cannot tell you what a relief I feel it, not to be pressed for Milton" a relief for which, as we have already stated, he was indebted to the cxertions of his friend and anticipated coadjutor. This work was, in all probability, the Four Ages; a poem originally suggested to him by his neighbour, the rev. Mr. Buchanan, curate of Ravenstone, and to the composition of which he long looked forward with great delight, intending to devote himself to the task, when he had completed the revision of his Homer, but of which he never had sufficient health or spirits left to finish more than eight and thirty lines. From this period his mental depression rapidly gained ground upon him, and soon assumed very unequivocal marks of approaching, if not of actual insanity. These the kindness of Mr. Greathead communicated to Mr. Hayley, when, in April, 1794, the dejected poet refused food and medicine, and gave his friends reason to apprehend that his life could not long be expected. You, dear sir," writes this excellent man and warm-hearted friend, after announcing these alarming symptoms, "have already effectually expressed and proved the warmth of your friendship. I cannot think that any thing but your society would have been sufficient, during the infirmity under which his mind has long been oppressed, to have supported him against the shock of Mrs. Unwin's paralytic attack. I am certain that nothing else could have prevailed upon him to undertake the journey to Eartham. You have succeeded where his other friends knew they could not, and where they apprehended no one could. How natural, therefore, nay, how reasonable, is it for them to look to you, as most likely to be instrumental, under the blessing of God, for relief in the present distressing and alarming crisis. It is, indeed, scarcely attemptable to ask any person to take such a journey, and involve himself in so melancholy a scene, with an uncertainty of the desired success, increased as the apparent difficulty is by dear Mr. Cowper's aversion to all company, and by poor Mrs. Unwin's mental and bodily infirmities. On these, accounts, lady Hesketh dares not ask it of you, rejoiced as she would be at your arrival. Am I not, dear sir, a very presumptuous person, who, in the face of all opposition, dare this? I am emboldened by those two powerful supporters, conscience and experience. Was I at Eartham, I would certainly undertake the labour I presume to recommend, for the bare pos-,

Hayley's Life of Cowper, vol. iv. 125.

sibility of restoring Mr. Cowper to himself, to his friends, to the public, and to God." On the receipt of a letter, as honourable to the writer as it was to the person to whom it was addressed, Hayley hastened to Weston, where his visit failed, however, in producing the effects anticipated from it. The poor hypochondriac-maniac we might rather say, but from the unwillingness which we feel to apply such a term to such a man, even in the wreck of one of the finest minds which the great Creator ever formed-was, to use the expression of his faithful friend, "too much overwhelmed by his oppressive malady, to show even the least glimmering of satisfaction at the appearance of a guest, whom he used to receive with the most lively expressions of affectionate delight." In the hope of diverting the poet's melancholy, Hayley brought with him his son, a boy of fine talents and disposition, to whom Cowper was remarkably attached. In happier times he had amused himself with the lad's ingenious criticisms on some passages of his translation of Homer, in which he evinced a taste and judgment far beyond his years; and even in this disastrous moment, his gentle voice had more influence in charming away the dæmon by which he seemed possessed, than any other. But even that was fated soon to fail; and his unconquerable depression defeated the united efforts of his relatives and friends, to cheer his spirits and restore him to himself. Hayley's visit enabled lady Hesketh to leave the patient, to promote whose comfort she had generously devoted herself, for a few days, that she might have a personal conference with Doctor Willis, to whom lord Thurlow had particularly recommended his distressing case. His malady was, however, beyond an earthly physician's skill; and the only consolation which his friend received, before he was compelled, by the pressure of claims upon his time, likely to be productive of more benefit to others, and more satisfaction to himself, was the receipt of a letter from lord Spencer, announcing his majesty's most gracious intention to bestow upon Cowper a pension, sufficient in its amount to secure him an honourable competence for the remainder of his days. That pension was received for his use, but it came too late to be enjoyed.

Soon after his return to Sussex from so melancholy a scene, Mr. Hayley was actively engaged in endeavouring to ward off a repetition of it in the person of another valued friend. Romney, from excessive devotion to his favourite

Hayley's Life of Cowper, vol. iv. p. 147, 8.

studies, and perhaps, in some measure, from the indulgence of eccentricities in his life and conduct, exhibited, about this time, symptoms of that hypochondriacal tendency which embittered the latter years of his existence; and to divert its approach, the poet and his son Thomas, the interesting youth already mentioned, took a journey with him into Hampshire, where they spent a short time most pleasantly with Doctor Warton, who had long been one of Hayley's friends and correspondents. This year had, indeed, made several breaches in the circle of our author's more intimate associations; for besides the afflictions of Cowper and of Romney, he had been suddenly deprived, at its commencement, of Gibbon, whom he had engaged to visit in the course of the spring at Lausanne.

