of conger eels a hundred feet long, swordfish, sharks, &c.-A porpoise lifting up his fishy face at my elbow Roaring surge-My will unmade Thought of a Coroner's inquest-Clarence's dream, &c.

Tost on the shore on the back of a mountain of water-bruised, battered, and half-suffocated-not a soul within hail-A remote view of a few stragglers that looked like pilots speculating on a wreck-The sea following from rock to rock, staunch as a bloodhound.

Searching for my clothes-my whole wardrobe hopelessly missing-probably stolen-Pondering on the pleasant contingency of making my entry into the town like a negro, or a plucked fowl-Tide rushing on, with a hideously desolate howl of the wind-Rocks slippery, the higher the ascent, scarped and perpendicular as a wall.

A gleam of joy at seeing my coat scooped out of the crevice of the rock where I had left it, as I ignorantly thought, above the reach of ocean, and sailing towards me-Grasped it like an old friend-flung it over my shoulders, and made my escape-My breeches, shoes, watch, and purse, of course, left to be fished for on the fall of the tide.

Rapid movement towards home-in the midst of the titter of girls, and the execration of matrons, and other "Dii majorum gentium," vehement against what they looked on as my voluntary exposure.

seeing the true glory of France.Ought to go sleep-tired, feverish, and spiritless.-Ought to go to the ball to revive my spirits, and shew the fools and puppies of the place, that I was neither mad nor merry in my morning's promenade.-Sprang out of bed.

At the ball-room door, met half the company coming out-Had to force the breach through a host of insolents, in the shape of footmen, gensdarmes, police-officers, and mendicants.

Breasted my way up stairs through a descending current of bonnetted, shawled, surtouted, swaddled, nonde script figures, that had once been quadrillers, card-players, pretty women, and prettier men.

My entrance made good at last, the company reduced to a scattering of a couple of dozens, unhappy reliques of the rout, uncouthly toiling down a dance, or loitering along the benches, yawning at each other, in pale despondency; the gentlemen drained to the last civil speech, and the ladies consuming the dregs of the orgeat and lemonade.-Every soul English, brouzed up in turbans that might have frightened the Grand Turk; bedizened in tawdry costumes, imported along with themselves, and made more burlesque by an attempt to ingraft them with French alterations. The young women universally lath, plaster, and chalk; the old ones, London porter, and prize-beef,-absolute Bluebeards

Tottered home.-My landlady fast asleep ;-and defying all the usual expedients of breaking a pane in her bed-chamber-tearing out her bell by the roots-Hallooing till I was hoarse

Every soul in the street poking their night-caps out of the windows, and reviling the coquin Anglais-Landlady still unshaken.

Taken up by the gensdarmes for disturbing the neighbourhood, amid surrounding cries of "Eh, ah! Bah, hah!" "Sacre !" "Bien fait, bonhomme." Au cachot!—A sudden population of thieves and filles de nuit starting, as if out of the ground, to attend me to the door of my new lodging.-Locked into the cachot for the night.

Sunday.-IN THE CACHOT.-The sous-prefect having gone to his countryseat-Unspeakable vexation-Thinking of liberty, and England.

Monday-The affair explainedLet loose-bounded like a lunatic home-Flung my trunk upon the neck

selected the passage on account of its inanity, or some felt resemblance to the character of his own thought. He is the most nerveless of all our English writers. Although a man of an extremely bad temper, he had not the slightest power of satire. No sooner died one of his friends, than he gave orders for a comfortable dinner-saw the fire well fed, and then, over his pint of port and filberts, he passed the evening in writing an elegy or epitaph on the deceased. Nothing could occur of the least notoriety that he did not forthwith turn into verse; and had London been destroyed utterly by fire or earthquake, he would have been at his octo-syllabics, and out with an Epistle to Lady A. before putting on his night-cap! His elegies, epitaphs, amatory verses, letters, comedies, tragedies, and epic poems, may be all read" promisky;" and by the alteration of a very few words here and there, be converted into each other sometimes with manifest advantage. There is a charade somewhere in these volumes, which we are positive we once read on a tombstone in a country church-yard.

It seems as if Mr Hayley had been careful to preserve one temperature in his library, and that he always composed in a state of much bodily comfort. His mind has little or no part in the philosophical or poetical transactions of the day; and at the close of the poem, or letter, or essay, we exclaim, "There writes the well-dressed gentleman!"It could not well have been otherwise. Had there been any wear and tear of mind, we should have been deprived of Hayley many years ago; but that system of continued and gentle bodily exercise which he took in his library, without any mental labour at all, no doubt conduced to the longevity of Mr Colburn's annuitant. However, the most judicious rules for attaining extreme old age, can only carry a man a certain length. Even Hayley is dead at last; and a prodigious power of scribble is no more.

