HAYLEY, WILLIAM (1 i45-182o), English writer, the friend and biographer of William Cowper, was born at Chichester and educated at Eton and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. His private means enabled him to live on his patrimonial estate at Eartham, Sussex, and he retired there in 1774. Hayley won contemporary fame by his poetical Essays and Epistles addressed to various dis tinguished men. On Thomas Warton's death in 1790 he was of fered the laureateship, which he refused. In 1792, while writing the Life of Milton (1794) , Hayley made Cowper's acquaintance. A warm friendship sprang up between the two which lasted till Cowper's death in 1800. After Hayley had moved in I Boo to his "marine hermitage" at Felpham, Sussex, William Blake settled near him for three years to engrave the illustrations for the Life of Cowper. This, Hayley's best known work, was published in 18o3–o4 (Chichester) in 3 vols. In 18o5 he published Ballads founded on Anecdotes of Animals (Chichester), with illustrations by Blake, and in 1809 The Life of Romney. For the last 12 years of his life Hayley received an allowance for writing his Memoirs. He died at Felpham on Nov. 12, 182o.
Hayley's Poetical Works were published in 3 vols. (1785) ; his Poems and Plays in 6 vols. (1788). See Memoirs . . . of William Hayley. . . . and Memoirs of his son T. A. Hayley, ed. John Johnson (2 vols., 1823) (containing many of Hayley's letters) ; an article on these memoirs by Robert Southey in the Quarterly Review, vol. xxxi., 1825; The Correspondence of William Cowper, arranged by Thomas Wright (vol. iv., igo4), containing many letters to Hayley.