The Testament of Beauty A Poem in Four Books

London: Clarendon Press, 1930. Leather. Very Good. 8.5" by 7". None. A nice clean copy of Bridge's The Testament of beauty for which he received the Order of Merit. A half vellum hardback with marbled boards. Robert Seymour Bridges (1844 - 1930) was an English poet, and poet laureate from 1913 to 1930. In the book Milton's Prosody, he took an empirical approach to examining Milton's use of blank verse, and developed the controversial theory that Milton's practice was essentially syllabic. He considered free verse to be too limiting, and explained his position in the essay "Humdrum and Harum-Scarum". He maintained that English prosody depended on the number of "stresses" in a line, not on the number of syllables, and that poetry should follow the rules of natural speech. His own efforts to "free" verse resulted in the poems he called "Neo-Miltonic Syllabics", which were collected in New Verse (1925). The meter of these poems was based on syllables rather than accents, and he used the principle again in the long philosophical poem The Testament of Beauty (1929). In a half vellum binding with marbled paper boards. Externally, smart with minor bumping to the extremities. There is some wear to the extremities, including some bumping, rubbing and the front board is warped. Internally, firmly bound. The pages are bright and clean with the occasional handling marks. Very Good