SOURCE: “An Oxford Poet,” in The Nation, Vol. 96, No. 2482, January 23, 1913, pp. 83-84.

In the following review of the Poetical Works of Robert Bridges, the poet's verse is positively described as “slow-moving” and underscored with a “dreamy languor.”

Outside of Oxford, where he now resides as a retired physician, Mr. Bridges has, we believe, never attained anything like popularity, and in this country he has scarcely been known except as a shadowy name. Yet his reputation has been spreading quietly among the refined for many years, and this cheap and attractive volume of his poems from the Oxford University Press will no doubt introduce him to many new readers.

It is not difficult to explain the exclusiveness, so to speak, of Mr. Bridges's fame. The fact is, his work falls between two stools. On the one hand, it has neither the swiftness of motion, the immediate impressiveness, the narrative...