Parisian families, but in 1675 he was appointed to the chair of philosophy at the Protestant university of Sedan. In 1681 the university at Sedan was suppressed, but almost immediately afterwards Bayle was appointed professor of philosophy and history at Rotterdam. Here in 1682 he published his famous Pensées diverses sur la comète de 1680 and his critique of Maimbourg’s work on the history of Calvinism. The great reputation achieved by this critique stirred the envy of Bayle’s colleague, P. Jurieu, who had written a book on the same subject. In 1684 Bayle began the publication of his Nouvelles de la république des lettres, a kind of journal of literary criticism. In 1690 appeared a work entitled Avis important aux refugiés, which Jurieu attributed to Bayle, whom he attacked with animosity. After a long quarrel Bayle was deprived of his chair in 1693. He was not depressed by this misfortune, especially as he was at the time closely engaged in the preparation of the Historical and Critical Dictionary (Dictionnaire historique et critique). The remaining years of Bayle’s life were devoted to miscellaneous writings, arising in many instances out of criticisms made upon his Dictionary. He died in exile at Rotterdam on the 28th of December 1706. In 1906 a statue in his honour was erected at Pamiers, “la réparation d’un long oubli.” Bayle’s erudition, despite the low estimate placed upon it by Leclerc, seems to have been very considerable. As a constructive thinker, he did little. As a critic he was second to none in his own time, and even yet one can admire the delicacy and the skill with which he handles his subject. The Nouvelles de la république des lettres (see Louis P. Betz, P. Bayle und die Nouvelles de la république des lettres, Zürich, 1896) was the first thorough-going attempt to popularize literature, and it was eminently successful. The Dictionary, however, is Bayle’s masterpiece.
Editions.—Historical and Critical Dictionary (1695–1697; 1702, enlarged; best that of P. des Maizeaux, 4 vols., 1740); Les Œuvres de Bayle (3 vols., The Hague); see des Maizeaux, Vie de Bayle; L. A. Feuerbach, Pierre Bayle (1838); Damiron, La Philosophie en France au XVIIe siècle (1858–1864); Sainte-Beuve, “Du génie critique et de Bayle” (Revue des deux mondes, 1st Dec. 1835); A. Deschamps, La Génèse du scepticisme érudit chez Bayle (Liége, 1878); J. Denis, Bayle et Jurieu (Paris, 1886); F. Brunetière, La Critique littéraire au XVIIIᵉ siècle (vol. i., 1890), and La Critique de Bayle (1893); Émile Gigas, Choix de la correspondance inédite de Pierre Bayle (Paris, 1890, reviewed in Revue critique, 22nd Dec. 1890); de Budé, Lettres inédites adressées à J. A. Turretini (Paris, 1887); J. F. Stephen, Horae Sabbaticae (London, 1892, 3rd ser. pp. 174-192); A. Cazes, P. Bayle, sa vie, ses idées, &c. (1905).
BAYLO (Lat. bajulus or baillivus; cf. Ital. balio, Fr. bailli, Eng. bailiff), in diplomacy, the title borne by the Venetian representative at Constantinople. His functions were originally in the nature of those of a consul-general, but from the 16th century onwards he had also the rank and functions of a diplomatic agent of the first class. “Under the name of bayle,” says A. de Wicquefort, “he performs also the functions of consul and judge; not only between members of his own nation, but also between all the other merchants who trade in the Levant under the flag of St Mark.” (See Diplomacy.)
BAYLY, THOMAS HAYNES (1797–1839), English songwriter and dramatist, was born at Bath on the 13th of October 1797. He was educated at Winchester and at St Mary Hall, Oxford, with a view to entering the church. While on a visit to Dublin, however, he discovered his ability to write ballads, and on his return to England in 1824 he quickly gained a wide reputation with “I’d be a butterfly,” following this up with “We met—’twas in a crowd,” “She wore a wreath of roses,” “Oh, no, we never mention her,” and other light and graceful songs for which his name is still remembered. He set some of his songs to music himself; a well-known example is “Gaily the troubadour.” Bayly also wrote two novels, The Aylmers and A Legend of Killarney, and numerous plays. His most successful dramatic piece was Perfection, which was produced by Madame Vestris and received high praise from Lord Chesterfield. Bayly had married in 1826 an Irish heiress, but her estates were mismanaged and the anxiety caused by financial difficulties undermined his health. He died on the 22nd of April 1839.
