The late Philip Bailey in his study at the Rope Walk, Nottingham details

“Seldom has a poet come as near to absolute greatness, as Bailey did; and surely in the romance of letters there are few careers more strange than his. I remember Dr. J. B. Paton, himself the most notable of Nottingham’s latter-day citizens, saying to me that it is hardly possible for one of the present generation to realise the great popularity which Festus and its author enjoyed in England in the early forties [i.e. 1840s]. “Bailey was the poet of the day,” he remarked; “for Tennyson had not yet won his bays; and the influence which Festus had on the younger generation of that day ws extraordinary. [...]” (p. 220)