You do not
find on every stall the poems of Bayly; but a copy in two volumes
has been discovered, edited by Mr. Bayly's widow (Bentley, 1844).
They saw the light in the same year as the present critic, and
perhaps they ceased to be very popular before he was breeched. Mr.
Bayly, according to Mrs. Bayly, "ably penetrated the sources of the
human heart," like Shakespeare and Mr. Howells. He also "gave to
minstrelsy the attributes of intellect and wit," and "reclaimed even
festive song from vulgarity," in which, since the age of Anacreon,
festive song has notoriously wallowed. The poet who did all this
was born at Bath in Oct. 1797. His father was a genteel solicitor,
and his great-grandmother was sister to Lord Delamere, while he had
a remote baronet on the mother's side. To trace the ancestral
source of his genius was difficult, as in the case of Gifted
Hopkins; but it was believed to flow from his maternal grandfather,
Mr. Freeman, whom his friend, Lord Lavington, regarded as "one of
the finest poets of his age." Bayly was at school at Winchester,
where he conducted a weekly college newspaper. His father, like
Scott's, would have made him a lawyer; but "the youth took a great
dislike to it, for his ideas loved to dwell in the regions of
fancy," which are closed to attorneys. So he thought of being a
clergyman, and was sent to St. Mary's Hall, Oxford. There "he did
not apply himself to the pursuit of academical honours," but fell in
love with a young lady whose brother he had tended in a fatal
illness.
Pages:
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60