Hayward heard so much about him from his admirers, that he set about a translation of 'Faust' in prose, which he published; and with his accustomed energy, before issuing a second edition, went again to Germany, where he consulted many eminent literary men and friends of the poet; and, thus fortified, the new edition rapidly attained to consideration both in Germany and England. This opened for him a door in London society, which he was not the man to remain outside of, and gave him the opportunity of using those means for pushing his way with which he was so notably equipped. Hobhouse, Macaulay, Scarlett, Whewell, Thirlwall, John Wilson, Babbage, Wordsworth, Southey, Sydney Smith, Lady Blessington, were some of his correspondents and acquaintances at this period. At this time he had chambers in the Temple (having apparently a certain amount of practice), and gave little dinners, which it was his ambition to render choice of their kind. The company was of the best, with such guests as Lockhart, Hook, James Smith, Lord Lyndhurst, Macaulay, Tom Moore, Louis Napoleon, and Mrs Norton. The viands carefully selected, and the entertainments owed perhaps some of their undoubted vogue to the fact that the host had just republished a couple of articles in the ready to meet all comers, and a visit to the jurists of Göttinasserting himself and his opinions gen. Goethe was then alive, and without compromise. Then he took an intense interest in public affairs and in other people's affairs. Though he never held any public office, he threw himself into the questions of the day with all the ardour of a professional politician, and always as an uncompromising partisan. With the same vehemence he would press into the quarrels, scandals, intrigues, and family histories of the world around him; and having an extraordinary memory, his value as a social chronicle, joined to his extensive literary information, rendered him acceptable in the boudoirs, and thus increased his general importance. Thus it came to pass that he had a large circulation; that those who met him everywhere took him to be somebody; and that public men found him most convenient to refer to on all matters of recent political history, and also on the opinions of their rivals and opponents, which, as soon as they were imparted to him, he never failed to proclaim most impartially: and as nothing afforded him so much delight as to be for the moment Mercury among the gods, he came to be known as a useful person in a difficulty, and, at moments when fear of change was perplexing ministries, might be met with hurrying from one great man to another, hanging on their arms in the public ways, asserting their policy, denouncing their opponents with a singular ardour of animosity, and telling everybody everything he knew about the matter, -for reticence was a virtue which he habitually cast to the winds. were Quarterly' on the art of dining, which made him appear much more of an epicure than he really was. Going the western circuit, visiting a good deal at the interesting country-houses of interesting people, making fresh acquaintances among notables, dinner-giving and dinner-frequenting, pushing, dictating, denouncing, writing letters and receiving better means than insistence; and he would have enjoyed an advantage which he did not often permit himself, in eliciting the free expression of the opinions of others, and in listening to and profiting by them. Nevertheless we must guard the reader against the inference that, with all his aggressiveness, he had not friends, and very good friends. Many such adhered to him up to the very end of his life, testified strongly their regard for him, and continue still to lament his loss. The fact is, that he had some very sterling qualities. Though always a partisan, no partisan was ever more honest: biassed he might be by prejudice, but not by fear or by expectation of profit to himself. He was very thorough in his friendships. He was none of your them, and preparing his careful articles for (at this time) the 'Edinburgh Review '--with an occasional trip to Paris,-such was the routine of his life, and so it continued to the end. We may here remark that these Letters show us nothing of the positive, combative, news-bearing, anecdoterecounting personage who wrote them and it is no offence to say that the letters of such correspondents as Sydney Smith and Mrs Norton are far more entertaining than his own. It is really unfortunate that that directly Hayward took pen in hand to write a letter, he dropped his remarkable personality. We say it is unfortunate, because in no other way could that remarkable personality have been more harmlessly displayed. To insist very strongly on a particular view of a matter lukewarm adherents who wait to in a letter would have been preferable to proclaiming it aggressively before a whole company. It would have been much more inoffensive to denounce some opponent to a third person, than personally to assail himself; the phraseology would have gained force by being more carefully chosen than what he was accustomed to utter, his criticisms on men and their works would have found expression more worthy of his keen critical faculty, his anecdotes would have been more sparingly introduced; and we should thus have had Hayward painted in permanent and favourable colours by himself, instead of the somewhat featureless inditer of a decorous and merely historical correspondence. On the other hand, it would have been a great gain had he transferred to his conversation somewhat of the style of his letters. He would thereby have largely increased the circle of his friends and diminished that of his enemies; he