"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