John Hayward John Hayward, who died last Friday in the
Chelsea flat he had shared for many years with his friend T. S. Eliot, was equally well known in this country and in America as scholar, wit and bibliophile. His chosen period may be said to have covered the years from the Restoration to 1745, but he was the admired editor of Donne as well as of Rochester and Swift. He had a Peculiar affection for Saint-Evremond, whom he translated and of whose works he had an un- rivalled collection. His knowledge of French Was unusually wide, and he could talk and write With equal authority on his favourite seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, on Villon, or on Corbiere, whose esoteric language had no mys- teries for hinn. He was also an expert on the textual problems of P. G. VVodehouse.
He had suffered from a torturing form of Progressive muscular atrophy since his last year I'll Cambridge, but refused to let his confinement an invalid's chair limit hit social activities. unique compound of stoic and epicurean re Was as curious as demanding and as reward- 11:t as Horace Walpole—an unquenchable gossip ah a vast social and intellectual range. In spite ,`!' the ravages of his illness, he preserved his :liveliness of mind until his death, and crammed s,t) heroic amount of work and pleasure into his Y years. His readers will miss his sceptical eearrls and sardonic flashes, even—perhaps r,.PeelallY- those who knew what it was to be by his occasional polished barbs. His ir:,lends will miss the Regency hospitality of that overlooking the river, where polyglot biblio- ',!le,s and starry beauty assembled in affection I its brave and brilliant owner. •
WATCHMAN
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