Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/99

 noted by W. M. Rossetti for review in 'The Germ'; 'The Mystic, and other Poems' (1855); and 'The Universal Hymn' (1867). Although the popularity of 'Festus' fluctuated, it was alive at the end of the nineteenth century. The 'Festus Birthday Book' appeared in 1882, and the 'Beauties of Festus' in 1884. A 'Festus Treasury' was edited by Albert Broadbent in 1901. In the United States thirty unauthorised editions of 'Festus' appeared before 1889.

Bailey's poetic power was never so fresh and concentrated as in the first edition of 'Festus.' His later additions turned the poem into a theological and metaphysical treatise, for which some critics claimed high philosophical merits, but beneath which the poetry was smothered. In 1876 W. M. Rossetti spoke of 'Festus' as 'but little read,' but by way of remonstrance Mr. Theodore Watts claimed that the poem contained 'lovely oases of poetry,' among 'wide tracts of ratiocinative writing' (Athenæum, 1 April 1876). Bailey prefixed to the jubilee edition an elaborate account of the aims of the poem in its final form and of the general principles of its arrangement. He was often regarded as the father of the 'spasmodic' school of poetry, and satirised as such along with [q. v.] and [q. v.] by [q. v.] in 'Firmilian' (1854); but in his last year he denied the imputation in a long letter in which he restated, with a self-satisfied seriousness, the intention of his work. He there claimed Browning as well as Tennyson among his admirers (see and, Lit. Anecdotes Nineteenth Century, ii. 413-8).

Bailey wrote a play on the subject of Aurungzebe, which Talfourd admired. Talfourd introduced the author to Macready, but the play was not produced and was finally destroyed by Bailey in a fit of despondency. Besides the volumes afterwards incorporated in 'Festus,' he published in 1858 'The Age,' a colloquial satire; in 1861 a prose essay, 'The International Policy of the Great Powers'; in 1878 Nottingham Castle, an Ode'; and in 1883 (undated, published at Ilfracombe) 'Causa Britannica, a Poem in Latin Hexameters with English Paraphrase.'

In 1856 Bailey received a civil list pension of 100l. in recognition of his literary work. In 1864 he settled in Jersey, whence he paid frequent visits to the continent. He witnessed the eruption of Vesuvius in 1872, impairing his health by exposure to heat. In 1876 he returned to England, settling first at Lee near Ilfracombe, and in 1885 at Blackheath. Finally he retired to a house in the Rope walk of his native Nottingham, where he died after an attack of influenza on 6 September 1902. He was buried in Nottingham cemetery. He married twice. His first marriage was unhappy, and he was compelled to divorce his wife, by whom he had a son and daughter. His second wife was Anne Sophia, daughter of Alderman George Carey of Nottingham, whom he married in 1863. She devotedly watched over his later years, but died before him in 1896. In 1901 Glasgow University conferred upon him an hon. LL.D. degree in his absence. A bronze bust of Bailey executed by Albert Toft in 1901 is in the Nottingham Art Gallery. A marble bust by John Alexander MacBride, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1848, is in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. A plaster cast of it, dated 1846, is in the Nottingham Art Gallery.

 BAIN, ALEXANDER (1818–1903), psychologist, logician, and writer on education, born on 11 June 1818 in Aberdeen, was one of the eight children of George Bain, a man of energy and a strict Calvinist. Son of a small farmer, the father served as a soldier, and finally settled in Aberdeen as a weaver. Alexander's mother, Margaret Paul, active and industrious, but delicate in health, died young. Bain himself preserved his health by a carefully planned system of simple living. At eleven he left school to work for his living. Although occupied in weaving, he found time to study mathematics by himself, and at sixteen he attended first of all an evening school and afterwards a mutual instruction class connected with the Mechanics' Institution. John Murray, a minister in Aberdeen, helped him in acquiring Latin, and introduced him to Professor John Cruikshank, who assisted him greatly in his studies. After