follows:
While he was deeply engaged in his biographical compositions he used to
say, 'I have not leisure to wander from my hermitage, and look into the
world in quest of a wife; but I feel a strong persuasion that if it is
really good for me to venture once more on marriage,
that step
Of deepest hazard and of highest hope,
my kind stars will conduct to my cell some compassionate fair one, fond
of books and retirement, who may be willing to enliven, with the songs
of tenderness, the solitude of a poetical hermit.'
Such was the frame of mind in the recluse when an incident occurred,
that gradually seemed to accomplish a completion of his prophecy. This
incident was a visit from an old ecclesiastical acquaintance, attended
by two young ladies, Mary and Harriet Welford, daughters of an aged and
retired merchant on Blackheath.
The countenance and musical talents of the elder sister made a strong
impression on the sequestered poet. Their accidental visit gradually led
to his second marriage, on the 23d of March 1809, an event attended with
much general exultation and delight, though evidently, like the usual
steps of poets in the world, rather a step of hasty affection than of
deliberate prudence.
In three years they were separated; I know not for what reasons. On
shewing me some gaps in his library, he said that they had been made by
proceedings in Doctors Commons.
To Felpham where he passed the last twenty years of his life, there
retired also, to end his days in privacy and quiet, Doctor Cyril
Jackson, who had been many years Dean of Christ Church, and in that time
had refused some of the highest honours in the church. It is said that
when Hayley waited on him, the Doctor declined entering upon an
interchange of visits; but said that he should be happy to establish an
intercourse of a different kind, and to send him occasionally books, or
anything else which he might happen to have, and which Hayley might be
without, and to receive from him the same neighbourly accommodations in
return. Accordingly when the poet took a wife in his old age, he sent
the Doctor a piece of the wedding cake, with a message, that he hoped at
some future time to receive a neighbourly communication of the same sort
in return.
In 1818, he told me that his medical attendant was apprehensive of his
becoming dropsical, and had prescribed him a glass of port wine after
his dinner. His usual drink before this had been water. In the October
of the following year he wrote to me that "he had been assailed by two
of the most formidable enemies of the human frame; and had been almost
demolished by a fit of apoplexy, and a fit of the stone: the blow from
the former," he adds, "was so violent, that my physician despaired of my
revival; but, by the mercy of Heaven, I am so far revived, that I can
again enjoy a social and literary intercourse with my friends; and even
dabble again in rhyme; but, as I suspect, that my rhymes, like the
Homilies of Gil Blas' Archbishop, may savour of apoplexy, I think it
right to keep them in utter privacy."
His other complaint the stone, terminated his life on the 12th of
November, 1820.
Under all his sufferings (says his early friend, Mr. Sargent), he was
never heard to express a querulous word; and if I had not seen it, I
could not have thought it possible for so much constant patience and
resignation to have been exhibited under so many years of grievous pain.
Of his severe disease he spoke with great calmness; and when there
seemed to be some doubt among his medical friends, as to the existence
of a stone in the bladder, he said to me in a gentle tone, "I can settle
the controversy between them; I am sure there is, for I distinctly feel
it." A very large stone was found, after his decease. An accidental fall
from the slipping of his foot, brought on his last illness and death.
When I came to him, the day before he died, he mentioned this
circumstance, and expressed a strong hope that God was, in mercy, about
to put a period to his sufferings. He had received the Sacrament about a
fortnight before, from the Rev. Mr. Hardy, a minister in the
neighbourhood, towards whom he always expressed a most friendly regard.
To this satisfactory account of Hayley's latter days, let me be allowed
to add, that which is given by the son of his friend, the Rev. John
Sargent. More perfect patience than Hayley manifested under his
excruciating tortures, it never was my lot to witness. His was not only
submission, but cheerfulness. So far could he abstract himself from his
intense sufferings, as to be solicitous, in a way that affected me
tenderly, respecting my comfort and accommodation as his guest; a
circumstance that might appear trivial to many, but which, to my mind,
was illustrative of that disinterestedness and affection which were so
habitual to him in life, as not to desert him in death. That his
patience emanated from principles far superior to those of manly and
philosophical fortitude, I feel a comfortable and confirmed persuasion,
not merely from the sentiments he expressed when his end was
approaching, but from the more satisfactory testimony of his
declarations to his confidential servant in the season of comparative
health. Again and again, before his last seizure, did he read over a
little book I had given him, Corbett's Self-Examination in Secret, and
repeatedly did he make his servant read to him that most valuable little
work, of which, surely, no proud and insincere man can cordially
approve; and to her did he avow, when recommending it for private
perusal, "In the principles of that book I wish to die." He also
mentioned to her, at the same time, his approbation of the Rev. Daniel
Wilson's Sermons, which had been kindly sent to him. He permitted me
frequently to pray with him, as a friend and minister; and when I used
the confessional in the communion service of our church, and some of the
verses of the fifty-first psalm, he appeared to unite devoutly in those
acts of penitence, and afterwards added, "I thank you heartily."
