The late Dr. Bridges' "Testament of Beauty," almost the late and certainly the most monumental ivory which lie produced, is so important contribution to English literature that an appreciation of its merits by @ competent critic will be read with interest even though the book itself has emerged from the review stage, Our late Poet-Laureate had been giving utterance so sparsely since his appointment to his high office '(and those rare utterances were chiefly prose-treatises on the grammar and spelling of the language, and calligraphy, valuable tut not precious) that we had begun to think that he had bartered his silver tongue for a golden silence, when suddenly like a miraculous winter rose-bed he "burst into crowded holiday of scent and bloom." Most of us knew him by his perfect little Lyrics, or perhaps by the sweet narrative "Cupid and Psyche;" bat his later poems have had =a philosophical and allegorical tend, and now after a long gestation he has given us a Philosophy of Mun-"Has given," I say, as if he were, still living and fecund: and truly it is dificult to read "The Testament of Beauty" and think that the keen mind of its creator is forever Inid There is nothing mew in this philosophy: most of it is as old as Plate and Aristotle, or Christ: Dut a philosophy as old as Christ is not dead yet, Poets are not original thinkers, kut they make great t hrs their drudges, and so Bridges with his classical learning and wide Knowledge of the modern sciences, history and biology and chemistry and physics (and the journalists too have worked for him), has compounded a new beauty.
This is a long poem—approaching half the length of Paradise Lost: but Bridges has Biilton's, power of unflagging excellence, has the technical perfection of one. who has devoted his lifo to his art and never swerved £eom the highest ideals of i to gain popularity (he has Milton's contempt for the crowd, and has written always for choice spirits). His verse is like Milton's again In that it speaks constantly to the intellect: every word is justly chosen, and the phrases have an intellectual rather than an mot making of man is fulfilled in his conzcient Reason: for Mind is all-pervading, running through the Atomic, Organic, Sensuous and Self-Conscious stages of existence until Wisdom takes back from man "her adoration robes/and royal crown of his Imagination and Love,' and the -eyele is complete, But Reasoa, the marvellous exception of the universe, has a small share even in man: it' is stretched over the uusiconseious mind like the thin skin of a peach; the conduct of man is largely instinctive, and Reason relies on premises that she cannot question or understand, things anchored beyond her in eternal Mind, which are "the firm rock/whereon her lofty watch-towers are planted, and all/her stargazing observatory ies built" Even the Ideas, as Courage and Mirth, Faith, Love, Poetry and Music, which, emanating from universal Mind, govern the mind of man, and which when they are all present in plenitude make the complete mind, well up through unconscient mind;'only the Idea of Order is Reason's property. So in poetry Reason is chiefly a critic. And the Greek belief that we can toil up to God by Reason has surrendered to the faith of Christ that [God is Love. Man is a spiritual animal rather than a thinking animal. won is in such deep insolvency sense that she is) an_untrust-thy guide, Man's love of Beauty the better guide: this Beauty, of which Setence kens nothing, gives to man his motive and purpose. Science can comfort man's animal poverty and humanise his manners: see how lately above her globe-sprodd net of speeded intercourse hath outrun all magic, and disclosing the secrecy of the reticent air hath woven a s web of invisible spin 1g the dumb inane quick matter of life: Now musi prisoned raptur and the drowned voice of truth mantled in light's: velocity, over land and se omnipresent, speaking aloud to every ear, into every heart and home their unhindered message, the body and soul of Universal Brotherhood; whereby war fain from savagery to fratricide, from 1 trumpeting vainglory to a crying shame, stalketh now with curse branded on its al colour, 90 that we hardly notice, except inthe loveliest passages, that it is through sensuous beauty' that) hho moves our mind, The metre is a new gift to the Engtish language: "my loose alexandrines" he calls his Yines—long, flexible, sinewy lines with an inexhaustible play of stress and the.uythm peculiarly faithful to the meaning. The Oxford Professor of Poctry tells us that the mmotre was suggested by the choruses, ai Samson Agonistes: to me the lunes, with their—_unclassical Gasticity and their strange cadences, recall the metre of Beowulf and Piers Plowman. They fare so adaptable that they include quotations from the Greek and Latin, from the Psalms and Gospels, from Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Shellioy, Keats, without disturbance of their rhythm. They can move with the intensity of impassioned verse or the subtlety of the finest prose; Lut we hear more often the ice of brooling intelligence than of passion, Tndocd, this verse, Shakespeare's most electric blank verse, is uncommonly near to prose, eeause thought has impregnated fts rhythms, This is very different to saying that it is prosaic, that is hot charged with poetical experiences.
I have heard faint readers complain that they were pub off by the strange spelling: but this slight and reasonable approach to intelligent spelling need deter none: the eye: hardly attends to it.
The arrangement of the poem is not entirely logical, but "partially dependent upon the caprice of the poet. The thought flows smoothly fiom line to line, wanders off into digestions, streams on its main course, and. is checked again by retminiscence, Sometimes the argument is held together by the thinnest threads of suggestion.
This is the' main argument as T read it: that Nature's purpose in the But she cannot satisfy the spirit, Nay, she brings despair to the hon-tst. seeker after truth, who fuds omnipotent Nature careless of man. Only faith in Beauty can help him then.
Reason controls two powerful instinels, Selfhood and Breed, th slividual urge and the race-instinct. We do not blame absolute Selfhood in plants, and hardly in animals, but Reason denounces it as the original sin of man. But even before Reason cama, Selfhood was its own restraint: the wolves gather themselves in packs, and the parental instinct, cousin to Breed, is born lof Sclfhood. Mun's mind "'straggleth slowly to birth thru, long-enfore'd delay." His highest selfhood is shown in Motherhood and the aifection and passion that springs from [ie OG ether oe ea fiat esso"The unfathomable mystery of tier awakened joy sendeth her daily to heaven on her knees in prayer: and watching o'er. the charm of a soul's wondering dawn enamoureth so her spirit, that all her happiness is in her care for him, all hope in i F and hhis nobility is the dream-goal of her life."
Among the arts and bees Self hood is lost: they have developed such a high social order that de-ludod men would take them as patterns of society, "not knowing the Ligh goal of our great endeavour is spiritual attainment, individual worth, at all cost to be sought." All Utopias founded on equality are castles in the air or counsels of despair.
War springs from Selfhood. It wwery, ard will men remain sav-warrior needs no apology as long as
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.