h them I
occasionally paid visits, but for the most part our life was as unvaried
as it was in 1814 and 1815.

"In 1818, I was unable to visit Felpham; but in 1819, I went down to
Bognor in considerable alarm, on hearing of our poor friend's illness;
and I was not certain that I should not arrive too late to see him. But
I found him out of danger; and had the happiness of returning to London
at the end of the week, leaving him recovering. But I saw him no more.
He died in November of the following year.

"You will wish to know what we read aloud. Chiefly manuscript poems and
plays of Mr. Hayley's, and modern publications. One of the former was a
sensible, just, and, as he read it, an apparently well-written Epistle
to a Socinian friend on the errors of his belief. You know, I suppose,
that our friend always read the Bible and Testament before he left his
chamber in a morning." Hayley's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 204. The epistle,
of which Mrs. Opie speaks, was printed with a few other "Poems on
serious and sacred Subjects," to be distributed among the friends of the
author, two years before his death.

His person and character are well described by the Rev. Doctor Johnson,
in the following words: "He was considerably above the middle stature,
had a countenance remarkably expressive of intellect and feeling, and a
commanding air and deportment that reminded the beholder rather of a
military officer, than of the character he assumes in the close of his
epistolary addresses (he used to sign himself _the Hermit_). The
deplorable infirmity, however, of his early years, had left a
perceptible lameness, which attended him through life, and induced a
necessity of adventitious aid, towards procuring him the advantage of a
tolerably even walk.

"As to his personal qualities, of a higher order, these were
cheerfulness and sympathy in a very eminent degree; so eminent, indeed,
that as no afflictions of his own could divest him of the former, so
neither could the afflictions of others find him destitute of the
latter. His temper also was singularly sweet and amiable, being not only
free from ebullitions of anger, but from all those minor defects which
it is needless to enumerate, and to which social peace and harmony are
so repeatedly sacrificed. It was the most even in its exercise, that the
writer of this brief account of him ever witnessed. Whether this regular
flow of good humour was owing to the native cheerfulness of his mind, t