volume which caused a French critic to describe him as the Anacreon of English romance. An attack of brain-fever prevented him from writing a work of fiction for which he had entered into an arrangement with Messrs. Bentley; but from this illness he recovered, only, however, to suffer from other and more painful diseases. He still hoped to recover, but dropsy succeeded to confirmed jaundice, and on 22 April 1839 he expired. He was buried at Cheltenham, his epitaph being written by his friend Theodore Hook.
Many of Bayly's songs are familiar wherever the English language is spoken. Amongst the most popular are ‘The Soldier's Tear,’ ‘I never was a Favourite,’ ‘We met—'twas in a Crowd,’ ‘She wore a Wreath of Roses,’ ‘I'd be a Butterfly,’ ‘Oh, no, we never mention her;’ and of humorous ballads, ‘Why don't the Men propose,’ and ‘My Married Daughter could you see.’ 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. ‘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’ (D. M. Moir).
In addition to his songs and ballads, which have been ‘numbered by hundreds,’ and his numerous pieces for the stage, the following is a list of Bayly's works: 1. ‘The Aylmers,’ a novel. 2. ‘Kindness in Women,’ tales. 3. ‘Parliamentary Letters, and other Poems.’ 4. ‘Rough Sketches of Bath.’ 5. ‘Weeds of Witchery.’
[Bayly's various Works, and Songs, Ballads, and other Poems, by the late Thomas Haynes Bayly, edited by his Widow, with a Memoir of the Author, 1844.]
BAYLY, WILLIAM (1737–1810), astronomer, was born at Bishops Cannings, or Carions, in Wiltshire. His father was a small farmer, and Bayly's boyhood was spent at the plough. In spite of the constant manual work he had to do, he took advantage of the kindness of an exciseman living in a neighbouring village, who offered to give him some lessons. From him he learned the elements of arithmetic. A gentleman of Bath, named Kingston, heard of the lad's taste for mathematics, and gave him some help. He became usher in a school at Stoke, near Bristol, and after a while took a similar situation in another school in the neighbourhood. While thus employed, he took every opportunity of increasing his mathematical knowledge. Dr. Maskelyne, the astronomer-royal, happened to hear of his talents, and engaged him as an assistant at the Royal Observatory. On his recommendation Bayly, in 1769, was sent out by the Royal Society to the North Cape to observe the transit of Venus that occurred in that year, and his observations were printed in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ of the society. In 1772 he accompanied Wales as an astrononomer on Cook's second voyage of discovery to the southern hemisphere. The two ships employed in the expedition, the Resolution and the Adventure, sailed on 13 June. He also sailed in Cook's third and last voyage made with the Resolution and the Discovery, which cleared the channel on 14 July 1776 (Pinkerton, xi. 639). This voyage, in which Cook was slain, came to an end in 1780. In 1785 Bayly was made head-master of the Royal Academy at Portsmouth, an office he continued to hold until the establishment of the Royal Naval College in 1807, when he retired on a sufficient pension. The organ in the parish church of his native village is his gift (Murray, Handbook to Wilts, Dorset, and Somerset, p. 62, ed. 1869). He died at Portsea towards the end of 1810. His published works are: 1. ‘Astronomical Observations made at the North Cape for the Royal Society by Mr. Bayley (sic),’ ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ 59, 262. 2. ‘The Original Astronomical Observations made in the course of a Voyage towards the South Pole … by W. Wales and W. Bayly … by order of the Board of Longitude,’ 1777. 3. ‘Original Astronomical Observations made in the course of a Voyage to the Northern Pacific Ocean. … in the years 1776–1780, by Capt. J. Cooke, Lieut. J. King, and W. Bayly … by order of the Board of Longitude,’ 1782.
[Hutton's Philosophical and Mathematical Dictionary; Gent. Mag. 1811, vol. lxxxi. pt. i.; Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels, xi.]
BAYNARD, ANN (1672–1697), noted for her learning and piety, was the only child of Dr. Edward Baynard [q. v.], and was born at Preston. She was carefully trained by her father in philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, physics, and classical literature. According to her chief panegyrist, at the age of twenty-three she ‘was arrived at the knowledge of a bearded philosopher.’ Her piety and charity were equally notable. ‘The great end of her study,’ writes Collier, in his ‘Great Historical Dictionary,’ ‘was to encounter atheists and libertines, as may be seen in some seven satyrs written in the Latin tongue, in which language she had a great readiness and fluency of expression,
