BAYLEY’s POEMS. 
Haunted me like apassion: the tall rock 
The mountainand thedeep and gloomy wood, 
Their colours and their forms, were then tome 
An appetite, a feeling and a love.” 
Lyrical Ballads, vol. i. 195, 
© . é . 
* © And let the misty mountain winds be free 
To blow against thee.” 
Tbid. 198. 
«* Therefore am I still 
A lover of the meadows and the woods 
And mountains, and of all which we behold 
‘From this green earth.” 
Ibid. 196. 
** Like rock or stone it is o’ergrown 
With lichens to the very top. 
+. * 
All lovely colours there you see 
All colours that were ever seen, 
And mossy network too is there, 
* * 
And cups the darlings of the eye, 
So deep is their vermillion dic.” 
Lyricat Ballads, 1. 37. 
The next instance is. more obvious 
and more offensive, as it is a base and 
unfeeling parody upon what we shall 
not scruple to call one of the finest pas- 
sages that ever was or can be written. 
s* Who so unbless’d as to lock up his heart 
ott the soothing power and sweet illapse 
Of Nature’s voice !—For sure there dwells a 
voice, 
A moving spirit, and a speaking tongue, 
In the loud waters, and the nimble air, 
And the still moonbeam, and the living light 
Of suns, resplendent in their mid career.” 
Peter Bayley, p. 45. 
«* And J nave felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
A motion and a spirit, that.impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things.” 
: Lyrical Ballads, i. 196. 
Mr. Peter Bayley, aware that so re- 
markable a passage as this would be 
recognised, has affected in one part to 
imitate Petrarch, and for “ the living 
light of suns” has quoted an vivo sole. 
A knave is never so knavish as when he 
affects honesty. Unfortunately for this 
gentleman, we also understand Italian, 
and we know that the phrase “ un vivo 
sole” is one of the metaphors common 
to all rhymers, one of the slang com- 
pliments of the Italian poets to their 
mistresses. The passage which he has re- 
B47 
ferred to is most likely the following, in 
the 70th Sonnet of Petrarch, speaking 
of Laura: 
* le parole 
Sonava altre che pur voce humana 
Uno spirto celeste, un vivo sole 
Fu quel, ch’ e vidi, &c.” 
that is a living sun, (or as the commen. 
tator has it in the notes below, a living 
sun of beauty) says Petrarch, “ was she 
whom I saw, and if she be so no longer,” 
that is on account of her age, as the 
Sonnet goes on, “the slackening of the 
bow does not cure the wound.” It 
occurs again in the 31st Canzonet, and 
with the same application. After hav- 
ing spoken of a fountain which boils in 
the night and becomes cold as the. sun 
rises, he goes on, saying, that it is even 
so with him, who is a fountain of tears, 
for 
«© Quando ’1 bel lume adorno, 
Cly e’] miosol. s’ allontana, e triste, e sole 
Son le mie luci, e notte oscura e loro; 
Ardo allhor ; ma se |’ oro 
E i rai veggio apparir del vivo sole, 
Tutto dentro, e di fuor cento cangiar me, 
E ghiaccio farme, cosi freddo torno.” 
Petrarch’s “living Sun’ is then the 
eyes of Laura, and Mr. Peter Bayley 
has endeavoured to conceal his theft by 
falshood. 
If this had been a single instance, it 
might have been excused asa pardonable, 
though not prudent effect of admiration, 
but of that hereafter. Mr. Peter Bayley 
is not contented with single imitations ; 
he parodies and he paraphrases; he in- 
serts half a line in one place and the 
other half in another; he patches in 
single phrases, such as ‘ sweet skirmish-: 
ing” applied to the sound of a brook, 
stolen from the Nightingale, “ with 
skirmish and capricious passagings.”” The 
whole art of literary thieving might be 
illustrated from this single poem. 
«« Yet when the coil, 
The stir and bustle of the world shall press 
Heavily on my heart, and when my soul 
Is sick to death of the incessant hum 
And ccremonious buzz of social life 
* * * * * 
a resting place 
For my Jong harass’d thoughts, and thou 
shalt slake 
Thy soul’s hot fever ; thou shalt soothe away 
The fretful peevishness that on the mind 
Hangs most unpleasantly. 
. * * * 
Then will thy heart confess 
The presence of a sober joy ——~ 
Nna2 
