HAYLEY, WILLIAM

born Oct. 29, 1745, Chichester, Sussex, Eng. died Nov. 12, 1820, Felpham, near Chichester English poet, biographer, and patron of the arts. Hayley is best remembered for his friendships with William Blake, the great pre-Romantic poet, painter, and designer, and with the 18th-century poet William Cowper. Hayley is also recalled for his well-meant but destructive patronage of George Romney, a painter whom he persuaded to continue the drudgery of face-painting when Romney would have preferred to paint ideal subjects. Of independent means and good intentions, Hayley in 1800 invited Blake and his wife to live in a cottage on his Felpham estate and engrave and print illustrations for his books. His failure to understand Blake's visionary genius caused Blake, despite his joy in the Sussex scenery and his gratitude for Hayley's generosity, to see in him an enemy of my Spiritual Life while (pretending) to be the Friend of my Corporeal; and in 1803, realizing that Hayley's wish to turn him into a tame poet, engraver, and miniature painter would eventually destroy his artistic integrity, he returned to London, immortalizing Hayley in the epigram: Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache: Do be my Enemy for Friendship's sake. Hayley's verse, as in the didactic The Triumphs of Temper (1781), belongs to the 18th century. His Life . . . of William Cowper, 3 vol. (180304), foreshadows the methods of modern biography, but he retains his place in literary history as Blake's Hayley (title of a study by Morchard Bishop, 1951).