me, unshaken by the
winds of the world, and burning every moment with whiter and purer
brilliance.

Mr. Bridges has written it in what is practically the classical manner, as
he has done in _Achilles in Scyros_--a placid and charming setting for
many placid and charming lyrics--

'And ever we keep a feast of delight
The betrothal of hearts, when spirits unite,
Creating an offspring of joy, a treasure
Unknown to the bad, for whom
The gods foredoom
The glitter of pleasure
And a dark tomb.'

The poet who writes best in the Shakespearian manner is a poet with a
circumstantial and instinctive mind, who delights to speak with strange
voices and to see his mind in the mirror of Nature; while Mr. Bridges,
like most of us to-day, has a lyrical and meditative mind, and delights to
speak with his own voice and to see Nature in the mirror of his mind. In
reading his plays in a Shakespearian manner, I find that he is constantly
arranging his story in such and such a way because he has read that the
persons he is writing of did such and such things, and not because his
soul has passed into the soul of their world and understood its
unchangeable destinies. His _Return of Ulysses_ is admirable in beauty,
because its classical gravity of speech, which does not, like
Shakespeare's verse, desire the vivacity of common life, purifies and
subdues all passion into lyrical and meditative ecstasies, and because the
unity of place and time in the late acts compels a logical rather than
instinctive procession of incidents; and if the Shakespearian _Nero:
Second Part_ approaches it in beauty and in dramatic power, it is because
it eddies about Nero and Seneca, who had both, to a great extent, lyrical
and meditative minds. Had Mr. Bridges been a true Shakespearian, the pomp
and glory of the world would have drowned that subtle voice that speaks
amid our heterogeneous lives of a life lived in obedience to a lonely and
distinguished ideal.

II

The more a poet rids his verses of heterogeneous knowledge and irrelevant
analysis, and purifies his mind with elaborate art, the more does the
little ritual of his verse resemble the great ritual of Nature, and become
mysterious and inscrutable. He becomes, as all the great mystics have
believed, a vessel of the creative power of God; and whether he be a great
poet or a small poet, we can praise the poems, which but seem to be his,
with the extremity of praise that we