Mr Hayley favours us with a short account of his birth and infancy." He no doubt was present at the first, but could not have been in a situation to make any observations that might be depended upon. Of his infancy, he speaks thus:-" He happened to arrive in the world wHEN THE CITY THAT GAVE HIM BIRTH was full of terror and perturbation. It was in the

famous year 45-and his father raised a company of volunteers, called the Chichester Blues."-Mrs Hayley, no way alarmed by the threats of a French invasion on the Sussex coast, refused to be taken to Portsmouth, and magnanimously produced our bantling bard in his "native city." Captain H., however, unwilling to destroy the beauty of his lady's bosom, which we are assured he greatly admired, engaged a wet nurse; but, miserabile dictu! by a fraud not uncommon among ve nal nurses, the person procured on this occasion was so deficient in the vital treasure in which she had pretended to abound, that her charge was nearly starved to death before the source of his decline was discovered." The anecdote is mentioned, as it may serve to enforce the eloquent admonitions which Rousseau, and Mr Roscoe, in translating the Italian poem of Tansillo, have given to young mothers; and because it is also remarkable, "as the first of many hairbreadth escapes of life to which the infant William was destined in his mor tal career."

Captain Hayley caught a cold on a field-day, which settled on his lungs, and carried him off prematurely; and so much for one whom our bard calls "the first of the Hayleys." His earliest school was a school of young ladies in Chichester; and " he often related with pleasure, that he received from the youngest of the three, a bright silver penny, as a reward of reading well; and it is a singular fact, that, in his sixty-third year, he had the pleasure of presenting to this lady, still conducting the school with cheerful health and perfect faculties, a recent edition of his Triumphs of Temper, printed at Chichester, as a memorial of his gratitude and regard towards the venerable teacher of his infancy." Soon afterwards he was removed to an academy at Kingston, where he had nearly kicked the bucket, and escaped with a shattered constitution, and, as it would seem, a debilitated intellect. He recovered, he says, from both; and before going to Eton, had a private tutor at Teddington. Here" a philosophic divine once amused him with a sight of Epsom Races through his telescope, and once displayed to him the circulation of blood in a frog." At twelve years of

age he is sent to Eton, and gets such an infernal flogging, that he plans “an extensive moral and satirical poem, in

several cantos, which he meant to entitle the Expulsion of the Rod."He remained at Eton five years, and acquired the knack of writing Latin verses indifferently; and produced an Ode on the Birth of the Prince of Wales, which was inserted in the Cambridge Collection, and also in the Gentleman's Magazine. So much for the birth, infancy, and boyhood, of William Hayley, Esq.

He now entered himself of TrinityHall, Cambridge, where he resided pretty constantly for three years. “In the only two lecturers in Trinity-Hall, there was nothing to inspire awe or apprehension. The one lectured in civil law, and the other in Longinus." "As the Students of Trinity-Hall, under the plea of devoting themselves to the civil law, are exempted from the public exercises of the university, and as Hayley left college without taking any degree, he never appeared as a disputant in the schools, but he often frequented them as a favourite amusement; for he had great pleasure in hearing the Latin language eloquently spoken by two moderators of his time, John Jebb and Richard Watson."And so finished his university education.

On leaving Cambridge, he goes to live with his mother in Great Queenstreet, Lincoln's-Inn-Fields. The house "had the advantage of a few trees in the little area behind it, which gave to the windows of the young poet's library, on the first floor, a pleasing appearance of verdure and retirement, as the house was lofty and commodious." He then makes a trip to Edinburgh, and studies fencing, horsemanship, and mathematics, in Auld Reekie; for the Modern Athens was at that time but a small concern. He sees Dr Robertson, Dr Cullen, Angelo, the Falls of the Clyde, and enjoys the humours of a Berwick smack-And of Scotland that is all he remembers, or had noticed, during a visit of several months.

We had forgot to mention, that, before going to Cambridge, the "Poet of Sussex" had fallen in love with a pretty girl named Fanny Page. They were in fact betrothed, and we were every moment expecting a weddingwhen, all of a sudden, the bardling takes flight, and is off at a tangent. A most provoking mystification hangs over this affar. To be sure it is no business of ours to pry into the loves VOL. XIV.

of Mr Hayley's youth; but since he chooses to be communicative, and to make the public his confidante, he has no right to stop short, sport mum, and baulk a curiosity which he had himself excited and indulged. There is some talk about anonymous letters, and it is hard to know which party was jilted; but there is gross indelicacy in saying anything about the matter at all; and if there was to be an account of it, it should have been full and particular. If Hayley, at the age of twenty-one, was frightened out of his attachment by anonymous letters, nothing could be more despicableBut we presume his passion had evaporated in verse.

