The Ode to Hope looks like one of Blair's Sermons cast into a lyrical mould.
There is, I believe, no allusion to any particular place that was familiar to him, throughout his poems. The description of the owl in the lines entitled Retirement, he used to say, was drawn from nature. It has more that appearance than any thing else he has written, and pleases accordingly.
Between his systems in poetry and philosophy, some exchange might have been made with advantage to each. In the former, he counted general ideas for nearly all in all. (See his Essay on Poetry and Music, p. 431.) In the latter, he had not learnt to generalize at all; but would have rested merely in fact and experience.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Philosophical Arrangements, c. xvii. p. 409, 8vo. ed.
[2] Hermes, p. 9, 8vo. ed. The same writer again thus defines the word.
"By the most excellent science is meant the science of causes, and,
above all others, of causes efficient and final, as these
necessarily imply pervading reason and superintending wisdom. This
science as men were naturally led to it from the contemplation of
effects, which effects were the tribe of beings natural or physical,
was, from being thus subsequent to those physical inquiries, called
metaphysical; but with a view to itself, and the transcendant
eminence of its object was more properly called [Greek: hae protae
philosophia], the first Philosophy." Three treatises (in a note), p.
365. Ibid.—See also Mr. Coleridge's Friend, vol. i. p. 309.
[3] Metaph. I. vi. c. I.
[4] Mr. Coleridge.
* * * * *
WILLIAM HAYLEY.
The most remarkable incidents in Hayley's Life are to be collected from his Memoirs of himself, edited by his friend the Rev. Dr. Johnson, better known as the favourite kinsman of Cowper. The Memoirs, though somewhat more copious than many readers might have wished them, are yet far from being devoid of entertainment to the lovers of literary biography.
William Hayley was born at Chichester, on the 29th of October, 1745. His father was a private gentleman, son of one Dean of Chichester, and nephew to another. Having enriched himself by an union with the daughter of an opulent merchant, who died without leaving him any children, he married for his second wife, Mary, a daughter of Colonel Yates, a representative in Parliament for the city of Chichester, the mother of the poet.
His father dying when he was three years old, and his only brother soon after, William became the sole care of a discreet and affectionate woman. A similar lot will be found to have influenced the earlier years of many who have been most distinguished for their virtues or abilities in after life. He was taught to read by three sisters, of the name of Russell, who kept a girls' school at Chichester; and pleased himself by relating that, when in his 63rd year, he presented to one of them, who still continued in the same employment with her faculties unimpaired, a recent edition of his Triumphs of Temper. His first instructor in the learned languages was a master in the same city, who appeared to be so incompetent to the task he had undertaken, that Mrs. Hayley removed her son to the school of a Mr. Woodeson, at Kingston. He had not been long here, when he was seized with a violent fit of illness, which obliged his mother, who had now fixed her residence in London, to take him home, after having nursed him for some weeks at Kingston, with little hopes of life. Of the anxiety with which she watched over him, he has left the following pathetic memorial in his Essay on Epic Poetry.
Thou tender saint, to whom he owes much more
Than ever child to parent owed before,
In life's first season, when the fever's flame
Shrunk to deformity his shrivel'd frame,
And turn'd each fairer image in his brain
To blank confusion and her crazy train,
'Twas thine, with constant love, through lingering years,
To bathe thy idiot orphan with thy tears;
Day after day, and night succeeding night,
To turn incessant to the hideous sight,
And frequent watch, if haply at thy view
Departed reason might not dawn anew.