William Hayley

William Hayley (1745–1820) was an English poet and biographer, born in Chichester and educated at Eton and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He lived most of his life in Sussex, first at Eartham and later at Felpham, and was a friend and patron of the painter George Romney, the poet William Cowper and, in his last years at Felpham, William Blake.

In his own day Hayley was a celebrated verse writer. The Triumphs of Temper (1781), a mock-heroic poem in six cantos, was reprinted many times, and his philosophical verse essays in heroic couplets on history, painting, epic poetry and sculpture, each addressed to a friend, were widely read. He also wrote odes, sonnets, plays and a Life of Milton (1796), and later a Life of Cowper (1803). This selection draws on the volumes printed between 1779 and 1800.