Meanwhile, the Poet of Sussex very dexterously transfers his affections from sweet Fanny Page to sweeter Eliza Ball, who had been the confidante in the former affair. "When Hayley first mentioned this new idea to his mother, the tenderness of maternal affection caught a severe alarm, concerning the deranged parent of the hapless but lovely Eliza. You know,' said Mrs H. to her son, 'that this sweet girl is almost as dear to me as she can be to you, for I have loved her and her parents for many years; but, my dear William, before you resolve to marry, let me ask you one question. You know the mental calamity of her poor mother-what should you think of your own conduct, if, after you had made this delicate and charming creature your wife, you should ever see her sink into her mother's most afflicting disorder?' My dear madam,' the fervent lover replied,' I have asked my own heart the very question you have proposed to me so kindly; and I will tell you its immediate answer. In that case, I shall bless my God for having given me courage sufficient to make myself the legal guardian of the most amiable and most pitiable woman on earth.'" It will be seen afterwards how the selfish and heartless versifier adhered to his virtuous resolutions. "He speedily escorted her to the Deanery at Chichester, where they were both received as most welcome guests; and on the 23d October, 1769, the lovers were married in the Cathe dral by the Bishop. That prelate, Sir William Ashburnham, had a voice and elocution peculiarly suited to sacred language. The poet civilly said to him, with great truth, on the close of the 2Q

ceremony, It is really a high pleasure, my lord, to hear any part of the Prayer Book read by your lordship.' To which compliment he oddly answered, This is the worst service in the church.' He meant the worst for recital; but his conjugal vexations gave to his speech all the poignancy of an ambiguous expression."

"The Poet" goes to London with his young wife, and "determines to apply himself chiefly to dramatic composition." He waits upon Garrick with a tragedy, entitled the "Afflicted Father," and an amusing enough account is given of the manager's efforts to get rid of the trash. "The manager assumed a face in which politeness vainly endea voured to disguise his perplexity; and, with much embarrassment, he said, Why, faith, I have not been able to fix a day. I have been reconsidering the tragedy-it is most elegantly written-it is a charming composition to recite to a small circle-but I am afraid it is not calculated for stage effect. However, it shall certainly be played, if you desire it.'—'O no! by no means, mildly said the poet, with suppressed indignation at the duplicity of the manager; I shall instantly put it into my pocket; and I am very sorry, sir, that it has given you so much trouble.' Garrick burst again into a profusion of new civilities, and offers of the kindest good offices upon any future occasion. Mrs Garrick seemed desirous of soothing the spirit of the poet by personal flattery; and the first hopes of this tragedy thus ended in a farce of adulation. It was a bitter disappointment to lose the fair prospect of seeing a favourite drama well played; but the mortification was felt much more severely by the wife and mother of the poet than by himself. During the hubble-bubble rejection of the tragedy by Garrick, the poet had felt a little like Ariosto, when scolded by his father, and instead of lamenting his own defects, he was struck with the idea, what a fine comic scene he could make of the important personage who was giving him a lecture. Indeed, a disappointed poet, with his deluded and angry friend, and a shuffling manager, and the manager's meddling wife, afforded ample materials for a comedy. But although the laughable group struck the fancy of Hayley in that point of view, he wrote nothing on the occasion, but employed his vi

vacity in soothing and cheering the vexed and irritated spirit of his Eliza, whose indignation had been peculiarly excited against Mrs Garrick, as the manager had incautiously betrayed what ought to have been a secret of his wife, and was weak enough to say, that she thought the tragedy not pathetic. This appeared such an insult against the talents of her husband, as the feeling Eliza found it hardly possible to forgive; but a vexation of a more serious and important nature soon occupied the thoughts, and most grievously agitated the tender nerves, of that most pitiable sufferer. She was overwhelmed by a sudden discovery, that her father, though in good health, had ceased to be Dean of Chichester! The Dean had been prevailed upon to resign (rather in a dishonest way, we think) by his son-in-law; and the surprise wounded the too vulnerable Eliza so deeply, that she passed the three first nights, after the intelligence had reached her, in tears, incessant tears! Her husband, though he felt also much indignation against the secrecy of the transaction, endeavoured to tranquillize her spirits; and their excellent friend Mr Steele contributed much to this desirable effect, by some kind, judicious, and admirable letters."-Soon after the worthy ex-Dean died, and Hayley returned to his tragedies.

66

The "Syrian Queen," however, met with no better reception from Colman than the "Afflicted Father" from Garrick, and the Poet of Sussex was once more on a bed of nettles. Feeling some degree of indignation that the doors of both theatres seemed to be shut against him, and persuaded by his own sensations that he had a considerable portion of poetic fire in his mind, he resolved to display it in a composition not subject to the caprice of managers, yet more arduous in its execution-in short, he intended to begin an Epic Poem." He intended that his Epic should be "a national work;" and his passion for freedom led him to choose for his heroes the Barons, and their venerable director the Archbishop Langton, "who, by a happy union of valour and wisdom, established the great charter." But he fell through his Epic, and England lost a

"national work," by the Poet of Sussex. He, however, presented his country with a poetical Epistle" to the mild and elegant Stanislaus, King