requiring the attention she had once bestowed. On this very first visit of Hayley to Weston she had been taken ill. She was now a very old lady. She may die at any moment, thought Hayley, and what would then happen to Cowper? It was at this moment he formed his grand resolve. He made up his mind not to rest satisfied till he had obtained for the unsuspecting poet a place or a pension. The idea grew upon him. 'It became,' he says, the most darling project of my sanguine spirit.' The manuscript entitled 'A Singular History' professes to relate the adventures of this quest. It is couched throughout in an eighteenth-century euphuism peculiar to the author. There is nothing' singular' about Hayley's 'history' except the extraordinarily affected manner in which it is written. But this, and the unconscious revelation of character that accompanies it, fully compensate for a lack of exciting material. Hayley had a peculiar genius for casting his thoughts into unnatural forms. His posthumously published memoirs are an example of this. The publishers to whom he was clever enough to sell them during his lifetime must afterwards have repented of their bargain. Housed in two large quarto volumes, they are written from beginning to end in the third person. Facts of his private life which only required the authority of his own word are laboriously established by circumstantial evidence. The fatuity of the book is almost incredible. Though he enjoyed the society of some of the most eminent men of his time, he has nothing pertinent to tell us about them in these memoirs. The huge volumes are chocked with triviality. The fifth chapter, for example (of the fifth book), opens by informing us that in the beginning of 1777 he endured considerable pain from an excrescence within the lower lid of his left eye'; while the third chapter (of the seventh book) commences with the startling statement that in 1785 Hayley was in imminent danger of being destroyed.' Reading further, one discovers he has had a slight fall from his horse. If such extravagances of thought and diction are ever accepted as graces, A Singular History' will certainly be considered a work of his best period. It is divided into five letters,' all of which are addressed, with many verbal caresses, to his son, Thomas Alphonso. In the first, which is dated May 1794-a date that marks the commencement of the narrative-he explains why he has undertaken the task. Conscious that after his death Alphonso will obtain much gratification and pleasure from the perusal of his writings, he is eager to prepare for his son's use more private works' which he may 'hoard or circulate hereafter, as the Treasures of Affection.' A second, and even more characteristic, reason for writing is expressed in a wish that, as Alphonso may sometimes have had occasion to reflect upon Hayley's failings, he may now have an opportunity of contemplating his Good Deeds. Further, lest anyone should think that this is pride on Hayley's part, he hastens to assure us he considers himself a mere Instrument in the Hand of Heaven.' By June 1782 Hayley was in London and had commenced operations. He was fully sensible of the difficulty of what he had undertaken, but did not of course realise that the chief obstacle lay in his own character. That it was unlikely one poor poet should make the fortune of another' he readily allowed in the abstract, but failed to see how small the chance became when that poet was anything but a man of affairs. Yet, though Hayley was, in more than one sense, a poor poet, and was, besides, the most conspicuously ridiculous person of his age, he had the saving quality of not being poor in spirit. Granted he was an ass, he was at least a determined one. You may call him stubborn, but his stubbornness was second cousin to courage. Southey once remarked that everything was good about him except his writings. That was a too generous verdict; but it is probable he has libelled himself to posterity. In his writings he is a sentimental weakling, but he bore with heroic fortitude the long and painful illness that closed his life. It must also be remembered that Cowper ranked him amongst his intimates. Hayley did not like London; he much preferred his hermitage at Eartham, where he had a 'riding house' a hundred feet long, an extensive library, and could amuse himself by doctoring the villagers. But Cowper's affairs pressed, and he was resolved to seek immediately a great man's assistance. This was Thurlow, the unscrupulous Chancellor, now in the last days of his power. Hayley, who had been introduced to him by a common friend, one Carwardine ('that pleasant and friendly, though idle, priest' he calls him), had already endeavoured to find out his opinion of Cowper. On that occasion Thurlow had replied evasively that Cowper was a truly great man,' a remark Hayley calls a 'eulogy.' Relying on the acquaintanceship that once had existed between Thurlow and the Chancellor of poetry,' Hayley had made his plans before arriving in town. It chanced that Carwardine had lately presented one of the Miss Thurlows with an elegant copy of Cowper's poems. Hayley wrote to the girl and got her to lend him a volume. Shortly afterwards he returned it to her, with the following inscription, written on a blank leaf: TO MISS CATHERINE THURLOW WITH COWPER'S POEMS. Sweet nymph, accept a Bard for whom To deck his moral Lyre; Dear, doubly dear, must wit and Truth Apart by different stars impelled, Their course as Mortals both have held To suffer and to drudge; But Genius kept them both in View, Ingenuous Girl, while here you see May you restore and teach to blaze The Friendship of their Youth. This is a fair example of the occasional verse of this once popular poet. Such were the poetical levers by which he attempted to raise a pension from a man of the character