would have gained for himself a hearing by be called on-he did not call that backing of his friends-but made their quarrel for the time his own. His outspokenness often took the form of serviceable candour, which made it all the more satisfactory for those to consult him who might know that his prepossessions were already on their side; for they felt that while they had in him a stanch advocate, yet, when he might differ from them, they would be sure to hear of it and his objection would be worth attention. And though he was undoubtedly too pugnacious, yet the courage which led him to strike the most renowned shields with his sharp point was of itself a title to confidence and applause. It would be difficult to say to what political party Mr Hayward might be most inclined by nature. It has been indeed a silly Radical taunt, that intolerance and arbitrary tendencies are Tory traits; but it has long been evident that nobody is so intolerant as a Radical. However this may be, Mr Hayward began life as a Tory at twenty five, when he was a member of the London Debating Society, and gained distinction in it by speeches which we are sure are clear and sharply put. As he never was in Parliament, his political views were of no great consequence till they underwent a change with the great schism of the Peelites. He had made a study of political economy, and, like most who ventured into the new country, became a freetrader. Therefore when the Peelites, in 1852, stood aloof from both the great parties, and when the endeavour was made to bring them into a Coalition Government along with the Whigs and the Radicals, Hayward threw himself into the scheme with such ardour, that he became, according to his own account, the principal agent, after the leading statesmen, in effecting the coalition. He set forth the views of the Peelites in the Morning Chronicle,' and fought their battles in all companies. Henceforth he threw in his lot with the Liberals, and the statesmen he sided with were the Duke of Newcastle, Sir G. Lewis, Sidney Herbert, Sir James Graham, Mr Cardwell, and Mr Gladstone-in fact, the Peelites. Later, he followed Mr Gladstone in the strides he made far in advance of the Liberal party; and if he were now alive, he might possibly be following him still." No explanation is given in these letters of why Hayward never tried to enter Parliament. He would seem to have been the very man to ardently covet a seat. He had the strongest bent towards party politics. In the contention of factions he would have been in his element; and he might thus have replaced by a new profession the one he had abandoned: for when made a Queen's Counsel in 1845, he got into a quarrel with the Benchers, and entered upon a conflict with these enemies in a fash ion so very earnest, that his prospects of practice as a Q.C. were accounted as nought in the fury of battle, and were left to take care of themselves; so that, when his strife with these antagonists had come to an end, his legal career had come to an end also. This piece of negotiation of 1852 was his first essay in the business of cabinet-making. His part in it is not made clear; probably it consisted in fitting the mortises and applying the glue; but whatever it was, he appears to have performed it very much to his own satisfaction. It is curious that his correspondence should give us so little information on this and similar subjects. There is no doubt that, while he was engaged on the business, everybody whom he chanced to converse with was made aware of all that was happening at every stage of it. But in the less perishable record, he imparts to his correspondents only the briefest notices of that intrigue, his share in which gave him so much delight, and the accomplishment of which he looked back on with so much satisfaction. The chief record of it is the notice of a dinner which he gave to the leading Peelites, and which, he says, "has done great good by consolidating the Peel party, as there was a rumour that the leaders were divided." But his exertions must have gone beyond his conciliatory festival, for he tells a relation, "I have no doubt at all that if anything that suited me should turn up, they would offer it to me, as I have been of great use to them throughout." He was advised to apply for a commissionership under the Charitable Trust Act, and used some efforts to get it. "I have most reluctantly become a placehunter," he says; "but the plain matter of fact is, that I lost a considerable part of my small fortune He failed he says, "in the middle of the night to the Times' office, where I saw Chenery, the editor, an intimate friend of mine; and the first leading article in the Times' of to-day was the result." Whether anybody could now take pride in having helped to form that ruinous Administration is another question. on my brother's death." to get it-why, we do not learn. Some years later Lord Aberdeen offered him the secretaryship of the Poor Law Board, expected to become vacant; but the vacancy did not occur, and Hayward remained to the close of his life an unofficial and unrewarded servant of the party he adhered to, doing his best to secure victories which brought him nothing, and fighting because he rejoiced in the battle. It is likely that one cause of Hayward's devotion to Mr Gladstone was the animosity which he cherished towards Mr Gladstone's rival. The provocations seem to have been mutual, and which began them we know not. So early as 1850 we find Hayward pronouncing "Disraeli very nearly, if not quite, forgotten. How soon one of these puffed-up reputations goes down! It is like a bladder after the pricking of a pin." This prophecy is not, perhaps, much