One contemporary at least showed by his practice that he agreed with Taylor as to the necessity of setting poetry on a philosophical basis. Philip James Bailey published _Festus_ in 1839. It has been the work of his life, for though he wrote other pieces afterwards, most of them have been incorporated, wholly or in part, with _Festus_. The consequence is that the poem, long originally, has grown to enormous dimensions. It is an ambitious attempt to settle all the fundamental problems of the universe, and it was once hailed with a chorus of praise that would almost have sufficed for Homer or Milton. This praise remains one of the curiosities of criticism for later days to marvel at. _Festus_ is not profound philosophy, and still less is it true poetry. The thought when probed is commonplace. A vigorous expression here and there is hardly enough to redeem the weak echoes of Goethe and Byron. Frequently the verse is distinguishable from prose only by the manner of printing. 'Swearers and swaggerers jeer at my name' is supposed to be an iambic line. We are told that a thing is in our 'soul-blood' and our 'soul-bones;' and we hear of 'marmoreal floods' that 'spread their couch of perdurable snow.' Yet this passes for poetry, and _Festus_ has gone through many editions in this country, and still more in America. The aberration of taste is not quite as great as that which raised Martin Farquhar Tupper and his _Proverbial Philosophy_ to the highest popularity, but it is similar in kind. [Sidenote: Richard Hengist Horne (1803-1884).]