Octoser axp Omer Pots. By Robert Bridges. Heinemann. 5s. net, When, last August, a certain member of the House of Commons asked Mr. Bonar Law "who the Pact Laurette was, and, on being informed that Dr. Bridges held the position, demanded whether it carried any obligation to write a poem, the honourable gentleman was, we are afraid, voicing the suppressed irritation of a people. The silence during times of exceptional—_natlonal crisis of one who had been chosen presumably to fulfil the duties of a National Bard was to say the least, surprising. But it. must be remembered that Dr. Bridges was appointed to his honourable post in the comparative quiet and uneventful atmosphere of 1913, when as yet few Englishmen heard the far rumble of drums or saw the Zilent unfurling of Royal Standards; and had the recognized master of the Classical Muse ~in 1913 condescended in the succeeding years to "rise to the occasion, that' is, in effect. to tune his lyre to all the degrading and bestial sounds of slaughter, the result would surely have been shocking rather than elevating The mistake, if there was © mistake lay not with our Poot Laureate but with those who. unseeing. chose from among our possible Bards the one who would never soil his art swith a record of blood and cruelty and vindictive passion.
Dr. Bridges has ever been a champion of that. aristocratic school of word-architect ies which—be-fives in dhvoreing poetry from life and in keeping the clear effluence of the classic spirit untainted by crude flames and vapours. the issue of Life and Life's paramour Fancy. And so, nearly at the heart of the present publication, we come suddenly upon the un-laboured, dignified defence of a too much of the gentleman and scholar to bicker. It is the
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