J^ . ■5^ •% ^-^^Wifc- ^:v,-^; .^^■■%^.^ «.. '^^i> ■^ ^'V *^c ^i^ ^'. ^^" "•/^ .1. ^^ -C^^i ^r^^ .^f-. : . ^i^>^ Q^atnrU Inlttetaity ffiihrarg Siiftiia. N«m fork BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1891 Cornell University Library PR4161.B6Z9 Robert Bridges, poet laureate; readings f 3 1924 013 439 272 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013439272 T^oet Laureate Readings from his "Poems .A TUBLIC LBCfU'RE T)BLivB'iii'D iDi^ rne ex^Mi:H^no3i_^ schools Br T,HerbertWarKen^M,^i:,^Hon^ PRESWENT OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE PROFESSOR OF EOEfitr Trice OXFOliB i4r TH€ CL^eS^DO^ Tj^ess 191 3 Robert Bridges "Poet Laureate Readings from his "Poems e/f TUBLIC LECTUTie Deuveiie'D iu^ths ex^Miu^riooi^ schools OS^tJipVSMBB'E^^, 1913 Br l^,Herbert^arren^M.^A,^Hon, D.C.L, PRESIDENT OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE PROFESSOR OF POETRY 0XF01(p 1913 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS] LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE* BOMBAY HUMPHREY MILFORD M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY PREFATORY NOTE This lecture as here published differs slightly in form, from what it was as delivered. On the one hand the text is a little longer, as want of time made it necessary to omit then some passages given in these pages. On the other hand some of the pieces read as illustrations, when the lecture was delivered, are not reproduced, but are given by reference to the pages of the Oxford Book, The Poetical Works of Robert Bridges, excluding the Eight Dramas: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1913. The different forms and prices of this edition will be found at the end. Lines sent with a copy of the 'Shorter Poems' Take, friend of all that 's good and fair, This hook of daintiest verse. And let each coy, retired air Its music rare rehearse. The silver Thames by summer kiss't. The rustling brakes of spring, Or autumn woods when gales are whist, Such songs as these they sing. Such song in England's flowering day Made merry England brave, From honied Chaucer shrewdly gay To Wither blithely grave. T. H. W. READINGS FROM THE POET LAUREATE WITH AN INTRODUCTION Undoubtedly the event of the vacation for us in Oxford, the event of the year in the English literary world, was the appointment of our neighbour, the friend of many of us, Mr. Robert Bridges, to be Poet Laureate. ' The friend of many of us.' I ought to tell you at the ■outstart that I am an old friend, and I speak with the partiality of an old friend. You may discount my opinion, if you will, proportionately. But it is my belief that it is an event and an appointment of no small or brief importance. I would begin with one word, or rather really two words, of congratulation. I would congratulate Mr. Bridges in your name and in the name of his university, of which he has shown himself not only such a worthy, but such a loyal and affectionate son. And I would -congratulate that other son of Oxford, the Prime Minister, and thank him for not having listened to those in Parlia- ment and elsewhere, who would fain have persuaded him to abolish this historic and picturesque office. The history of the Laureateship is not very well known. To recount it would require a special lecture. I will only say that it is partly the fault of the poets themselves if it is less continuously creditable than it might have been. Some years ago I had the opportunity of hearing Mr. Gladstone's opinion about the office. He said to me that ' the history of the office was curious and seemed 6 Poetical names of Poets to show that an appointment, to be prosperous, required to combine a number of conditions '. It has had, of course, its ups and downs. Oddly enough, it was vacant just a hundred years ago this summer by the death of the then holder, whose name was Pye, a member of my own college. Mr. Bridges has, in the Collection of Sonnets entitled ' The Growth of Love ', a delightful sonnet in which he notes how by a happy chance so many of the names of the great poets are themselves beautiful and musical, and might seem to have been chosen for their beauty and euphony. ' Thus may I think ', he writes, the adopting Muses chose Their sons by name, knowing none would be heard Or writ so oft in all the world as those, — Dan Chaucer, mighty Shakespeare, then for third The classic Milton, and to us arose Shelley with liquid music in the word. Mr. Pye's name was not poetical, however spelt, and was often made game of. The Laureateship at that time was very down. But why was it down ? The fault lay not with the Kings or the Prime Ministers. They had offered it in the previous century to one of the very best poets of the century, to Gray. Gray refused it, in a clever and characteristic letter. But in this very letter he said he hoped some one might be found to restore its credit, and having refused, he shortly after wrote the Installation Ode, a pre-eminently occasional, laudatory, laureate piece containing some splendid and some most beautiful verses, but the concluding lines of which are absolutely in the vein which he and others disparaged. The star of Brunswick smiles serene And gilds the horrors of the deep. The poet's laurel 'The odorous hay ' 7 In""the year 1813 the laurel was offered — again to one of the best poets of the day — to Sir Walter Scott. One of the reasons why Scott declined it was that Gray had done so. It was then given to Southey, then to Words- worth, and then to Tennyson. Tennyson received it as we all know, Greener from the brows Of him who uttered nothing base. He left it not only greener, but more glorious still, fragrant and fertile with the flower and fruit of some forty years. The poet's laurel, be it remembered, is the ' odorous bay '.^ When the Exhibition of 1862 was opened and Tenny- son's Ode was sung, one of the newspapers reported that the poet-laureate was present ' clothed in his green baize '. ^ Tennyson died just one-and-twenty years ago. A child born on the day of his death would, this autumn, exactly have reached his majority. Born four or five years earlier, so that he could just remember Tenny- son, he would be to-day five- or six-and-twenty. It is the period of a generation. During all that time the laurel has certainly been, to put it gently, somewhat in the shade. But if it is not cut down it is an evergreen tree, and once more it is shining in the sun. Habemus poetam laureatum J We have a laureate, in the true English line of English poetry, of Chaucer and Spenser, of Milton and Gray, of Wordsworth and Tennyson. But I am not going to praise, or to appraise, my old friend. I am not going to attempt any critical study of his work or his works. I have done so before now, and I may perhaps be allowed to mention to you the name of a little volume in which some three-and-twenty years ago I ventured to introduce and commend him to 8 ' Regina Cara ' readers of poetry. It was a volume in Mr. A. H. Miles's- series of the ' Poets and the Poetry of the Century ', and it was entitled Robert Bridges and Contenvporary Poets.