the most celebrated poets and orators of Greece and Rome. He applied himself to the French and Italian languages, and soon became a perfect master of the various beauties of Corneille, Racine, Rousseau, Voltaire, Dante, and Tasso. Nor was his attention confined exclusively to books, he cultivated a natural taste for the fine arts, and owing in part, perhaps, to his intimacy with the painter, Romney, and several other eminent artists, acquired a knowledge of the principles of statuary and painting of which few amateurs can boast.

On his marriage with Miss Ball, daughter of the Dean of Chichester, Mr. Hayley settled in the metropolis, but retired to his country seat at Eartham, in Sussex, after a residence in the metropolis of about five years. During his abode in London he had occasionally sacrificed to the muses, but was restrained, by the natural timidity of his disposition, from making any of his productions public. On his return, however, he seems to have devoted himself to poetry, with the view of striving with his contemporaries up the ascent to fame and popularity; for, in 1778 he published "An Epistle to an Eminent Painter," addressed to his friend Romney. In this poem he developed a minute knowledge of the art upon which it professed to treat.

His "Essay on History" appeared in 1780, and bore decisive marks of considerable improvement. It may certainly be ranked among the best of his minor productions: it embellishes character with animated description, splendid imagery, and dignified sentiment. Of his next work, the "Triumphs of Temper," little can be said in the way of eulogy. "There is," says Mr. Leigh Hunt, (in a pleasant little volume, entitled 'The Feast of the Poets,") "something not inelegant or unfanciful in the conduct of Mr. Hayley's 'Triumphs of Temper,' and the moral is of that useful and desirable description which, from its domestic familiarity, is too apt to be overlooked, or to be thought incapable of embellishment: but in this as well as in all his other writings, there is so much talking by rote, so many gratuitous metaphors, so many epithets to fill пр and rhymes to fill in, and such a mawkish langour of versification, with every now and then a ridiculous hurrying for a line or so,

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that nothing can be more palling or tiresome. The worst part of Mr. Hayley's style is that smooth-tongued, and overwrought complimentary style in addressing or speaking of others, which, whether in conversation or writing, has always the ill fortune, to say the least of it, of being suspected of sincerity. His best part is his annotation. The notes to his poems are amusing and full of a graceful scholarship; and two things must be remembered to his honor, first, that although he had not genius enough to revive the taste in his poetry, he has been the quickest of our last writers to point out the great superiority of the Italian school over the French; and, secondly, that he has been among the first and the most ardent of them all in hailing the dawn of our native painting. Indeed, with the singular exception of Milton, who had visited Italy, and who was such a painter himself, it is to be remembered to the honor of all our poets, great and small, that they have shewn a just anxiety for the appearance of the sister art; And felt a brother's longing to embrace

At the least glimpse of her resplendent face.'

It would appear, from some specimens in his notes, that Mr. Hayley would have cut a more advantageous figure as a translator than as an original poet. I do not say he would have been equal to great works; for a translator, to keep any thing like a pace with his original, should have at least a portion of his original spirit; but as Mr. Hayley is by no means destitute of the poet, the thoughts of another might have invigorated him, and he would, at any rate, have been superior to such rhymers as Hoole, for instance, who with the smallest pretensions in their own persons, think themselves qualified to translate epics. In the notes to his "Essays on Epic Poetry,” there is a pleasing analysis, with occasional versions of twenty or thirty lines of the Aurancana of Alonzo d'Ercilla, and in the same place is a translation of the three first cantos of Dante, which, if far beneath the majestic simplicity of the original, is at least for spirit as well as closeness much above the mouthing nonentities which have been palmed upon us of late years for that wonderful poet."

In 1782, Mr. Hayley published his " Essay on Epic Poetry." The most fastidious critic must allow it to afford numerous evidences of industrious investigation and correct taste. This is the only praise to which it can aspire. The style, on the whole, is too loose and indefinite, which happens rather unfortunately in a work destined to instruct others in the art of poetical composition.

We cannot do better than to record the origin of Mr. Hayley's intimacy with Cowper in his own words:

"To Milton I am in a great measure indebted for what I must ever regard as a signal blessing, the friendship of Cowper! The reader will pardon me for dwelling a little on the circumstances which often lead me to repeat those sweet verses of my friend on the casual origin of our most valuable attachments:

Mysterious are his ways whose power

Brings forth that unexpected hour,
When minds, that never met before,
Shall meet, unite, and part no more.
It is the allotment of the skies,
The hand of the supremely wise,
That guides and governs our affections
And plans and orders our connections.'

