connexion with this vamped-up charge, a curious coincidence. Friend Hayley himself was not a very orthodox man in politics or religion, a Whig at the least, a quondam intimate of Gibbon's, admirer of Voltaire and Rousseau; holding, in short, views of his own. He was a confirmed absentee, moreover, from church, though an exemplary reader, to his household, of Church-service, and sermon, and family prayer, winding up with devotional hymns of his own composition.
Blake used to declare the Government, or some high person, knowing him to have been of the Paine set, 'sent the soldier to entrap him;' which we must take the liberty of regarding as a purely visionary notion.
The net result of this startling close to the tranquil episode of the life at Felpham was to revive, in Blake's generous heart, warm feelings of gratitude and affection towards Hayley, whose conduct on the occasion certainly had the ring of true metal in it. For a time, at any rate, it obliterated the sense of irritation and the intellectual scorn which had been engendered in Blake's mind,—witness various jottings in his note-book to be quoted hereafter,—by a too close companionship bringing into harsh prominence the inevitable yet ludicrous social inversion of their true natural relations. Full of genuine solicitude on account of Hayley's rash horsemanship, which had been so near proving fatal, he sends an emphatic caution on his return:—
Dear Sir,
I write immediately on my arrival, not merely to inform you that in a conversation with an old soldier, who came in the coach with me, I learned that no one, not even the most expert horseman, ought ever to mount a trooper's horse. They are taught so many tricks, such as stopping short, falling down on their knees, running sideways, and in various and innumerable ways endeavouring to throw the rider, that it is a miracle if a stranger escape with his life. All this I learn'd with some alarm, and heard also what the soldier said confirmed by another person in the coach. I therefore, as it is my duty, beg and entreat you never to mount that wretched