^ I was asked to do this by Mr. Miles, and Mr. Bridges himself aided me in the task by giving me a few auto- biographical notes, which I still possess, and of which I made use. Among the ' contemporary poets ' whom it contained were Frederic W. H. Myers, Edward Dowden, Ernest Myers, Gerard Hopkins (with an introduction from Mr. Bridges' own pen), Arthur O'Shaughnessy, Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, W. E. Henley, H. D. Rawnsley, R. L. Stevenson, Alice Meynell, A. Mary F. Robinson, William Watson, and Rudyard Kipling. In 1906, fifteen years later, it was revised and re- issued under the title Bridges to Kipling. The ladies were removed to another volume and some new poets were added, among them Henry Newbolt and Laurence Binyon. What, with your kind concurrence, I should desire to do to-day is, to ask you to judge, and to help you to judge, for yourselves, of this fine poet, for such he is, and his production, giving such amount of introduction and explanation as may enable you to understand his poems better. For it is the truth that his poems have not, been, and still are not, as well known as they ought to be. I find, for instance, that comparatively few know that he has already written a beautiful piece in what might be con- sidered a peculiarly laureate vein. It was not written to command and is of course all the better for that. It was written, however, for Queen Victoria's ' Diamond Jubilee'. It is headed 'Regina Cara, Jubilee-Song, for Fallentis semita vitae 9 Music, 1897 '. It has a characteristic Latin ' Envoy '. It will be found on p. 364 of the Oxford edition. It is a commonplace to say that Mr. Bridges is not a ' popular ' poet. In a sense that is true. He has never sought to be popular. He does not live in the street. His poetry is not known to the ' man in the street ', whether on the pavement or on the top of the tram. May I say that the cult of him is not one which falls under the formula — Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab ' omnibus ' ? He left the street long ago, for the very reason that he did not wish for this sort of worship. And country life I praise. And lead, because I find The philosophic mind Can take no middle ways ; She will not leave her love To mix with men, her art Is all to strive above The crowd, or stand apart. So he wrote in the ' Invitation to the Country ' (Oxford edition, p. 253). But his critics sometimes go further than this and say that he has deliberately shunned popularity, that he has only brought out his poems in the rare editions of a private press or in separate and isolated pamphlets, which, like the Sibyl's leaves, he has allowed the winds of chance to scatter, and has never gathered together again. I do not think that is quite fair. We have all heard of the timid gentlewoman who had seen better days and was reduced to selling muffins, and who cried her wares in ever so soft a voice, saying, ' Muffins 1 Muffins ! I hope nobody will hear me ! ' Well, I don't think Mr. Bridges was ever quite like that, but he has B 10 Tennyson, Bridges, and the Duke of Wellington sometimes reminded me of his own ' flame-throated- robin ' of whom he writes : Thus sang he ; then from his spray He saw me Ustening and flew away. But of this and of his poems I want you to judge for yourselves. If we could understand them I think we should find that of him, as of other poets, his poems themselves were the best biography. But that you may understand them, I will attempt a brief outline of his career, giving it when I can in his own words. He was born, then, at Walmer, in 1844. Some of you may remember the lines which stood in the earliest versions of Tennyson's Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington : Where shall we lay the man whom we deplore ? He died on Walmer's lonely shore. Tennyson was nearly six when Waterloo was fought. He wds forty-three when the great Duke died, in 1852. Mr. Bridges, in his turn, was then a boy of eight. There is a charming autobiographical poem of his styled ' The Summer House on the Mound ', which describes how he used to watch, through a telescope from his father's garden, the ships in the Channel, and how, in particular in 1854, he saw the English Fleet under Napier making its way to the Baltic, and among the vessels ' the Admiral ship The Duke of Welhngton ', Tennyson, you may remember, heard the booming of the guns at Portsmouth as he wrote ' Maud ', in the January of 1854, and he watched the ' ships of battle ' ' slowly creeping ' under the cliffs at Freshwater. I remem- ber Mr. Bridges telling me that the 'Letter to F. D. Maurice ' was a poem he much liked. The Baltic Fleet, 1854 11 Let me now read you Mr. Bridges' own description. ((Oxford edition, pp. 334-5.) One noon in March upon that anchoring ground Came Napier's fleet unto the Baltic bound : Cloudless the sky and calm and blue the sea, As round Saint Margaret's cliflE mysteriously, Those murderous queens walking in Sabbath sleep Glided in line upon the windless deep : For in those days was first seen low and black Beside the fuU-rigg'd mast the strange smoke-stack, And neath their stern revolv'd the twisted fan. Many I knew as soon as I might scan. The heavy Royal George, the Acre bright, The Hogu$ and Ajax, and could name aright Others that I rememlaer now no more ; But chief, her blue flag flying at the fore. With fighting guns a hundred thirty and one. The Admiral ship The Duke of Wellington, Whereon saU'd George, who in her gig had flown The silken ensign by our sisters sewn. The iron Duke himself, — ^whose soldier fame To England's proudest ship had given her name. And whose white hairs in this my earliest scene Had scarce more honour'd than accustom'd been, — Was two years since to his last haven past : I had seen his castle-flag to fall half-mast One morn as I sat looking on the sea. When thus all England's grief came first to me. Who hold my childhood favour'd that I knew So well the face that won at Waterloo. A little later Mr. Bridges went to Eton. This was it may certainly be said, fortunate for Eton and fortunate for him — fortunate for him because Eton, whatever may be its failings, is certainly a good school for a poet, not ionly from its associations, its splendours, its dehghtful amenities, but still more from its free and varied life. It leaves them more alone, gives them more scope to be themselves, than many schools which are better for more average, ordinary boys. This may be seen in the Eton 12 Eton and her Poets poets, in Gray and Shelley, in Swinburne, and above all in Mr. Bridges. It was fortunate for Eton, since none of her sons have written so happily about Eton and for Eton as he : none above all with such ideal truth to her real nature, to what she was meant to be. Gray loved her, and in the formal eighteenth century he discerned and declared her historic tradition, her dedication to learning. Ye distant spires, ye antique towers That crown the watery glade. Where grateful Science still adores Her Henry's holy shade. Swinburne loved her and has written of her beauty" and her associations : Still the