Bailey, PHILIP JAMES

Bailey, PHILIP JAMES, poet, was born at Basford, Nottingham, 22d April 1816, and after studying at Glasgow University, was called to the English bar in 1840, but never practised. Festus, the poem by which he is best known, was published in 1839, and reached an 11th (Jubilee) edition in 1889, having in the course of these various editions received a large amount of new matter. It attracted considerable notice in England, and in America was hailed with a perfect tornado of applause. Before the enthusiasm had cooled, its author was in certain quarters mentioned in the same breath with Shakespeare, Milton, and Goethe. And by so great a poet as Rossetti it was, says his brother, under date 1843 'enormously relished, read again and yet again.' In 1850 appeared the Angel World, possessing on a reduced scale all the faults and beauties of the former work, with which it is now incorporated. Subsequent writings have been the Mystic, the Age, and the Universal Hymn (1867).