To Bayly we shall not return; but he has one rare
merit,--he is always perfectly plain-spoken and intelligible.
"Farewell to my Bayly, farewell to the singer
Whose tender effusions my aunts used to sing;
Farewell, for the fame of the bard does not linger,
My favourite minstrel's no longer the thing.
But though on his temples has faded the laurel,
Though broken the lute, and though veiled is the crest,
My Bayly, at worst, is uncommonly moral,
Which is more than some new poets are, at their best."
Farewell to our Bayly, about whose songs we may say, with Mr.
Thackeray in "Vanity Fair," that "they contain numberless good-
natured, simple appeals to the affections." We are no longer
affectionate, good-natured, simple. We are cleverer than Bayly's
audience; but are we better fellows?
THEODORE DE BANVILLE
There are literary reputations in France and England which seem,
like the fairies, to be unable to cross running water. Dean Swift,
according to M. Paul de Saint-Victor, is a great man at Dover, a
pigmy at Calais--"Son talent, qui enthousiasme l'Angleterre,
n'inspire ailleurs qu'un morne etonnement." M. Paul De Saint-Victor
was a fair example of the French critic, and what he says about
Swift was possibly true,--for him. There is not much resemblance
between the Dean and M. Theodore de Banville, except that the latter
too is a poet who has little honour out of his own country.
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