reaches of the river, still the light on field and hill, Still the memories held aloft as lamps for hope's young fire to fill. Shine, and while the light of England lives, shall shine for England still. But Mr. Bridges has seen more deeply. Eton is too often thought of, as Oxford is also sometimes thought of, as a place of elegant education for elegant youth, for the jeunesse doree, a smart and fashionable school where a good deal of cricket and rowing and other athletic enjoyment accompany the acquisition of a tincture of the classics, a knowledge of the manners and ways of society and ' all things fitting gentleman's attire '. Mr. Bridges appreciated and enjoyed all this to the full, but he and his best friends found something more in the College of St. Mary the Virgin of Eton, the fair founda- tion of the royal and murdered saint. I wonder whether any here know the Charter of the Foundation of Eton. It is headed by a beautiful illumina- The Dedication of Eton 13 tion representing King Henry VI dedicating his college to her Patron. An intimate friend oi Mr. Bridges, Mr. Lionel Muirhead, when they had just left school and were at Oxford together, painted a picture representing more fully the same dedication, and containing symbolical portraits of the friends, Mr. Dolben, Mr. Stuckey Coles, and Mr. Bridges himself. Mr. Bridges has most happily combined this inspiration and this view of Eton with her other aspects in the charming ' Eton Ode ' written for the ' Ninth Jubilee of the College '. (Oxford edition, p. 313.) Mr. Bridges has written again, more than once, about Eton, about his own life there, in the ' Eclogue for the Fourth of June ', Oxford edition, p. 330, about her sorrow for her sons, in the ' Ode in memory of the Old-Etonians whose lives were lost in the South African War ' (Oxford edition, p. 393). The same spirit pervades them all. It was a spirit common to himself and his friends, as may be seen, not only from this painting of one of them, but from the faithful, vivid, and humorous picture which he has drawn of their little coterie in the memoir which he wrote for the edition of his friend Mr. Mackworth Dolben's poems. At Eton Mr. Bridges was, as might be gathered from his poems, a scholar and an athlete in happy combination. It was the same when he came to Oxford. He chose Corpus, of which college a kinsman of his. Dr. Thomas Edward Bridges, had been President for twenty-one years, dying the year before the Poet Laureate was bom. He pursued the usual classical course, reading for ' Greats ', and taking his degree with Honours in 1867. 14 Oxford and Travel He had originally intended to seek Holy Orders, and had come to Oxford with introductions to Dr. Pusey and Canon Liddon, who remained his friends during his undergraduate time. He gave up this idea, however, and after his degree travelled with his friend Mr. Muirhead in the East. Later he travelled with this same companion on the Continent. Mr. Muirhead has kindly given me in a letter some accovmt of their travels. He writes : ' In January 1868 R. B. and I went by sea to Alex- andria, and thence to Cairo, where after spending some time we went leisurely up the Nile, seeing ever57thing we could, as far as Assouan, and did not return to Cairo tDl the beginning of May. R. B. wrote poems even in those days, and I find in my sketch-book a small pencil drawing of him smoking his pipe with the legend beneath: " R. B. as he appeared when he composed his ode." The ode is no longer in existence unless the Pyramids and the Nile with their " eternal recollections " {vide " Now in wintry delights ") keep it in mind. I have also got a sketch of him writing in one of the temples at Phylae : the Nile has now drowned the temple, though Osiris has fortunately preserved the poet. In May we went by Jaffa to Jerusalem where we spent several weeks seeing the surrounding country, the Dead Sea, and going south to Hebron. R. was then suddenly summoned to England and I continued my journeyings alone. In March 1874 we went to Italy, seeing Pisa, Florence, Perugia, Siena, Orvieto, Rome, Naples, Pompeii, Paestum, Sorrento. In November 1881 we went to Amiens, Turin, Genoa, Nervi, Rapallo, Spezzia, and to Florence and Rome in Italy and the East 15 1882. Thence R. went on to Sicily, leaving me in Rome. Some of the sonnets in the Growth of Love were written at Florence in 1882 — " Life-trifhng Lions", for instance, I think may be so dated — though a great number of the sonnets were written much earlier (the first edition of some of them was in 1876) and some of those dealing with Florence date from 1874 ; without much more research than I can give I should be afraid of venturing on dogmatic statement about dates.' This travel widened his views and gave him in his own language : Mirrors bright for the magic cave, of memory. They gave him in particular a living idea of Greece and Egypt which no book learning alone can supply. I note not a few reminiscences of them in his poem. One of the best instances may be found in a poem of which I am specially fond, 'Achilles in Scyros'^ Let me quote one passage from this poem. It is about Achilles and Homer. But lo, I am come to give thee joy, to call Thee daughter, and prepare thee for the sight Of such a lover, as no lady yet Hath sat to await in chamber or in bower On any walled hill or isle of Greece ; Nor yet in Asian cities, whose dark queens Look from the latticed casements over seas Of hanging gardens ; nor doth all the world Hold a memorial not where ^Egypt mirrors The great smile of her kings and sunsmit fanes In timeless silence : none hath been like him ; And all the giant stones, which men have piled Upon the illustrious dead, shall crumble and join The desert dust, ere his high dirging Muse Be dispossessed of the throne of song. 1 6 Rowing and the River Among his contempoi^aries and friends at Oxford were Dr. Sanday, Mr. Andrew Lang, and Mr. Gerard Hopkins, a very-interesting, poetic, pathetic figure, of whom he has written a brief memoir, to be found, as I have already mentioned, in the little volume. Bridges to Kipling. As an oarsman Mr. Bridges achieved some remarkable successes, stroking the Corpus Eight and carrying it to the head of the river, while at Paris as stroke of the Oxford Etonians he, I believe, performed greater feats still, and I often find, when I ask his contemporaries what he was like, that it was in this capacity that he made the strongest impression on them. I remember well that when I was getting up a list of supporters to nominate him for the Professorship of Poetry I foimd that Bishop Chavasse had been with him at Corpus, and with some hesitation I asked the Bishop if he would let me add his name. * Most assuredly I will ', he said. ' I steered the Eight for him at Corpus and I have the greatest respect and regard for him.' The river may be said to stream like a shining thread through his poems, and the oarsman is a very frequent figure in them. In this he is a true son of Oxford.' Elegy Clear and gentle stream ! Known and loved so long. That hast heard the song And the idle dream Of