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.
"Another failing observable in the character of Hayley, was the little attention he paid to public opinion, in regard to his modes and habits of life. During his long residence in his paternal seat of Eartham, though he occasionally received friends from a distance, and especially the votaries of literature and the fine arts, yet to the families in his vicinity he was not easily accessible. He seems, indeed, to have been almost an insulated mortal among them; and one who, discharging himself from the obligation of what is commonly called etiquette, made it impossible to maintain with him the reciprocities of intercourse. It is true, indeed, that the attention of the possessor of Eartham was considerably engrossed by meditation and study; but this increased rather than lessened his adaptation to society, and made the effect of his seclusion the more to be lamented." Hayley's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 220.
As Hayley was too much extolled at the beginning of his poetical course, so was he undeservedly neglected or ridiculed at the close of it. The excessive admiration he at first met with, joined to that flattering self-opinion which a solitary life is apt to engender, made him too easily satisfied with what he had done. Perhaps he wrote worse after his acquaintance with Cowper; for, aiming at a simplicity which he had not power to support, he became flat and insipid. He had at no time much force of conception or language. Yet if he never elevates he frequently amuses his reader. His chief attraction consists in setting off some plain and natural thought or observation, by a sparkling and ingenious similitude, such as we commonly find in the Persian poets. To this may be added a certain sweetness of numbers peculiar to himself, without the spirit and edge of Pope, or the boldness of Dryden, and fashioned as I think to his own recitation, which though musical, was somewhat too pompous and monotonous. He was desirous that all his rhymes should be exact; but they are sometimes so only according to his own manner of pronouncing them. He holds about the same rank among our poets that Bertaut does among the French; but differs from him in this; that, whereas Bertaut was the earliest of a race analogous to the school of Dryden and Pope, so Hayley was the latest of the correspondent class amongst ourselves.
In one respect he is deserving of most honourable notice. During the course of a long literary life, I doubt whether he was ever provoked to use a single word of asperity or sarcasm towards any of his contemporaries. This was praise which alone ought to have exempted him from the harsh and unmerited censure of Porson, by whom he was called Criticorum et Poetarum pessimus. He sometimes on the other hand, indulged himself too much in a lavish and indiscriminate commendation of contemporary writers. But from whatever might appear like flattery of the great, he scrupulously abstained. When the Princess Charlotte visited him at Felpham, he would not present some verses he had written on her, lest he should be thought capable of that meanness.