ait 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."

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. He is a charming singer at Calais; at Dover he inspires _un
morne etonnement_ (a bleak perplexity). One has never seen an English
attempt to describe or estimate his genius. His unpopularity in England
is illustrated by the fact that the London Library, that respectable
institution, does not, or did not, possess a single copy of any one of
his books. He is but feebly represent