[478] William Hayley (1745-1820) was a voluminous poet. Byron (English Bards and Scotch Reviewers) attacks him with severity—
"Whether he spin poor couplets into plays,
Or damn the dead with purgatorial praise,
His style in youth or age is still the same,
For ever feeble and for ever tame."
In 1780 he had addressed to Gibbon An Essay on History, in Three Epistles. He married, in 1769, Eliza Ball, daughter of the Dean of Chichester. The marriage proved unhappy; but it should be added that Mrs. Hayley adopted her husband's illegitimate son, who, born in 1780, afterwards became the sculptor, and treated him as her own child. In 1789 Hayley was separated from his wife, whose mind had become affected. Hayley was at this time living at Eartham, in Sussex, a property which he had inherited from his father.
Transcriber's note:
Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained.
Corrections have been made for Volume 1 as listed in the Errata.
Page 44: The original had a blank area where the transcriber has inserted a dash as follows: