In a period where we have so many great or almost great names to notice, it cannot be necessary to give the weakest writers of its weakest part more than that summary mention which is at once necessary and sufficient to complete the picture of the literary movement of the time. And this is more especially the case with reference to the minor verse of the end of the eighteenth century. The earliest work of the really great men who re-created English poetry, though in some cases chronologically _in_, is not in the least _of_ it. For the rest, it would be almost enough to say that William Hayley, the preface to whose _Triumphs of Temper_ is dated January 1781, and therefore synchronised very closely with the literary appearance of Cowper, Crabbe, and Blake, was one of the most conspicuous, and remains one of the most characteristic of them. Hayley's personal relations with the first and last of these poets--relations which have kept and will keep his name in some measure alive long after the natural death of his verse--were in both cases conditioned by circumstances in a rather trying way, but were not otherwise than creditable to him. His verse itself is impossible and intolerable to any but the student of literary history, who knows that all things are possible, and finds the realisation of all in its measure interesting. The heights, or at least the average levels, of Hayley may be fairly taken from the following quotation:-- Her lips involuntary catch the chime And half articulate the soothing rhyme; Till weary thought no longer watch can keep, But sinks reluctant in the folds of sleep-- of which it can only be said that any schoolboy could write it; his not infrequent depths from the couplet:-- Her airy guard prepares the softest down From Peace's wing to line the nuptial crown.