my boyish day ; While I once again Down thy margin stray. In the selfsame strain Still my voice is spent, With my old lament And my idle dream. Clear and gentle stream ! ' Clear and Gentle Stream ! ' tj Where my old seat was Here again I sit, Where the long boughs knit Over stream and grass A translucent eaves : Where back eddies play Shipwreck with the leaves, And the proud swans stray. Sailing one by one Out of stream and sun. And the fish lie cool In their chosen pool. Many an afternoon Of the summer day Dreaming here I lay ; And I know how soon. Idly at its hour, Fiifst the deep bell hums From the minster tower. And then evening comes. Creeping up the glade. With her lengthening shade, And the tardy boon Of her brightening moon. Clear and gentle stream ! Ere again I go Where thou dost not flow, Well does it beseem Thee to hear again Once my youthful song, That familiar strain Silent now so long : Be as I content With my old lament And my idle dream, Clear and gentle stream. This delightful little ' Elegy ', as he calls it, which opens the book of the ' Shorter Poems ', was one of the first of his writings, and appears in the earliest book of poems. c i8 Medicine in London ' There is a hill beside the silver Thames ' (Oxford edition, p. 248) is again one of the most characteristic and beautiful of his pieces. Another poem a little later, characteristically headed ' Indolence ' (Oxford edition, p. 270), describes a voyage by boat from Oxford to Abingdon. When he came back from travel he determined to study medicine. He joined St. Bartholomew's Hospital and made himself thoroughly proficient. He took the M.B. degree at Oxford, and in course of time held several hospital appointments. In particular he was on the staff at St. Bartholomew's and at the Children's Hospital in Great Ormonde Street. He also practised generally. He much preferred treating young children to treating adults, as he very wittily said, for two reasons, firstly that they could not tell him untruths about their sjnnptoms, secondly because they were obliged to take the remedies which he prescribed for them. He was moreover very fond of children. One of the most touching and beautiful poems in the whole of his collected works, arising, I believe, out of his hospital time, is the poem ' On a Dead Child ' (Oxford edition, p. 267). I wonder how many here know it. I will venture, though it is not an easy poem to read, to read it. On a Dead Child Perfect little body, without fault or stain on thee. With promise of strength and manhood full and fair ! Though cold and stark and bare. The bloom and the charm of life doth awhileremain on thee. Thy mother's. treasure wert thou ; — alas ! no longer To visit her heart with wondrous joy ; to be Thy father's pride ; — ah, he Must gather his faith together, and his strength make stronger. The Dead, and the Living, Child 19 To me, as I move thee now in the last duty, Dost thou with a turn or gesture anon respond ; Startling my fancy fond With a chance attitude of the head, a freak of beauty. Thy hand clasps, as 'twas wont, my finger, and holds it : But the grasp is the clasp of Death, heartbreaking and stiff; Yet feels to my hand as if 'Twas still thy will, thy pleasure and trust that enfolds it. So I lay thee there, thy sunken eyelids closing, — Go lie thou there in thy coffin, thy last little bed ! — Propping thy wise, sad head. Thy firm, pale hands across thy chest disposing. So quiet ! doth the change content thee ? — Death, whither hath he taken thee ? To a world, do I think, that rights the disaster of this ? The vision of which I miss, Who weep for the body, and wish but to warm thee and awaken thee ? Ah ! little at best can all our hopes avail us To lift this sorrow, or cheer us, when in the dark. Unwilling, alone we embark, And the things we have seen and have known and have heard of, fail us. As a set-off to this sad poem let me read you another, a glad poem on a child. It is entitled ' The Garland of Rachel '. The heroine was the little newly-born daughter of Mr. Henry Daniel, at that time Bursar, now Provost, of Worcester College. She W£is bom on September 17, 1880. It was Mr. Himiphry Ward who suggested the ' Garland ', after the model of the famous Guirlande de Julie of the Hotel Rambouillet, and it was printed the next year. There were eighteen contributors; (i) her father himself ; (2) Mr. Albert Watson, afterwards Principal of B.N.C. (in Latin) ; (3) Mr, Austin Dobson ; (4) Andrew Lang] 20 ' The Garland of Rachel ' (5) John Addington S37nionds ; (6) Mr. Robert Bridges ; (7) ' Lewis Carroll ' ; (8) Sir Richard Harington (Latin) ; (9) A. Mary F. Robinson, afterwards Madame Darmesteter; (10) Mr. Edmund Gosse ; (11) Mr. Francis W. Bourdillon ; (12) W. E. Henley (in French) ; (13) Mr. W. J. Courthope ; (14) Frederick Locker ; (15) Mr. Humphry Ward ; (16) Mr. Ernest Myers ; (17) Margaret L. Woods ; (18) Mr. C. J. Cruttwell. Mr. Daniel printed the slender volume. Mrs. Daniel added the floral lettering or ' miniation ' in red ink. Mr. Alfred Parsons, R.A., then a young Somerset friend, contributed three designs, for head and tail pieces and for the tops of the pages. Here is Mr. Bridges' poem : ' Rachel's Garland ' Press thy hands and crow. Thou that know'st not joy: Rouse thy voice and weep, Thou that know'st not care : Thou that toil'st not, sleep : Wake and wail nor spare, Spare not us, that know Grief and life's annoy. Thine unweeting cries Passion's alphabet, . Labour, love, and strife Spell, or e'er thou read : But the book of life Hard to learn indeed. Babe, before thee lies For thy reading yet. Thou when thou hast known Joy, will laugh not then : When grief bids thee weep. Thou wilt check thy tears : Latin 'longs and shorts' 21 When toil brings not sleep. Thou, for others' fears Fearful, shalt thine own Lose and find again. To-day the child for whom the garland was then •twined, has a nursling of her own, and her poet wears the nation's laurel. Another poem belonging to this period and phase I will not read. It is exceedingly clever and amusing, but it is in Latin, and I am not lecturing in Latin. It is entitled Carmen Elegiacum Roberti Bridges de Nosocomio Sti. Bartholomaei Londinensi, and is an account written in the ' longs and shorts ' so dear to Eton, of that hospital and its staff. It is addressed to Dr. Patrick Black, and has a very neat and fluent Introduction dated from 52 Bedford Square, on the Ides of December, and a merry motto : Si qua videbuntur casu non dicta latinh In qua scribebam barbara terra fuit. Indeed, the whole piece is full of a delightful playful- ness. ' Dear to Eton,' I said, and Mr. Bridges himself writes : Audeo quae quondam propter Thamesina fluenta Progeniem docuit mater Etona suam. It was published in 1877. It was exhibited at the Royal College of Physicians on St. Luke's Day last, when Dr. Bridges was entertained by the President and Fellows as the guest of the evening. Another production of his, one of the wisest and wittiest things of the kind I know, is not a poem at all, but that very prosy thing a Report ; an account in prose of the