BAILEY, Pirmr• JAMES, a distinguished living poet, was b. at Basford, in the co. of Nottingham, in the year 1816. His early education was conducted in his native town, and afterwards he became a student at the university of Glasgow. Ile was called to the English bar in 1840, but never practiced. The first edition of Festus, the poem by which he is best known, was published in 1839, and has in subsequent editions received a large amount of new matter. It attracted considerable notice in England, and was in America assailed by a perfect tornado of applause. While the enthusiasm lasted, Mr. B. was in certain quarters mentioned in the same breath with Shakespeare, Milton, and Goethe. This injudicious admiration was, however, certain to cool down, and to prove more prejudicial to the real interests of the author than unmerited_ cen sure itself; consequently, in literary journals, Rallis is frequently mentioned with a con tempt which it is far from deserving. It is a wonderful work, when the age of the author at the period of its production is taken into account. It was commenced before the author had reached his 20th year, and completed in three years. Festus errs from excess of boldness. Mr. B. speaks of universes as other poets speak of buttercups.
He has the entrée to the highest heaven and to the regions of penal fire. He is on terms of perfect familiarity with eternity. He lays his scenes in the " center," "elsewhere," " everywhere," " nowhere." Despite its extravagance, Festus is full of poetical thought and felicitous expression, and has occasional dashes of grim humor in it, not unworthy of Goethe's mocking fiend himself. The faults of the poem are as great as the beauties; there is no congruity or proportion in it, and you lay it down with a sense of admiration qualified with disgust. In 1830, Mr. B. published the Angel which possesses all the faults and all the beauties of the former work on a reduced scale. If the reader's admiration is less, his disgust is less. The Angel World is now incorporated with the larger work. Mr. B.'s subsequent writings have been the .Mystic, the Age, a colloquial satire, and the Universal hymn (1867). The first production is in the writer's early style, with all the beauties deleted. But whatever measure of success may attend Mr. B. in "elsewhere," and "nowhere," complete failure awaits him when he deals with man kind and the ordinary affairs of earth.