Bridges, Robert Seymour, 1844–1930, English poet. In 1882 he abandoned medical practice to devote himself to writing. An excellent metrist, he wrote many beautiful lyrics and longer poems, noted for their refined simplicity and perfection of form. Although not a well-known poet, in 1913 he was made poet laureate. In 1929, when Bridges was 85, he published The Testament of Beauty, a philosophical poem on the evolution of the human soul. It achieved immediate popularity and is considered his greatest work. Long interested in prosody, Bridges published two important works on the subject, Milton's Prosody (1893) and John Keats (1895). He also published the poems of his friend Gerard Manley Hopkins.
See The Selective Letters of Robert Bridges, ed. by D. E. Stanford (2 vol., 1983); study by D. E. Stanford (1978).
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