treatment, the gratuitous and necessarily rather perfunctory treatment, of the ' casualty' patients at a London Hospital. Mr. Bridges became then a Fellow of the Royal CoUege of Physicians. But as regards his poetry the most 22 Poetry and Science important effect of this period of his career is the influence of his medical and scientific study upon his thought. He possesses and exhibits a grasp of Natural Science, so potent a factor in our time, such as will be found in no English poet before Tennyson, and in no other poet since Tennyson. Good specimens of it may be seen in the Hexameter Epistle to ' L. M. ' (his friend Mr. Lionel Muirhead), the first of the ' Poems in Classical Prosody ', (O.B. p. 411). Fond as he was, however, of Science, and strong as was his belief in its importance, he loved poetry better, and became convinced that it was his vocation. This is shown in the ' Spring Ode ' (Oxford edition, p. 254) : Thrice happy he, the rare Prometheus, who can play With hidden things, and lay New realms of nature bare ; Whose venturous step has trod Hell underfoot, and won A crown from man and God For all that he has done. — That highest gift of all, Since crabbed fate did flood My heart with Sluggish blood, I look not mine to call ; But, like a truant freed. Fly to the woods, and claim A pleasure for the deed Of my inglorious name : And am content, denied The best, in choosing right ; For Nature can delight Fancies unoccupied With ecstasies so sweet As none can even guess, Who walk not with the feet Of joy in idleness. The Sincere Wooer 33 And still more forcibly in Sonnet 62 in the ' Growth of Love ' (Oxford edition, p. 213) : I will be what God made me, nor protest Against the bent of genius in my time. That science of my friends robs all the best. While I love beauty, and was born to rhyme. Be they our mighty men, and let me dwell In shadow among the mighty shades of old. With love's forsaken palace for my cell ; Whence I look forth and all the world behold. And say. These better days, in best things worse. This bastardy of time's magnificence. Will mend in fashion and throw off the curse. To crown new love with higher excellence, Curs'd tho' I be to live my life alone. My toil is for man's joy, his joy my own. A very interesting autobiographic piece which describes this period of his life and his conflict of inclinations is the ' Recollections of Solitude ' (Oxford edition, p. 367). In the end it may be said of him that, ' he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision ', for indeed, it was 4 ' call '. He chose poetry not from ambition but from love, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer. This is how that shy mistress ought to be wooed, and how she is to be won and wedded. He has a beautiful little poem upon this theme (Oxford edition, pp. 286-7) : O Love, my muse, how was 't for me Among the best to dare. In thy high courts that bowed the knee With sacrifice and prayer ? Their mighty offerings at thy shrine Shamed me, who nothing bore : Their suits were mockeries of mine, I §ued for so much more. 24 The Growth of Love Full many I met that crowned with bay In triumph home returned, And many a master on the way Proud of the prize I scorned. I wished no garland on my head Nor treasure in my hand ; My gift the longing that me led. My prayer thy high command. My love, my muse ; and when I spake Thou mad'st me thine that day, And more than hundred hearts could take Gav'st me to bear away. In 1882 then, at the age of 38, he gave up London and Medicine and retired to the country, and to Berkshire, in which county he has. lived ever since. For a number of ye&.rs he had his home at Yattendon, on the downs above Fahgboume. Now, to our advantage, he is settled near Boar's Hill. His first volume of poems was published in 1873 when he was nine-and-twenty. It is now exceedingly rare, and so are the thin, paper-covered pamphlets which succeeded it during the next few years. Some of the poems contained in these he has never reprinted. There is one in particular, a very fine Lucretian piece on ' Nature ', which I have often wished he would reprint. In 1876 he published what must be regarded as one of the most characteristic of his works, the sequence of Sonnets entitled ' The Growth of Love '. As then given to the world it consisted of twenty-four numbers. In 1879, and again in 1880, he published volumes, entitled simply, ' Poems by the author of the Growth of Love '. Then in 1883, the year after he had left London, came a notable event in his literary career, the printing for the first time of one of his pla}^ by his now intimate friend The ' Daniel Press ' and ' Prometheus ' 25 Mr. Henry Daniel, the present Provost of Worcester College. The history of the ' Daniel Press ' is a chapter apart, a chapter of real moment, as is beginning to be more and more evident in the history of printing and poetry in our time. But it deserves, and would require, a separate lecture to do it justice. The first long poem printed by Mr. Daniel for Mr. Bridges was the noble and beautiful play which opens the Oxford Book, Prometheus the Fire-Giver, ' A Mask in the Greek Manner ', as he calls it. Both the Greek manner and the manner of Milton, especially of Comus, are distinctly traceable in it, as the first few lines alone would suffice to show. And yet it is thoroughly original. It reveals all Mr. Bridges' qualities. It revealed them, as I well remember, to me, for it was the first of his poems I read. It was reprinted in 1884 by Mr. Bell, and it was in this form that I came upon it. Just after it appeared I had asked my friend and predecessor in this Chair, Mr. J. W. Mackail, if there was any new poet who could write really good blank verse. He said, ' Yes, there is one ', and advised me to get Prometheus. I got it and read it, and "from that day I have never had any doubt that Mr. Bridges was a true and a new poet, a poet that is with a new and quite independent style of his own. This last point I think struck me as much as anything. His blank verse is not like that of Tennyson except when Tennyson also resembles Milton, nor like that of Swin- burne or Shelley or Keats. In Prometheus it is obviously reminiscent of Milton, but it has a differentia of its own. I set myself to procure everything of this new and delectable poet, and, very soon after, I had the good luck to make his personal acquaintance. For the next half- dozen years he went on in his quiet, sequestered way, D 26 Andrew Lang's Criticism printing and publishing his poems and plays, now with his friend Mr. Daniel, now with Messrs. Bell, now with Mr. Edward Bumpus, the plays chiefly with the latter.3 He was not well known, but he had his poetic friends, and other good judges spoke up for him from time to time. Notably Mr. Andrew Lang, in his Letters on Literature, 1889, quoted and praised, with equally happy discrimina- tion and warmth, several of his pieces, above all the ' Elegy on the Lady killed by grief for the death of her betrothed' (Oxford edition, p. 238). It is interesting to read Lang's criticism again to- day, written in 