Could there be a more simple Tyrtæus? and who that reads him will not be ambitious of falling in a glorious war? Bayly, indeed, is always simple. He is “simple, sensuous, and passionate,” and Milton asked no more from a poet.
“A wreath of orange blossoms,
When next we met, she wore.
The expression of her features
Was more thoughtful than before.”
On his own principles Wordsworth should have admired this unaffected statement; but Wordsworth rarely praised his contemporaries, and said that “Guy Mannering” was a respectable effort in the style of Mrs. Radcliffe. Nor did he even extol, though it is more in his own line,
“Of what is the old man thinking,
As he leans on his oaken staff?”
My own favourite among Mr. Bayly’s effusions is not a sentimental ode, but the following gush of true natural feeling:—
“Oh, give me new faces, new faces, new faces,
I’ve seen those around me a fortnight and more.
Some people grow weary of things or of places,
But persons to me are a much greater bore.
I care not for features, I’m sure to discover
Some exquisite trait in the first that you send.
My fondness falls off when the novelty’s over;
I want a new face for an intimate friend.”
This is perfectly candid: we should all prefer a new face, if pretty, every fortnight:
“Come, I pray you, and tell me this,
All good fellows whose beards are grey,
Did not the fairest of the fair
Common grow and wearisome ere
Ever a month had passed away?”
For once Mr. Bayly uttered in his “New Faces” a sentiment not usually expressed, but universally felt; and now he suffers, as a poet, because he is no longer a new face, because we have welcomed his juniors. 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.”