In the midst of these distressing interruptions he pursued, however, his literary labours with success, and in the year 1795 gave the world the Life of Milton, on which he had been engaged for five years. It seems to have had the benefit of Cowper's revisal; for in writing to his friend, Mr. Hurdis, professor of poetry at Oxford, in November, 1793, referring to Hayley's second visit to Weston, he says, "He left me but a few days since, having spent somewhat more than a fortnight here; during which time we employed all our leisure hours in the revisal of his Life of Milton. It is now finished, and a very finished work it is; and one that will do great honour, I am persuaded, to the biographer, and the excellent man of injured memory who is the subject of it *." In this work he seems indeed to have been deeply interested; for he writes to its author, a few days after, "I am impatient for the appearance of it, because impatient to have the spotless credit of the great poet's character, as a man and a citizen, vindicated as it ought to be, and as it never will be againt." This satisfaction it is not likely that he ever enjoyed; for when the volume did appear, he was in the course of removal from his beloved retreat at Weston, to be placed under the care of his maternal relatives in Norfolk, whose kind attentions soothed, as well as any thing could soothe, the last years of his extraordinary life, and amongst whom that life was closed. His correspondence with the friend to whom he formerly wrote with such frequency and delight, had for some time ceased; and so completely was his existence treated as a blank, that in the dedication of the second edition of the work, for whose publication he was so

*Hayley's Life of Cowper, vol. iv. p. 120, 121.

+ Ib.

p. 126, 7.

anxious, its author speaks of him in terms but rarely, if ever used, but in application to the dead-though breathing of hopes, which he who gave expression to them could scarcely entertain. After mentioning the translations of Milton's Latin and Italian poems, with specimens of which the work was embellished, he affectingly adds, "For the honour of Milton, and for that of his most worthy interpreter, I hope that the whole of this most admirable performance may soon be imparted to the public, as I trust that returning health will happily restore its incomparable author to his suspended studies; an event that may affect the moral interest and the mental delight of all the world;-for rarely, very rarely indeed, has Heaven bestowed on any individual such an ample, such a variegated portion of true poetical genius; and never did it add greater purity of heart to that divine yet perilous talent, to guide and sanctify its execution. Those who are best acquainted with the writings and the virtues of my inestimable friend, must be most fervent in their hopes, that in the course and the close of his poetical career, he may resemble his great and favourite predecessors, Homer and Milton. Their spirits were illuminated in the decline of life by a fresh portion of poetical power; and if in their latter productions they' rose not to the full force and splendour of their meridian glory, they yet enchanted mankind with the sweetness and serenity of their descending light*." The dedication from which this beautiful tribute to the talent of a friend, cast by the most melancholy malady into a temporary shade, is extracted, is addressed to Doctor Joseph Warton, and bears date at Eartham, on the 29th of October, 1795. The edition to which it was prefixed, was printed in the following year, the first having formed a part of the magnificent impression of Milton's works published by Messrs. Boydell. In the introduction to this work+ he speaks again of Cowper in terms of the highest commendation and most affectionate friendship, though, as the sentiments are nearly the same as those contained in the dedication, we shall not transcribe the passage. To the merit of this, the first biographical production of Hayley's pen, what higher testimony could be borne than has already been quoted from the letters of Cowper; to which, however, we add that of Dr. Warton, a most accomplished scholar and enlightened critic, who, in acknowledging the honour of the dedication of the work to him, says, "I have read your life with equal pleasure, atten

Hayley's Life of Milton, 2d edit. p. xxii, xxiii.

+ P. 3, 4.

tion, and information. You have candidly and completely vindicated our unrivalled bard*." The same favourable opinion was expressed by the reviewers, we believe, without exception, and, generally speaking, with more discrimination than they evinced in criticising the former productions of its author. By some, indeed, he was accused of too much warmth and illiberality in his reflections on Johnson's partial criticisms on the great object of his poetical idolatry: and though in this we are inclined to think he could scarcely err, we have tracted in various parts of the memoir, especially in vindicating his subserviency to Cromwell, the effects of that partiality which a biographer scarcely can escape, when he writes con amore, as Hayley confessedly did, in delineating the character of Milton. Its author was also very fairly charged with giving way to a mean spirit of literary jealousy, in withholding from the Life of that great poet, by Dr. Symmons, the praise which it justly merited. With these slight exceptions, we cordially concur in all the praise which has justly been bestowed on this interesting and judicious life, as we also do, on the other hand, at least as fully, in the dissatisfaction expressed by most of the critical tribe of that day with the tameness of an Elegy on Sir William Jones, published by Mr. Hayley in the course of the same year, under the additional disadvantage of following that of Mr. Maurice, which in force and genius it fell far beneath, though even that is occasionally cumbrous and dull. Hayley's elegy disappointed even Miss Seward, whose nauseous extravagance of praise, in former. cases, is calculated to excite nothing but disgust. "Many of the phrases," she truly says, "are oddly prosaic ;" and "the epithets applied to the deceased have often a coaxing effeminacy that would proceed better from a lover bewailing his mistress, or a parent his child, than from a celebrated literary. character, paying tribute to the manes of congenial excellencet." It was perhaps the hearing, nearly for the first time, the language of truth employed in the criticism of any of his avowed productions, on occasion of the publication of this poem, that induced Mr. Hayley, for a longer period than usual, to refrain from presenting to the public any new production of his muse. In 1789, soon after his Revolution Ode had been received with somewhat less than their wonted. courtesy by the reviewers, we learn from his incessant flatterer Miss Seward, who lived like him on praise, that the nonsense and malice of the public critics (though surely no one + Seward's Letters, iv. 153.

• Wooll's Life of Warton, 405.