1889, nearly a quarter of a century ago, before Browning had published his last volimie, or Tennyson his last but one. ' The name of Mr. Robert Bridges ', he sajrs, ' is probably strange to many lovers of poetry who would like nothing better than to make acquaintance with his verse. But his verse is not so easily found. This poet never writes in magazines ; his books have not appealed to the public by any sort of advertisement, only two or three of them have come forth in the regular way. The first was "Poems, by Robert Bridges, Batchelor of Arts in the University of Oxford. Parva seges satis est. London : Pickering, 1873 ". This voliune was presently, I fancy, withdrawn, and the author has distributed some portions of it in succeed- ing pamphlets, or in books printed at Mr. Daniel's private press in Oxford. In these, as in all Mr. Bridges' poems, there is a certain austere and indifferent beauty of diction, and a memory of the old English poets, Milton and the earlier lyrists. I remember being greatly pleased with the " Elegy on a Lady whom Grief for the Death of Her Betrothed Killed ". The Early Poems 27 Let the priests go before, arrayed in white, And let the dark-stoled minstrels follow slow, Next they that bear her, honoured on this night. And then the maidens in a double row, Each singing soft and low. And each on high a torch upstajdng : Unto her lover lead her forth with light. With music, and with singing, and with praying. This is a stately stanza. In his first volume Mr. Bridges offered a few rondeaux and triolets, turning his back on all these things as soon as they became popular. In spite of their popularity, I have the audacity to like them stUl, in their humble twittering way. Much more in his true vein were the lines, " Clear and Gentle Stream ", and all the other verses in which, like a true Etonian, he celebrates the beautiful Thames (Oxford edition, p. 248) : There is a hill beside the silver Thames, Shady with birch and beech and odorous pine : And brilliant underfoot with thousand gems Steeply the thickets to his floods decline. Straight trees in every place Their thick tops interlace. And pendant branches trail their foliage fine Upon his watery face. A rushy island guards the sacred bower. And hides it from the meadow, where in peace The lazy cows wrench many a scented flower. Robbing the golden market of the bees : And laden barges float By banks of myosote ; And scented flag and golden flower-de-lys Delay the loitering boat. I cannot say how often I have read that poem, and how delightfully it carries the breath of our river through the London smoke. Nor less welcome are the two poems 28 Growing Repute on spring, the " Invitation to the Country ", and the " Reply " (Oxford edition, pp. 252-7).' Professor Dowden also in the Fortnightly, and Mr. Humphry Ward and Mr. Thursfield in the Times spoke up for him. It was about 1890 that he began to take his real rank. In 1889 Mr. Daniel reprinted for him the ' Growth of Love ', now increased to seventy-four sonnets, while he published four plays, Palicio, The Return of Ulysses, The Christian Captives, and Achilles in Scyros, with Bumpus and with Messrs. Bell, the first edition of the collection called the ' Shorter Poems '. It was this little volume that made him more widely known. A reprint was called for the same year, and two more in 1891 and 1894. Its further history will be found on page 224 of the Oxford edition. In the year 1891 it was that Mr. Alfred Miles, had the courage and prescience to entitle his new volume 'Robert Bridges and Contemporary Poets'. In 1898 Canon R. W. Dixon, his old friend, wrote a most discerning and emphatic commendation of him for a series of portraits by WiU Rothenstein, of which more anon. In 1899 Messrs. Bell issued a shilling edition of the ' Shorter Poems ', to which a fifth book had been added in 1894, and this was again reprinted the same year. This same year, 1899, saw the publication by a new firm, Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co., of a collected edition of all his works in six volumes.* This is a very attractive edition. It contains the so-called ' New Poems ' and the plays, and has a number of notes on the history of the poems. In 1903 he made another new departure, publishing with Mr. Daniel the first of the ' Poems in Classical The Oxford Poets : Prose Writings 29 Prosody ' which grew out of the theories and experiments of his friend, the Radley Master, Mr. William Johnson Stone. ' Wni Stone's versification ', as he calls it in the first of the poems so written and published, the first, that is, of the Epistles. In 1912, last year, Oxford gave him the degree of Doctor of Letters ; and in the autumn the University Press, to its lasting credit, ranked him living with the dead immortals, — ol(o ireitvva-dai, rol 8^ o-kmI aia-crova-iv — and put him into the series of Oxford Poets, in the volume which I hold in my hand, and am using to-day. It was a bold step, but it has been abundantly justified. This edition adds to the poems collected before a series m so-called ' Later Poems ' which, as will be seen, have appeared in a variety of periodicals and papers, ranging from the Sheaf and the Corpus College Pelican to the Monthly and English Reviews. Last July he was appointed Poet Laureate, and when at the end of the month I asked for a copy of the cheap edition, I was told it was all sold out. There are then seven years which are landmarks in the Poet Laureate's poetical career, namely, 1873, 1883, 1890, 1899, 1903, 1912, and 1913. Besides his verse, he has also written a good deal of criticism in prose, some avowed and some anonymous. Specially noteworthy are the criticisms of Keats which he wrote as an Introduction to Mr. BuUen's edition, his prose tractate on Milton's Prosody (published with the Clarendon Press in 1893), and his recent deliverance on English Pronunciation issued from the same source. These should be remembered by any one who wishes to study his poetry with thoroughness, and to understand his art and its development completely. But I want now to let these poems speak for themselves, 30 Love and the ' gentle hearts ' and to give, through them, and in his own language, some indication of the character of his genius and his work. Has it any dominant note ? I think it has. ' 'Tis Love, Love, Love,' says the old French refrain, * that makes the world go round.' C'est I'Amour qui fait le ^onde k la ronde. That is the secret of all life. And this is certainly Mr. Bridges' creed. But love implies an object, it is of many kinds, love of husband, wife, child, and friend, of man in general, of beauty in man's work, in all the various arts, of the fair face of nature, and containing and crowning aU these, the love of God. Mr. Bridges has put his creed into one of the shorter of the ' Shorter Poems ', No. 9 of Book IV, a httle poem that has all his art yet all his naturalness, his sincerity and artistic simplicity (Oxford edition, p. 286) : My eyes for beauty pine. My soul for Goddes grace : No other care nor hope is mine ; To heaven I turn my face. One splendour