Robert Bridges Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Hoxie Neale Fairchild

Critical Essay by Hoxie Neale Fairchild

SOURCE: “Old Wine, New Bottles,” in his Religious Trends in English Poetry, Columbia University Press, 1962, pp. 13-36.

In the following excerpt, Fairchild characterizes Bridges as a “noble bore” whose poetry reflects a central concern for preserving Victorian values and beliefs.

How highly we value the conservative art of Robert Bridges depends on our readiness to admire serene, high-minded, eloquently incantatory poetry which does very little to stretch our experience in any fresh direction. Within the whole period of this volume, he is doubtless the best poet of his well-bred, inky-blooded kind. In a few poems like “A Passer-by” (“Whither, O splendid ship”), “London Snow,” “Nightingales” and “My delight and thy delight” he transcends his kind and touches the verge of greatness. On the whole, however, it seems to me that Bridges is a noble bore, and that Yvor Winters grows extravagant in asserting, “It is harder to imitate Bridges...
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