"These charming verses strike with particular force on my heart when I recollect, that it was an idle endeavour to make us enemies which gave rise to our intimacy, and that I was providentially conducted to Weston, at a season when my presence there afforded peculiar comfort to my affectionate friend under the pressure of a domestic affliction, which threatened to overwhelm his very tender spirits.

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"The entreaty of many persons whom I wished to oblige, had engaged me to write a life of Milton, before I had the slightest suspicion that my work could interfere with the projects of any man; but I was soon surprised and concerned to hear that I was represented in a newspaper as the antagonist of Cowper.

"I immediately wrote to him on the subject, and our cor

respondence soon endeared us to each other in no common degree. The series of his letters to me I value not only as memorials of a most dear and honorable friendship, but as exquisite examples of espistolary excellence."

Of his intercourse with Hayley, Cowper thus speaks in one of his letters to Lady Hesketh: "My correspondence with Hayley proceeds briskly, and is very affectionate on both sides. I expect him here in about a fortnight, and wish heartily, with Mrs. Unwin, that you would give him a meeting. I have promised him, indeed, that he shall find us alone, but you are one of the family."

In May, 1722, Mr. Hayley paid the promised visit to his friend at Weston. "Our meeting, (says he,) so singularly produced, was a source of reciprocal delight; we looked cheerfully forward to the unclouded enjoyment of many social and literary hours.

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My host, though now in his sixty-first year, appeared as happily exempt from all the infirmities of advanced life, as friendship could wish him to be; and his more elderly companion, not materially oppressed by the age of seventy-two, discovered a benevolent alertness of character that seemed to promise a continuance of their domestic comfort. Their reception of me was kindness itself. I was enchanted to find that the manners and conversation of Cowper resembled his poetry, charming, by unaffected elegance and the graces of a benevolent spirit. I looked with affectionate veneration on the lady, who, having devoted her life and fortune to the service of this tender and sublime genius, in watching over him with maternal vigilance through many years of the darkest calamity, appeared to me now enjoying a reward justly due to the noblest exertions of friendship, in contemplating the health and the renown of the poet, whom she had the happiness to preserve.

"The pleasure I derived from a perfect view of the virtues, the talents, and the domestic enjoyments of Cowper, was suddenly overcast by the darkest and most painful anxiety.

"After passing our mornings in social study, we usually

walked out together at noon. In returning from one of our rambles, around the pleasant village of Weston, we were met by Mr. Greathead, an accomplished minister of the Gospel, who resides at Newport Pagnell, and whom Cowper described to me in terms of cordial esteem.

"He came forth to meet us as we drew near the house, and it was soon visible, from his countenance and manner, that he had ill news to impart. After the most tender preparation that friendship could devise, he informed Cowper that Mrs. Unwin was under the immediate pressure of a paralytic stroke.

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My agitated friend rushed to the sight of the sufferer: he returned to me in a state that alarmed me in the highest degree for his faculties. His first speech to me was wild in the extreme: my answer would appear little less so, but it was addressed to the predominant fancy of my unhappy friend, and, with the blessing of Heaven, it produced an instantaneous calm in his troubled mind.

"From that moment he rested on my friendship, with such mild and cheerful confidence, that his affectionate spirit regarded me as sent providentially to support him in a season of the severest affliction.

66 A very fortunate incident enabled me to cheer him by a little show of medical assistance, in a form that was highly beneficial to his compassionate mind, whatever his real influence might be on the palsied limbs of our interesting patient.

"Having formerly provided myself with an electrical apparatus, for the purpose of applying it medicinally to counteract a continual tendency to inflammation in the eyes, I had used it occasionally (for many years) in trying to relieve various ma ladies in my rustic neighbours; often, indeed, with no success, but now and then with the happiest effect. I wished to try this powerful remedy on the present occasion; and enquired most eagerly if the village of Weston could produce an electrical machine. It was hardly to be expected; but it so happened, that a worthy inhabitant of Weston possessed exactly such an apparatus as we wanted, which he had partly constructed himself.

"This good man, (Mr. Sacket,) was absent from the village,