Hayley’s book

is as bad as you describe it, and there is truth enough in your view of his character to justify its severity. Yet he has his better points, and I verily believe the worst thing he ever did was writing those Memoirs; for, as they stand, they have the deadly sin of dulness, and as he left them they were much more sinful. By way of explaining his domestic history, he intended to publish details which ought not have been whispered even in a confessional.

Yet you will see that Mrs H. must have made no secret of the matter to Miss Seward.

Perhaps I am the more inclined to excuse him, because his wife has made a very disagreeable impression upon me by a silly, or worse than silly, essay called “The Triumph of Acquaintance over Friendship.”

I like him, not for his writings as you may well suppose, but for his love of literature. It is so rare a thing to find a man in Hayley’s rank who prefers it to dogs, or horses, or guns, the common dissipations, or the common business of the world (which is not much better), that I could forgive him even if his epitaphs had been more numerous and worse than they are. You are right about the nature of his feeling; it was of a kind that easily worked itself off. As far as my observation extends, those persons recover soonest from their sorrow who let it take its full course at first.

Whether I have done as well with Hayley as you are pleased to say I should have done with a broomstick you will probably soon see. But for your sake I certainly will try what I can do with the latter subject;

it does me as much good to indulge sometimes in nonsense as it did Hayley to draw off his sensibility in a sonnet.