William Hayley (born Oct. 29, 1745, Chichester, Sussex, Eng.—died Nov. 12, 1820, Felpham, near Chichester) was an 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. He was also a patron of less well-known writers, including the poet and novelist Charlotte Smith. 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.
Nevertheless, Blake illustrated Hayley’s Ballads Founded on Anecdotes Relating to Animals (1805). Hayley’s other poetical works include the long didactic poems The Triumphs of Temper (1781) and The Triumphs of Music (1804). Though mocked by fellow poets, these were popular in their time. His Life . . . of William Cowper, 3 vol. (1803–04), foreshadows the methods of modern biography; he also wrote lives of Milton (1796) and Romney (1809). Hayley retains his place in literary history as Blake’s Hayley (title of a study by Morchard Bishop, 1951).