The So far as a few sentences of decided censure may tend to obviate the objections which M^r Gifford may feel to this account of Hayleys life & writings,

– the article will not be injured by introducing them. But I am utterly at a loss to conceive how any person can have read the paper & supposed that it contains very great praise of him

& Miss Seward. There is not a word in commendation of the latter, – unless it can be deemed praising her to say she was right in thinking Hayley would soon be consoled for the loss of his son.

And for Hayley himself, let me set before your eyes what is said of him, as an author:

P. 1.               That he was during many years confessedly the most popular & the most fashionable of living poets.

D^o. –               that there are in all his writings marks of a constitutional feebleness

8 –               there can be little doubt that Garrick was right in rejecting his tragedy.

10 –               he chose a good subject for an epic poem “but it is one thing to fix upon a fine situation for building, & another to erect an edifice there which shall not disfigure instead of ornamenting the scene.

11 –               he was no more like Virgil than M^r Pitt was like Mæcenas.

D^o. –               a love of the country was the most poetical part of his character.

D^o –               if the lines on his mother have not the stamp of genuine poetry, they have that of genuine feeling

13.               his Epistles succeeded because the verse was just upon a level with the taste of the age, & the notes contained what was then an extraordinary display of reading.

15.               few poems have been more successful than the Triumphs of Temper.

19 –               he was by grace of the public King of the Bards of Britain

D^o.               perhaps he felt himself unwilling because unworthy to succeed Warton in the Laureateship.

19.               If he had been asked his own opinion of his own verses he would have said with the Gracioso that they were not very good, – but passable.

20               both the wit & the erudition of his Essay on Old Maids were estimated too highly, but it has finer touches of feeling than any of his other writings

33               His latter works very inferior to his former productions, & compleatly unsuccessful.

D^o –               his poetry has had its day, – but in his latter devotional pieces (the only ones which are praised) there is a strain of thought & feeling which will find sympathy & may afford consolation.

And this is all the praise bestowed upon him as an author, except where I have ha said that in following Dantes metre he was led into a diction which approached the manner of a better age:

– it having just before been observd that he wrote couplets neither with skill nor vigour, tho always with ease & sometimes gracefully.

I have thus patiently set before you all that is said of his literary character. Where is the praise? No person who reads the paper can possibly suppose <that> the writer of it considers the success & the popularity of an writer <author> in his own age to be any proof of merit. – The truth is that I had <thought> as little thought of attempting to reviving the dead, as of slaying the slain. But Hayley was so decidedly the most popular Poet of his day, that <as such> the Laureateship was offered to him, as it was when it last fell vacant to Walter Scott

– upon the principle of detur digniori:

& as such he must hold a place in the history of English literature: And by taking out of his volumes what was worth repeating, & telling it in a better manner than his own, & intermingling it with remarks upon English poetry, – I considered myself as contributing something like a chapter to that history.

As a man, I have praised him, deservedly & honestly. Hayley is no more to me than Hecuba,

I had never the slightest intercourse with him, or with any one belonging to him. His faults I have not dissembled, but I have praised the general tenor of a life devoted to better pursuits than those of gain, – or of the turf or the field; – & treated him as a gentleman & a scholar ought always to be treated.

With regard to the article in your fourth number,

if my paper were more in opposition to it than it is (for I join with it in condemning his life of Romney)

 I should think it of no consequence, – that article being as compleatly dead & buried as Hayley himself. Beyond all doubt consistency is most desirable in a Review; but that <can> only be maintained when the Journal is conducted upon settled principles of faith, politics, philosophy & taste. The Q R. is orthodox & loyal; farther than this it has no pretension to consistency. I believe that I have never advanced a single principle in it, which has not at some time or other (sometimes in the same number) & sometimes certainly with marked design, received a point blank contradiction in its pages.

I have never spared time, research or pains of any kind, in any thing that I have written for you. This I am sure you know. And nothing of mine has ever brought disgrace upon the Review, or involved you in any difficulty as the Publisher. On the contrary the <QR> would sometimes have been saved from merited obloquy, if it had taken the bias which I would have given it. The events of life are uncertain, – life itself still more so. How much or how little I may contribute to that Journal in future depends upon circumstances which no one can foresee. But whenever such of my papers as are worthy of preservation shall be collected (– whether you permit to xxx it to be done while am able to do it, <to restore them where they have been mutilated,> & to incorporate other matter with them, – or whether it be done after my decease) I shall be well content that posterity should judge of my <opinions> by what will there be found.

And I am quite certain that such a republication would be creditable & advantageous both to you & to myself.

I am at a loss to <cannot> conjecture what the objections can be which have prevented you from closing with John Coleridge; – for objections in some quarter or other it is plain there are. He is a person in character, habits & attainments omni exceptione major,

a thorough scholar, thoroughly bred, with a high University character, & good connections; a man of business, punctual, honourable well-principled & high-principled, independent & discreet, & in addition to the security arising from his temper, judgement & discretion, there is that of his professional knowledge. It is absolutely impossible to find a man better qualified for such a responsibility as the editorship of the Q R requires.

My Dialogues

are so far advanced that I shall soon send them to press.

If you will send me a set of the Missionary Register, beginning with the second volume (the first you sent me long ago) I will prepare for you a paper upon what has been done by the Church Missionary Society.