Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/357

 9 th S. X. Nov. 1, 1902.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

349

in 1848, lay off Blackwall, and in the season was brought up above Waterloo Bridge. Can any reader say what became of this curious vessel 1 A little pamphlet bought on board states that the vessel was named the Keying, was built of teak, and was supposed to be nearly a hundred years old. The yellow paper-covered booklet, "sold only on board," affords a good description of the vessel and an interesting account of the voyage from Canton to London. I. C. GOULD.

[Most of the information you seek is supplied 6 th S. ix. 198.]

PHILIP JAMES BAILEY. (9 th S. x. 242, 291.)

IT is well that ' N. & Q.' should commemo- rate, as MR. JOHN C. FRANCIS has done, the death of Philip James Bailey. The Midlands of England have produced Shakespeare, Herbert Spencer, and George Eliot, all of kindred distinction in their way, and Nottingham has given us Kirke White and Philip James Bailey, of national promise. Early death in White's case aad lack of concentration in Bailey's prevented them from attaining high places in the kingdom of poetry. I do not re- member any town which has given us a writer so remarkable as the author of ' Festus.' The following lines are worth citing, as showing whence, possibly, Macaulay acquired his con- ception of the New Zealand traveller, which he made famous in his fascinating way : Meanwhile the Arts, in second infancy, Rise in some distant clime, and then, perchance, Some bold adventurer, fill'd with golden dreams, Steering his bark through trackless solitudes, Where, to his wondering thoughts, no daring prow Hath ever plough'd before, espies the cliffs Of fallen Albion. To the land unknown He journeys joyful ; and perhaps descries Some vestige of her ancient stateliness : Then he, with vain conjecture, tills his mind Of the unheard-of race, which had arrived At science in that solitary nook, Far from the civil world ; and sagely sighs And moralizes on the state of man.

As Macaulay read "Catnach," he no doubt read ' Festus.'

The late Eric Mackay wrote a small book to show that Tennyson founded his 'Columbus' on a previous poem of the same name by the late Joseph Ellis (brother of Sir Whittaker Ellis). Joseph Ellis sent his poem to Tennyson two years before the poem of the Poet Laureate appeared. In Tennyson's the conception but not the execution was changed. Tennyson made Columbus a coarse, roistering captain ; Ellis made him a gentle-

man. Ellis could not have written Tenny- son's poems, but he wrote a better ' Columbus.' I care very little for the plagiaries which rest on conjecture seldom true, and when untrue they are libellous, since they impute theft where none has been committed. But in coincidence of ideas I believe ; and when a man like Philip James Bailey precedes a great contemporary in a remarkable concep- tion, the coincidence denotes similarity of genius in that respect. In the quotation I send you Bailey is entitled to that distinction and honour. G. J. HOLYOAKE.

Probably the least known of Philip James Bailey's publications is his privately printed pamphlet entitled ' Causa Britannica : a Poem in Latin Hexameters, with English Para- phrase in Free Heroic Verse.' This was printed at Ilfracombe, and comprised alto- gether only eleven octavo pages of print. It bears no date. This, however, is determined by a letter in mv possession, written by the author of 'FestusT to his friend Mr. Ford. It is dated from "5 Pierrepont Street, Bath, Novr. 30/83." The address" was only tem- porary. Mr. Bailey wrote :

" Some time iri August last I sent to you by Book Post a little poem of mine I had printed privately, called ' Causa Britannica,' the Latin Hexameters, with English paraphrase. As I have not heard from you, in relation to it, I think it possibly may have miscarried in the post. Should such be the case, and you have not received the copy intended for you, and which was dispatched along with others to Marston and various friends, it will give me great pleasure to forward another copy to you ; as I am as desirous that you should see it as any one."

It will thus be seen that ' Causa Britannica was prinfed during the August of 1883. Copies are very rare. There is one in the Bailey Collection at the Nottingham Public Reference Library, but there is not in the British Museum. I possess the Ford copy.

Bailey's library has been dispersed. The Glasgow University Library ; the Brom- ley House Subscription Library, Notting- ham ; the Free Public Library, Nottingham ; and the People's Hall, Nottingham, received a considerable portion of the collection. The Bromley House share is to constitute "The Philip James Bailey Collection."

J. POTTER BRISCOE.

Nottingham.

In the ' Ptomantic School ' (pub. 1833) Heine says (Fleishman's translation) :

"The poet is, on a small scale, but the imitator of the Creator, and also resembles God in creating his characters after his image."

Bailey writes :