into air!"

Did Bayly write that ditty or did I? Upon my word, I can hardly tell. I
am being hypnotised by Bayly. I lisp in numbers, and the numbers come
like mad. I can hardly ask for a light without abounding in his artless
vein. Easy, easy it seems; and yet it was Bayly after all, not you nor
I, who wrote the classic--

"I'll hang my harp on a willow tree,
And I'll go to the war again,
For a peaceful home has no charm for me,
A battlefield no pain;
The lady I love will soon be a bride,
With a diadem on her brow.
Ah, why did she flatter my boyish pride?
She is going to leave me now!"

It is like listening, in the sad yellow evening, to the strains of a
barrel organ, faint and sweet, and far away. A world of memories come
jigging back--foolish fancies, dreams, desires, all beckoning and bobbing
to the old tune:

"Oh had I but loved with a boyish love,
It would have been well for me."

How does Bayly manage it? What is the trick of it, the obvious, simple,
meretricious trick, which somehow, after all, let us mock as we will,
Bayly could do, and we cannot? He really had a slim, serviceable,
smirking, and sighing little talent of his own; and--well, we have not
even that. Nobody forgets

"The lady I love will soon be a bride."

Nobody remembers our cultivated epics and esoteric sonnets, oh brother
minor poet, _mon semblable_, _mon frere_! Nor can we rival, though we
publish our books on the largest paper, the buried popularity of

"Gaily the troubadour
Touched his guitar
When he was hastening
Home from the war,
Singing, "From Palestine
Hither I come,
Lady love! Lady love!
Welcome me home!"

Of course this is, historically, a very incorrect rendering of a
Languedoc crusader; and the impression is not mediaeval, but of the comic
opera. Any one of us could get in more local colour for the money, and
give the crusader a cithern or citole instead of a guitar. This is how
we should do "Gaily the Troubadour" nowadays:--

"Sir Ralph he is hardy and mickle of might,
_Ha_, _la belle blanche aubepine_!
Soldans seven hath he slain in fight,
_Honneur a la belle Isoline_!

"Sir Ralph he rideth in riven mail,
_Ha_, _la belle blanche aubepine_!
Beneath his nasal is his dark face pale,
_Honneur a la belle Isoline_!

"His eyes they blaze as the burning coal,
_Ha_, _la belle bl