His Collected Works (1844) contain a memoir by his wife.
BAYNES, THOMAS SPENCER (1823–1887), English editor and man of letters, the son of a Baptist minister, was born at Wellington, Somerset, on the 24th of March 1823. He studied at Edinburgh University, where he was a pupil of Sir William Hamilton, whose assistant he became and of whose views on logic he became the authorized exponent. This teaching was embodied in his Essay on the New Analytic of Logical Forms, published in 1850, the same year in which he took his London University degree. This was followed in the next year by a translation of Arnauld’s Port Royal Logic. In 1850 he had become editor of the Edinburgh Guardian, but after four years’ work his health gave way. He spent two years in Somerset and then went to London, becoming, in 1858, assistant editor of the Daily News. In 1864 he was appointed professor of logic metaphysics and English literature at the university of St Andrews, and in 1873 the editorship of the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica was entrusted to him. He conducted it singly until 1881, when the decline of his health rendered it necessary to provide him with a coadjutor in the person of Prof. W. Robertson Smith. Baynes, however, continued to be engaged upon the work until his death on the 31st May 1887, shortly before its completion. His article on Shakespeare (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed.) was republished in 1894, along with other essays on Shakespearian topics and a memoir by Prof. Lewis Campbell.
BAYONET, a short thrusting weapon, fixed to the muzzle or fore-end of a rifle or musket and carried by troops armed with the latter weapons. The origin of the word is disputed, but there is some authority for the supposition that the name is derived from the town of Bayonne, where the short dagger called bayonnette was first made towards the end of the 15th century. The elder Puységur, a native of Bayonne, says (in his Memoirs, published posthumously in Paris, 1747) that when he was commanding the troops at Ypres in 1647 his musketeers used bayonets consisting of a steel dagger fixed in a wooden haft, which fitted into the muzzle of the musket—in fact plug-bayonets. Courts-martial were held on some English soldiers at Tangier in 1663–1664 for using their daggers on their comrades. As bayonets were at first called daggers, and as there were few or no pikemen in Tangier until 1675, the probable conclusion is that the troops in Tangier used plug-bayonets. In 1671 plug-bayonets were issued to the French regiment of fusiliers then raised. They were issued to part of an English dragoon regiment raised in 1672 and disbanded in 1674, and to the Royal Fusiliers when raised in 1685. The danger incurred by the use of this bayonet (which put a stop to all fire) was felt so early that the younger Puységur saw a ring-bayonet in 1678 which could be fixed without stopping the fire. The English defeat at Killiecrankie in 1689 was due (among other things) to the use of the plug-bayonet; and shortly afterwards the defeated leader, General Mackay, introduced a ring-bayonet of his own invention. A trial with badly-fitting socket or zigzag bayonets was made after the battle of Fleurus, 1690, in the presence of Louis XIV., who refused to adopt them. Shortly after the peace of Ryswick (1697) the English and Germans abolished the pike and introduced these bayonets, and plates of them are given in Surirey de St Remy’s Mémoires d’Artillerie, published in Paris in that year; but owing to a military cabal they were not issued to the French infantry until 1703. Henceforward the bayonet became, with the musket or other firearm, the typical weapon of infantry. This bayonet remained in the British service until 1805, when Sir John Moore introduced a bayonet fastened to the musket by a spring clip. The triangular bayonet (so called from the cross-section of its blade) was used in the British army until the introduction of the magazine rifle, when it was replaced by the sword-bayonet or dagger-bayonet. Sword-bayonets—weapons which could be used as sword or dagger apart from the rifle—had long been in use by special troops such as engineers and rifles, and many ingenious attempts have been made to produce a bayonet fitted for several uses. A long curved sword-bayonet with a saw-edged back was formerly used by the Royal Engineers, but all troops are now supplied with the plain sword-
