William the Conqueror: The Friendship between William Hayley and William Cowper
‘It was an idle endeavour to make us enemies’, wrote William Hayley in his Life and Letters of Cowper, ‘which gave rise to our intimacy.’1 Hayley was author of the best-selling self-help book in rhyming couplets The Triumphs of Temper, and a popular poet who had recently turned down Pitt’s offer of the laureateship because