thence is shed From all the stars above : 'Tis namfed when God's name is said, 'Tis Love, 'tis heavenly Love. And every gentle heart. That burns with true desire. Is lit from eyes that mirror part Of that celestial fire. ' Every gentle heart.' Amore e cor gentil son una cosa as the great Italian lover-poet sang. ' Love and the gentle heart are one same thing.' Mr. Bridges has had above all, and always, the ' chivalrous heart '. The next two poems ' run division ', as the old phrase was, on the same theme. Number 10 shows us how by following truly his true love of beauty he won the unique Love and Scorn 31 reward of the sincere, who are faithful to their love and themselves. His ambition was to succeed in Science, his vocation was to succeed in poetry. He followed his vocation. I wished no garland on my head Nor treasure in my hand. The garland is on his head now and I hope some treasure in the hand, but just because he did not seek them they were added to him. Love is the theme of his two longer poems — ' The Growth of Love ' and ' Eros and Psyche ', which takes the old fairy tale of True Love and the Soul, from Apuleius' tinsel setting, and gives of it a new, a healthy and heavenly reading. The poet in a golden clime was born, With golden stars above. Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn. The love of love. So wrote another Poet Laureate in his youth some eighty years ago. How does the Poet Laureate of to-day put it ? (Oxford edition, p. 303) : Since to be loved endures. To love is wise : Earth hath no good but yours. Brave, joyful eyes. Earth hath no sin but thine, DuU eye of scorn : O'er thee the sun doth pine And angels mourn. The counterpart of joy is sorrow, and the measure of love is grief. This too is worthily expressed in Mr. Bridges' poems. One of the most touching of them 32 ' Maurice ' all is the poem on the death of his wife's brother, Maurice Waterhouse (Oxford edition, p. 309) : I never shall love the snow again Since Maurice died : With corniced drift it blocked the lane. And sheeted in a desolate plain The country side. The trees with silvery rime bedight Their branches bare. By day no sun appeared ; by night The hidden moon shed thievish light In the misty air. We fed the birds that flew around In flocks to be fed : No shelter in holly or brake they found. The speckled thrush on the frozen ground Lay frozen and dead. We skated on stream and pond ; we cut The crinching snow To Doric temple or Arctic hut ; We laughed and sang at nightfall, shut By the fireside glow. Yet grudged we our keen delights before Maurice should come We said, In-door or out-of-door We shall love life for a month or more, When he is home. They brought him home ; 'twas two days late For Christmas day : Wrapped in white, in solemn state, A flower in his hand, all still and straight Our Maurice lay. And two days ere the year outgave We laid him low. The best of us truly were not brave, When we laid Maurice down in his grave Under the snow. The ' Villager ' 33 Perfect mastery of his instrument, delicate dainty harmony and rhythm, these will be found everywhere. Like a consummate skater or dancer, there is nothing he cannot do, no figure he cannot cut, no step he cannot execute, and with grace. ' But ', they say, ' he is wanting in passion and in feeling for the common joys and sorrows of life.' The little poem ' A Villager ' is surely enough to refute that charge (Oxford edition, p. 319) : There was no lad handsomer than Willie was The day that he came to father's house : There was none had an eye as soft an' blue As Willie's was, when he came to woo. To a labouring life though bound thee be. An' I on my father's ground live free, I'll take thee, I said, for thy manly grace, Thy gentle voice an' thy loving face. 'Tis forty years now since we were wed : We are ailing an' grey needs not to be said : But Willie's eye is as blue an' soft As the day when he wooed me in father's croft. Yet changed am I in body an' mind. For Willie to me has ne'er been kind : Merrily drinking an' singing with the men He 'ud come home late six nights o' the se'n. An' since the children be grown an' gone He 'as shunned the house an' left me lone : An' less an' less he brings me in Of the little he now has strength to win. The roof lets through the wind an' the wet. An' master won't mend it with us in 's debt : An' all looks every day more worn, An' the best of my gowns be shabby an' torn. 34 Music No wonder if words hav' a-grown to blows ; That matters not while nobody knows ; For love him I shall to the end of life, An' be, as I swore, his own true wife. An' when I am gone, he'll turn, an' see His folly an' wrong, an' be sorry for me : An' come to me there in the land o' bliss To give me the love I looked for in this. Love qt his country will be found in the ' Fair Brass ' (Oxford edition, p. 349), a delightful quietly original and very characteristic lyric, on a subject so apt that it seems strange it has never been handled before, and in the Peace Ode (Oxford edition, p. 439). It reniains to speak of two points which go together, of Mr. Bridges' knowledge and skill in music, and of his com- mand of that rare and difficult art, the art of writing hymns. My own knowledge of music is slight. I only know enough to believe that I can see for myself, what others tell me, that Mr. Bridges' knowledge is deep and true. His love of it certainly breaks out again and again in his poems. He has written an Ode to Music for the Bicentenary Commemoration of Henry Purcell (Oxford edition, p. 394). He dedicated ' Eros and Psyche' to the celestial spirit ' of the same rare English composer. In the ' Christian Captives ' he introduces the music of Anerio and Allegri, and he writes charmingly about music in the sonnet to Joseph Joachim, and critically about it, in the first Epistle in Classical Prosody (Oxford edition, p. 411). Of his hymns it is hardly possible to give a fair idea in a short time, or by one or two specimens. He excels both in translation and in original work. I first came across a hymn of his, a translation from the Latin, in that very Hymns translated and original 35 pleasant book Translations from Prudentius, edited by his friend the Rev. Francis St. John Thackeray, the ' Morning Hymn '. I was at once attracted by it and I have always, when I have returned to it, thought it very beautiful. It is, however, somewhat long, and I will only quote the first two stanzas : Nox et tenebrae, et nubila Confusa mundi, et turbida. Lux intrat, albescit polus, Christus venit, discedite ! Caligo terrae scinditur Percussa solis spiculo Rebusque jam color redit Vultu nitentis sideris. Night and gloom and cloud The world's confusion and shroud ! Light enters, the sky grows bright, Christ comes, take ye your flight. The darkness of earth is torn By the level spears of the morn. The colours return and play In the smile of the star of day. In 1899 he published a Hymn Book of his own, The Yattendon Hymnal, a most original volume based on his own personal experiment and experience with his rustic choir in his parish church on the Berkshire