Doubtless, as sometimes ensues in the case of far more congenial minds, many things which failed, amid the amenities of personal intercourse, to disturb the good understanding at the time, rankled or were felt resentfully afterwards. In two more of the sarcastic and biting reflections, in epigrammatic form, on those against whom Blake had, or fancied he had, cause of offence, interspersed with more serious matter in the Note-book, Hayley's name again figures:—
My title as a genius thus is proved,
Not praised by Hayley, nor by Flaxman loved.
And once more:—
To Hayley.
You think Fuseli is not a great painter? I'm glad:
This is one of the best compliments he ever had.
The reading world, too, was fast coming round to a juster estimate of its quondam favourite. The Ballads, though illustrated in so poetic a spirit and in a more popular style than anything previous from the same hand, were as complete a failure—not in pecuniary respects alone, but in commanding even a moderate share of public attention—as any in the long list of Blake's privately printed books. Hayley had not more power to help Blake with a public challenged now by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, won by Crabbe, Campbell, Scott, than Blake had by his archaic conceptions, caviare to the many, to recall roving readers to an obsolete style of unpoetic verse, a tame instead of a rattling one, such as had come into vogue. The Life of Romney, when at last it did appear, was quite unnoticed. After the Life of Cowper, no book of Hayley's again won an audience.
June 1 8th, 1808, is the engraver's date to the duodecimo edition of Hayley's Ballads on Animals. These prints are unfair examples of Blake's skill and imperfect versions of his designs; they have more than his ordinary hardness of manner. Two—The Eagle and The Lion—are repetitions from the quarto. The Dog, The Hermit's Dog, and The Horse, are new.