With emphasis did I hear him utter the memorable words, "I know that my
Redeemer liveth, &c." and on my reminding him that Job exclaimed also,
"Behold I am vile," he assented to the excellence of that language of
repentance and humility. Indeed, I well remember his heartily agreeing
with me in an observation I made some months before, "That a progress in
religion was to be discerned by a progressive knowledge of our own
misery and sinfulness." The last words almost I heard fall from him,
contained a sentiment I should wish, living and dying, to be my own--"
Christ, have mercy upon me! O my Saviour, look down upon me, forsake me
not."
Of his habits during the latter part of his life, Mrs. Opie, who has
the art of conferring an interest on whatever she relates, has given
this very pleasing account, in a letter addressed to the Editor of his
Memoirs. "In consequence of a previous correspondence with Mr. Hayley,
the result of his flattering mention of me in the twelfth edition of the
"Triumphs of Temper," I went to his house on a visit, in the year 1814.
Nothing could exceed the regularity and temperance of Mr. Hayley's
habits. We did not breakfast till a little before eight, out of
compliment to me I believe; but, as he always rose at six,[2] he
breakfasted at half-past seven when he was alone; and as soon as he
returned from his usual walk in the garden; you remember how rapidly he
walked, spite of his lameness, bearing on his stick on one side, and his
umbrella on the other.[3] During breakfast, at which he drank cocoa
only, he always read; and while I was with him, he read aloud to me. We
then adjourned to his sitting room, the upper library, and he read to
me, or I to him, till coffee was served in the dining room, which was, I
think, at eleven o'clock. That repast over, we walked in the garden, and
then returned to our books; or I sang to him till it was time for us to
dress for dinner--with him a very temperate meal. He drank water only at
dinner, and took coffee instead of wine after it. The coffee was served
up with cream and fruit in the upper library.
"After dinner I read to him, or he read to me, till it was near tea-time,
when we again walked in the garden, and on our return to the house, cocoa
was served for him, and tea for me. After tea I read aloud or sang to him,
till nine o'clock, when the servants came in to prayers, which were
manuscript compositions, or compilations of his own; and which, as you well
know, he read in a very impressive manner. He then conversed for half an
hour or I sang one or two of Handel's songs to him, or a hymn of his own;
and then we retired for the night. I think he had for some years been in
the habit of waking at five o'clock, and composing a hymn, but I do not
remember to have heard him mention having been so employed, while I was
his guest.
"With the single exception of a drive to Chichester, and to Lavant,
where we spent a day with Mrs. Poole, and of having one or two friends
to tea three times, there was no _variety_ in the life which I have
above described, during the whole month I passed with Mr. Hayley; and, I
believe, the years that followed, to the time of his death, were as
little varied as the days I have detailed. The Honourable Miss
Moncktons; and their sister, Mrs. Milnes, drank tea with us once, as
they were very ambitious of being presented to Mr. Hayley, and their
conversation and great musical powers were justly appreciated by him.
"The next year I repeated my visit to Felpham, and found the Moncktons
at Bognor, with their brother and sister, Viscount and Viscountess
Galway. The latter were eager to make Mr. Hayley's acquaintance, and I
easily obtained leave to introduce them. At the same time, the Countess
of Mayo, and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Smith, requested of me a similar
introduction, and this application drew from our friend the following
remark; 'I think, my dear, you had better _show_ me at a shilling a
head.' Leave was granted me to present these new visitants; and they
afterwards, I found, introduced Lord Mayo. That year Mr. Hayley was
unable to bear the motion of a carriage, from the increased pain in his
hip-joint, and, from that time he scarcely ever left his own precincts.
"The next year I went to Scotland, and did not see Felpham till the year
1817. I found Mr. Hayley was become fond of seeing occasional visitors,
and that Earl and Countess Paulett, and Lady Mary Paulett, as well as
Lord and Lady Mayo, and Mr. and Mrs. T. Smith, were frequent callers on
him that year. The Miss Godfreys were also his guests and with them I
occasionally paid visits, but for the most part our life was as unvaried
as it was in 1814 and 1815.
"In 1818, I was unable to visit Felpham; but in 1819, I went down to
Bognor in considerable alarm, on hearing of our poor friend's illness;
and I was 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.