Schooled at Eton and Cambridge, Hayley was the biographer of William Cowper the English poet.
He was born in West Sussex in the town of Chichester. He was born in 1745 and lived to be 75.
He was well known for: Nonfiction Pottery and ceramics
Hayley had already written occasional poems, when in 1771 his tragedy, The Afflicted Father, was rejected by David Garrick. In the same year his translation of Pierre Corneilles Rodogune as The Syrian Queen was also declined by George Colman. Hayley won the fame he enjoyed amongst his contemporaries by his poetical Essays and Epistles a Poetical Epistle to an Eminent Painter (1778), addressed to his friend George Romney, an Essay on History (1780), in three epistles, addressed to Edward Gibbon Essay on Epic Poetry (1782) addressed to William Mason A Philosophical Essay on Old Maids (1785) and the Triumphs of Temper (1781). The last-mentioned work was so popular as to run to twelve or fourteen editions together with the Triumphs of Music (Chichester, 1804) it was ridiculed by Byron in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.
In 1805 he published Ballads founded on Anecdotes of Animals (Chichester), with illustrations by Blake, and in 1809 The Life of Romney. For the last twelve years of his life Hayley received an allowance for writing his Memoirs.
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