POET LAUREATESHIP

Otago Witness, Issue 3097, 23 July 1913, Page 25

POET LAUREATESHIP

DR BRIDGES APPOINTED. LONDON, July 16. Dr Robert Bridges has been appointed poet laureate in succession to Mr Alfred net in. Mr Asquith stated in Parliament that the emoluments of the office were £7O a year and a butt of wine. Robert Bridger, M.A., M. 8., D. Litt.. Oxford; LL.D., St. Andrews, F.R.C.P., was born in 1814. His father was the late Mr L. T. Bridges, of Walmer and S. Nicholas Court, Isle of Thanet. Dr Bridges was educated at Eton and Corpus Christ! College, Oxford, and afterwards he studied medicine at St. Bartholomew’s, London. He became a casualty physician there, and was later ■appointed assistant physician at the Children's Hospital, Gt. Ormond street, and physician at the G. N. Hospital. He retired in 1882, and in 1884 married Monica, the eldest eianghtcr of Mr Alfred Waterhouse, R.A., by whom he has one son and two daughters. As a poet Robert Bridges stands rather apart from the current of modern English verse.' His chief critical works are Milton’s Prosody ” (1893), a volume made up of two earlier essays (1887 anei 1889,; and “John Keats; a Critical Essay ” (1895).