to his credit as a soothsayer; but he did more than prophecy. He not only furnished materials for attacks on Disraeli, but made one himself in the Edinburgh,' by which, he says exultantly, the Disraelites were frenzied with rage." On the other hand, Mr Disraeli spoke of the raconteur Hayward as "in his anecdotage," and was supposed to have made a very uncomfortable allusion to him in a novel. On the whole, Hayward probably did his antagonist the more serious damage. When there was a prospect of Liberal victory at the election of 1880, he says, "I have been longing for the fall of the Disraeli Government as I did for the fall of the Second Empire"and his longing impelled him to endeavour to secure the support of the Times' for the new Ministry. After an interview with Mr Gladstone, Lord Hartington, and Lord Granville, "I went off," Meanwhile Hayward's contributions to periodical literature went on regularly. As we have seen, he had written a great deal for the Edinburgh,' but that connection came to an end, and apparently not a friendly end; for with reference to a pamphlet he had written, he says: "I feel convinced they will lie and misquote in the Edinburgh.' But he now returned to the Quarterly,' resuming a connection which had begun in Lockhart's time, and thereafter regularly had an article in every number till a few months before his death. On each of these occasions the process of incubation went on in a very public fashion. The progress of the article was communicated freely to his numerous acquaintances till the final hatching had left little to reveal, and it afforded a fruitful theme for discussion, orally and by letter, as soon as it was before the public, -so that his essays, besides the writing of them, contributed a great deal both to the interest and the business of his life. They were very highly estimated by men of letters like Lord Lytton and Lord Houghton, and certainly deserved it. He spared no pains to be accurate. He would consult any number of people to verify a single fact, or to procure a result which would be recorded in a few words. He had known so many persons of authority in his long and busy life, that he could at once command the best sources of information on any con temporary topic. What he most enjoyed, therefore, because he felt more at home in it, was to review some new book of memoirs relating to the literary or social or political history of the time. His style was perfectly lucid, and of its kindthat is, of a kind excluding all play of imagination or exercise of invention excellent; clear-cut, logical, forcible without heaviness, and thickly set with the allusions, quotations, and anecdotes, which his extensive reading and large acquaintance with men had stored his mind with, and which his accurate memory could always place ready to his hand. So assured did he feel of his own infallible accuracy, that if any circumstance were called in question which he had at any time recorded, he would cite the fact that he had done so as a kind of evidence from which there could be no appeal. But the most curious identification of himself with his writings was in the claim which he always asserted to consider any anecdote he had once related as his own property, which nobody thenceforward ought to meddle with. The present writer having heard from Richard Doyle a good story about Lord Nelson, repeated it to Hayward. But few stories could be told to him which he was not already acquainted with; and he had not only heard this one, but had narrated it, which caused him indignantly to ask, "What the devil does Doyle mean by spoiling my story?" On this occasion, however, Doyle's version turned out to be right. It was not, however, contemporary subjects alone which could engage his attention. He once, on the appearance of the Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis,' took up the question as to who was Junius, with the view of disproving Sir Philip's claim. What was Junius to him, or he to Junius? Yet he threw himself into the question with an ardour which might have seemed excessive in a contemporary -pommelled Sir Philip Francis to his heart's content seemed inclined to back Lord George Sackville's pretentions; but finally decided that the once formidable letters were supplied by "the Grenvilles," which, perhaps, does not help us much to a conclusion; -a failure, however, that matters the less, as few people now feel a lively interest in identifying the truculent phantom. Among other subjects, he once wrote a dissertation on whist; and being in the habit of playing the game a good deal at the Athenæum, he used vigorously to propound its rules at the whist-table for the benefit of transgressors so that, on very animated evenings, his rubber might be called a severe lecture on whist, with occasional illustrations from the cards; and if some fellow - player unhappily showed an impatient temper, the green cloth, sacred to neatness and repose," became an arena of resounding conflict. What might have happened if he had ever played whist with Charles Lamb's friend, Mrs Battle, is terrible to contemplate. The titles of some of his other articles will serve to indicate the tracks in which his pen habitually ran. "Pearls and Mock Pearls of History" gave his memory a wide range, so did "Varieties of History and Art," "Curiosities of German Archives," and "Vicissitudes of Families." Ancient scandals were investigated with great gusto, as in the papers, "Marie Antoinette" and "The Countess of Albany and Alfieri.” Sometimes the subject bore graver title, as "Lanfrey's Napoleon," "The British Parliament, its History and Eloquence," and "England and France-their National a |