of Thurlow. The Chancellor, 'overwhelmed with business and spleen,' did not wish for an interview, but Hayley, having explained in a note that he was staying in town for that express purpose, made a second refusal impossible. Thurlow therefore (with a kind indulgence that Hayley can never forget) asked him to breakfast at his house at Great Ormond Street. No sooner were the two seated, quietly and alone, than Lord Kenyon was announced. Hayley, who was about to unbosom himself, fearful of losing for ever his opportunity, plunged into his subject at once, regardless of etiquette. The noble Lords could not choose but hear,' and he seems to have spoken well and to the point. He reminded Thurlow that the last occasion he had seen Cowper was in November 1763, when he had entered his chambers in the Temple, just after the young law student had attempted to commit suicide. Thurlow was touched at this reminiscence; he was not an unkind man, and the present crisis in his own affairs doubtless aided the recol lection. But when Hayley went on to suggest that the King should pension Cowper as an act of personal Thanksgiving and Gratitude towards Heaven, for having restored his Majesty from that mental malady by which this wonderful and most interesting poet has been periodically afflicted,' he could not but remark that such a negotiation would require the utmost delicacy of handling. At this moment Hayley looked at his watch, and, finding he had been talking for over an hour, rose to go. He thus concludes his description of the interview: The Chancellor then dismissed me with this endearing expression, "I am greatly obliged to you for all you have said."' Cheerful that he had advanced his friend's fortunes at least one notch, Hayley made his bow and disappeared into the wilds of Sussex, there to prepare for Cowper, whom he had succeeded in enticing from Weston on the score of Mrs. Unwin's health. Those who would embroider this history to the utmost will find the visit detailed in Southey's ' Works of Cowper.' But before Cowper arrived at Eartham, Hayley underwent severe mortification. June passed, and with it vanished Thurlow's Chancellorship. He had been at his old game, truckling to the King and undermining his colleagues' policy, and Pitt had told George bluntly that he or the Chancellor must go. Pitt being indispensable, Thurlow was compelled to retire into private life. Anyone who had had any acquaintance with politics would have known that, after this event, further correspondence with Thurlow on the subject of pensions could only serve to remind him of his former position, but Hayley, who in these matters was as blind as a mole, continued to work i' th' earth. On July 1, after a month's vain expectation, he wrote him a long letter, full of bad verses and mild reproach. This, which is copied at length in A Singular History,' Southey printed in his 'Works of Cowper,'1 explaining in a footnote that for this curious letter' he was obliged to Mr. Carwardine, the son of Hayley's friend. Getting no answer to this letter, Hayley thus quaintly extenuated Thurlow's behaviour: 'I believe the temper and health of the Noble Lord were so embittered at this particular time by Public and Private occurrences, that he was greatly disqualified for social enjoyment and for the common forms of civility'; at the same time he wrote some verses complaining of ill-treatment, and asked Carwardine (if he had courage sufficient') to repeat them to his 1 Vol. iii. p. 68. patron. Their last stanza is worth quoting because, for Hayley, it is a remarkable piece of direct utterance. Touched by thy silent disrespect Two poets blame thy rude neglect We, tho' aloof from Public Jars, We have thy Pride, but (thank our Stars) Thy pride without thy Spleen. Thurlow, accustomed to the savage onslaughts of the authors of 'The Rolliad,' was not accustomed to be treated so gently. Thus ended Hayley's first assault upon the powers on behalf of his friend Cowper. But he was determined not to give in. His spirits were still undashed, his enthusiasm unabated. Here the second portion of his manuscript ends; the third tells how he conceived a new plan and started to put it into execution. His fresh project was to make a direct appeal to the benevolence of the Prime Minister. Here, again, Hayley was unfortunate in the character of the person applied to. The indifference of Pitt to matters of private interest is common knowledge. Preoccupied with public cares, he was not likely to give special attention to the monetary affairs of a poet. He did not include recognition of genius among his public duties. Yet the hermit of Eartham was not unthoughtful of success. When Pitt was a boy of fourteen, Hayley, aged twenty-eight, had made his acquaintance at Lyme, in Dorsetshire, and, though they had never since met, had kept up with him a rather one-sided friendship. When, upon the death in 1790 of Thomas Warton, the poet laureate, it had been suggested to Pitt that Hayley was the man for the job, the Minister kindly offered it to him, telling him that the income should be increased if he accepted it. This, from mingled motives of pride and diffidence he had declined to do, but hastened to London to lay before Pitt his notions of how that office should be conducted. He could not, however, obtain an audience, and was forced to return to his hermitage,' leaving behind him a litter of bad verses. Now, thinking that all this past history stood very much to his credit, on December 11, 1792, some months after Cowper had returned to Weston, he addressed to Pitt a long letter, in which, amongst other matters, he states that Mrs. Unwin had expended 12007. on Cowper's behalf, and that on her death he would be destitute of all support except a little precarious income arising from the contribution of different relatives.' |