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. But "they were both too wise to think of
living upon love, and, after mutual tears and sighs, they parted never to
meet again. The lady, though grieved, was not heartbroken, and soon
became the wife of another." They usually do. Mr. Bayly's regret was
more profound, and expressed itself in the touching ditty:

"Oh, no, we never mention her,
Her name is never heard,
My lips are now forbid to speak
That once familiar word;
From sport to sport they hurry me
To banish my regret,
And when they only worry me--

[I beg Mr. Bayly's pardon]

"And when they win a smile from me,
They fancy I forget.

"They bid me seek in change of scene
The charms that others see,
But were I in a foreign land
They'd find no change in me.
'Tis true that I behold no more
The valley where we met;
I do not see the hawthorn tree,
But how can I forget?"

* * * * *

"They tell me she is happy now,

[And so she was, in fact.]

The gayest of the gay;
They hint that she's forgotten me;
But heed not what they say.
Like me, perhaps, she struggles with
Each feeling of regret:
'Tis true she's married Mr. Smith,
But, ah, does she forget!"

The temptation to parody is really too strong; the last lines, actually
and in an authentic text, are:

"But if she loves as I have loved,
She never can forget."

Bayly had now struck the note, the sweet, sentimental note, of the early,
innocent, Victorian age. Jeames imitated him:

"R. Hangeline, R. Lady mine,
Dost thou remember Jeames!"

We should do the trick quite differently now, more like this:

"Love spake to me and said:
'Oh, lips, be mute;
Let that one name be dead,
That memory flown and fled,
Untouched that lute!
Go forth,' said Love, 'with willow in thy hand,