Thomas Haynes Bayly, song-writer, was born at Bath, October 13, 1797, and was trained for the church at Winchester and St. Mary Hall, Oxford. In 1824, however, he settled in London; and his “I’d be a Butterfly” was quickly followed by “The Soldier’s Tear,” “We met—’twas in a Crowd,” “She wore a Wreath of Roses,” “Oh, no, we never mention her,” &c. He also wrote a novel, several volumes of verse, some tales, and thirty-six dramatic pieces. In his last years afflicted by sickness and loss of fortune, he died April 22, 1839.

Personal

  He was a thorough gentleman, of handsome person and refined manners. His talent did not approach genius, but he hit the popular taste, and his verses, wedded to simple music, long delighted ears not over-fastidious…. He is one of the numerous worthies whose names are intimately associated with Bath; for, in addition to his having been born there, all, or nearly all, his most popular songs were written in that pleasant city.

  Mr. T. H. Bayly was a dandy, who wore white kid gloves in the day time. He was a gentleman; had been a man of fortune; but I suspect that like Dogberry, he had had losses.

General

  An English critic supposes that he is indebted for much of his popularity to his former position in society; but the estimation in which his compositions are held in this country, where his personal history was unknown, shows the opinion to be erroneous. It is not always easy to discover the true causes of an author’s success. Bayly was certainly not one of the first poets of his time—the century in which more true and enduring poetry was written than in any other since the invention of letters; and if he had essayed any thing of a more ambitious character than the simple ballad, doubtless he would have failed; but by her who dallies with a coronet and the maiden at her spinning-wheel, by the soldier, the student, and the cottage Damon, his melodies are sung with equal feeling and admiration. Many have written “songs,” exquisitely beautiful as poems, which are never sung; and others, like Dibdin, have produced songs for particular classes; but Bayly touches the universal heart. He is never mawkish, never obscure, and rarely meretricious; his verse is singularly harmonious; every word seems chosen for its musical sound; and his modulation is unsurpassed. Our rough English flows from his pen as smoothly as the soft Italian from that of Bojardo or Metastasio.

  He possessed a playful fancy, a practised ear, a refined taste, and a sentiment which ranged pleasantly from the fanciful to the pathetic, without, however, strictly attaining either the highly imaginative or the deeply passionate.

  He is now mostly known for his exquisite songs, which for sweetness and elegance are second only—if they are second—to those of Burns and Moore; showing the playful fancy, the practised ear, and the refined taste of the author. They are simple, natural and graceful, and tender—descriptive of the feelings of all, in a language which all can appreciate and understand. It is doubtful if any songs in the English language ever attained the popuarity of “Oh no, we never mention her!” “I’d be a Butterfly,” and the “Soldier’s Tear.” Other of his songs, as “Why don’t the Men propose?” and “My married Daughter could you see,” show a different kind of power—that the author possessed that knowledge of human nature, and those powers of keen and delicate satire, which can lay bare the secret workings of the heart of a vain daughter or of a silly mother for the amusement of the world.

  There is no lofty strain in any of Bayly’s productions, but in nearly all there is lightness and ease in expression, which fully account for their continued popularity.

  If to be sung everywhere, to hear your verses uttered in harmony with all pianos and quoted by the world at large, be fame, Bayly had it. He was an unaffected poet. He wrote words to airs, and he is almost absolutely forgotten. To read him is to be carried back on the wings of music to the bowers of youth; and to the bowers of youth I have been wafted, and to the old booksellers. You do not find on every stall the poems of Bayly; but a copy in two volumes has been discovered, edited by Mr. Bayly’s widow (Bentley, 1844). They saw the light in the same year as the present critic, and perhaps they ceased to be very popular before he was breeched…. Of his poems the inevitable criticism must be that he was a Tom Moore of much lower accomplishments. His business was to carol of the most vapid and obvious sentiment, and to string flowers, fruits, trees, breeze, sorrow, to-morrow, knights, coal-black steeds, regret, deception, and so forth, into fervid anapæstics. Perhaps his success lay in knowing exactly how little sense in poetry composers will endure and singers will accept…. 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 frère!… The moral of all this is that minor poetry has its fashions, and that the butterfly Bayly could versify very successfully in the fashion of a time simpler and less pedantic than our own. On the whole, minor poetry for minor poetry, this artless singer, piping his native drawing-room notes, gave a great deal of perfectly harmless, if highly uncultivated, enjoyment.

  It was as a song writer that Bayly attained his greatest success, and some of his songs, partly on their own account, and partly from the felicity of their setting at the hands of musical composers, and of their popularity with vocalists, have been among the most sung songs of the century…. His songs and vers de société are, however, the more characteristic productions of the Butterfly bard.