and hall." He thought no more of
studying for the Church, but went back to Bath, met a Miss Hayes, was
fascinated by Miss Hayes, "came, saw, but did _not_ conquer at once,"
says Mrs. Haynes Bayly (_nee_ Hayes) with widow's pride. Her lovely name
was Helena; and I deeply regret to add that, after an education at
Oxford, Mr. Bayly, in his poems, accentuated the penultimate, which, of
course, is short.

"Oh, think not, Helena, of leaving us yet,"

he carolled, when it would have been just as easy, and a hundred times
more correct, to sing--

"Oh, Helena, think not of leaving us yet."

Miss Hayes had lands in Ireland, alas! and Mr. Bayly insinuated that,
like King Easter and King Wester in the ballad, her lovers courted her
for her lands and her fee; but he, like King Honour,

"For her bonny face
And for her fair bodie."

In 1825 (after being elected to the Athenaeum) Mr. Bayly "at last found
favour in the eyes of Miss Hayes." He presented her with a little ruby
heart, which she accepted, and they were married, and at first were well-
to-do, Miss Hayes being the heiress of Benjamin Hayes, Esq., of Marble
Hill, in county Cork. A friend of Mr. Bayly's described him thus:

"I never have met on this chilling earth
So merry, so kind, so frank a youth,
In moments of pleasure a smile all mirth,
In moments of sorrow a heart of truth.
I have heard thee praised, I have seen thee led
By Fashion along her gay career;
While beautiful lips have often shed
Their flattering poison in thine ear."

Yet he says that the poet was unspoiled. On his honeymoon, at Lord
Ashdown's, Mr. Bayly, flying from some fair sirens, retreated to a bower,
and there wrote his world-famous "I'd be a Butterfly."

"I'd be a butterfly, living a rover,
Dying when fair things are fading away."

The place in which the deathless strains welled from the singer's heart
was henceforth known as "Butterfly Bower." He now wrote a novel, "The
Aylmers," which has gone where the old moons go, and he became rather a
literary lion, and made the acquaintance of Theodore Hook. The loss of a
son caused him to write some devotional verses, which were not what he
did best; and now he began to try comedies. One of them, _Sold for a
Song_, succeeded very well. In the stage-coach between Wycombe Abbey and
London he wrote a successful little _lever de rideau_ called
_Perfection_; and it was lucky that he opened