Downs. It is described as ' Hymns in Four Parts with English Words for singing in Church, edited by Robert Bridges '. In the preface he makes acknowledgement to his friend Mr. Henry Ellis Wooldridge, some time the Slade Professor of Fine Art, for the music. It was published in various forms. The Edition de Luxe, at a guinea a part, is a magnificent volume, so is the next largest form, but there are also quite cheap editions procurable at a very 36 The Yattendon Hymnal small price, from Messrs. Blackwell. I will quote -one Hsman from this book, No. 82 : My heart is fill'd with longing And thick the thoughts come thronging Of my eternal home ; That all desire fulfilleth And woe and terror stilleth : Ah, thither fain, thither fain would I come. Creation knows no stasdng, And with the world decaying May love itself decay : Yea, as the earth grows older Her grace and beauty moulder, Her joy of life passeth, passeth away. But Thou, Love supremest. Who man from woe redeemest. My Maker, Thee I pray. My soul with night surrounded; Above the abyss unsounded. Lead forth to light, lead to Thy heavenly day. I said at the beginning of this Lecture that I would not myself praise or appraise my friend, but I do not feel precluded from quoting the appreciation of another. Let me conclude by reviving an appreciation written some sixteen years ago. It is that of Mr. Richard Watson Dixon. It will be found in the letter-press of a volume entitled English Portraits, by Will Rothenstein, pub- lished in 1898, opposite a portrait of Mr. Bridges himself. 'Among "them that know'", the writer there says, ' there is continual wonder that wider recognition is not given to the genius of Robert Bridges. His generation hesitates to place him where in heart it feels that he ought to be placed : but the reason for not doing a thing should scarcely be that it ought to be done. The living R. W. Dixon 37 generation ought to give the signal to posterity. One or two fair opportunities have been lamentably lost. . . . One of his dramas contains the most ludicrous situation ever invented, another the most pathetic. His sonnets are a collection that will stand among the first three or four, unless his generation befool posterity by its reticence. His Shorter Poems are as new an application to nature as photography. To poetry as an art he has rendered a special service. The influence of his " new prosody " is apparent ever37where. We know of Milton and of Keats what we should not have known without him. It is perhaps a pity that the masters so seldom write on one another. If Milton had written on Shakespeare we should have known things that we shall never know.' . . . The whole is to my mind an excellent piece of English and an admirable piece of criticism. The author was the lifelong friend of William Morris and of Bume- Jones. He was an excellent and approved writer himself. ' Among them that know ', to use his own phrase, he is accounted, I beUeve, one of the best of oiu: Church historians, and he was also himself a poet. If you would know more of him let me commend to you the two little volumes, Selected Poems by R. W. Dixon, with a Memoir by Robert Bridges, Smith, Elder, and the Last Poems of Richard Watson Dixon, selected and edited by Robert Bridges, Henry Frowde, 1905. Dixon was a warm friend of Mr. Bridges. Make allow- ance for that friendship if you will, as I have asked you to do for mine. He put his opinions strongly. I told him at the time, I remember, how much the strength and courage of his words pleased me. He said that he 38 Wordsworth's test had not written when he had the chance without de- Uberation. Yet friendship is not all a disadvantage to the critic. Is not the deepest truth about a poet that spoken, by a poet ? And you must love him ere to you He will seem worthy of your love. If only he could have been spared to know that Bridges' generation has not ' befooled posterity by its reticence ', that ' the living have given the signal '. If Dixon could have lived to see this day ! 1 This fact is stated in an interesting letter of Gray to Walpole. He is criticizing, and I fear correcting, the book of an Oxford professor of poetry, Spence's Polymetis, and he says : ' There are several little neglects, that one might have told him of, which I noted in reading it hastily : on page 311 a dis- course about orange trees occasioned by Virgil's Inter odoratum lauri nemus, where he fancies the Roman Laurus to be our Laurel, though undoubtedly the bay tree, which is odoratum, and (I beUeve) stiU called Lauro, or Alloro, at Rome.' * Another critique of mine appeared in the Literary Year Book for 1900. ^ He published Eros and Psyche, Bell, 1885. Nero, Bumpus, 1885. The Feast of Bacchus, Daniel, 1889. Elements of Milton's Blank Verse, in Mr. Beeching's edition, 1887. Prosody of Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, Blackwell, Oxford, 1889. * A seventh volume is understood to be now in preparation which will complete this edition up to date. * ROBERT BRIDGES ' (Reprinted from The Oxford Magazine.) Loving the joy of earth, and well beloved. Home at the last he is come : Home to the light of applause he has not sought for, Now, with the wreath of a fame he never wrought for, England rewards her son. The meadow-sweet, and streamlets of the Isis, Have had their poet long. And the greater themes of high Hellenic story He has touched again with a tender, mellowing glory, Master of Attic song. eagle-eyed, knowing the lofty music That Milton also knew. To-day the heart of the land with thee rejoices. Hearing, far from the murmur of city voices Thy magic known to few. H. F. B. B.-S. Oxford : Horace Hart M.A. Printer to the University Works by the Poet Laureate published by the OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS THE POETICAL WORKS OF ROBERT BRIDGES I. The Oxford Poets. Large Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. ($1 . 25) ; and in a large variety of leather bindings, from 6s. With photogravure portrait. Also on Oxford India paper, cloth, 5s. ($1 .75); in leather from 7s. With photogravure portrait. II. Oxford Editions of Standard Authors. Crown 8vo, cloth boards, is. 6d. net ; cloth boards, gilt lettered on side and back, 2S. (50 c.) ; and in superior bindings from 2s. 6d. net. With portrait. These editions consist of the Poems and Masks (as apart from the Dramas) contained in the collected editions of the Poetical Works of Robert Bridges, together with two groups of Later Poems and Poems in Classical Prosody now published for the first time as now collected. Other Works by the Poet Laureate. DEMETER : a Mask. From is. net (35 c). MILTON'S PROSODY. 5s. net ($1 . 75). ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION: a Tract. 3s. 6d. net ($1 .35). The Poems of Digby Mackworth Dolben. Edited with a Memoir by Robert Bridges, ios. net. Yattendon Hymnal. Hymns in four parts with English words for Singing in Churches. Edited by Robert Bridges. Royal 4to, £1 net. Folio, £4 net. The Yattendon Hymnal in the above two forms is now out of print. "?« ^m^r ^s-w^ •tT^ip'^j - r: .. ^en ^' tb'a^^Kdr