On Thursday it was announced that Mr. Bridges bad been
appointed Poet Laureate. Though Mr. Bridges is not a poet whose words will stir a nation's heart, and thus, in Tennyson's phrase, be in truth a man of deeds, the appointment is one not unworthy of the nation. Mr. Bridges is essentially a scholar- poet, but that does not in any way mean that he is not a poet in a very real sense. His knowledge of and power over metre and the subtler devices of rhythm is very great. But though words of themselves are to him in so special a way "centres of emotional force," the thought is never in his work sacrificed to rhetoric. His work is far removed from what the Germans call Byzan- tine. He has not hitherto had much call to write public occasional verse, but it is quite possible that under the com- pulsion of some great national event or anniversary, he may produce poetry which will be a good deal more popular in its appeal than anything he has yet written.
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