_The Maid_: He shieldeth himself well, and striketh surely; His foes fall down before him. Ah! now what can I see? Who cometh? Lo! a dazzling helm, a spear Of silver or electron; share and swift The piercings. How they fall! Ha! shields are raised In vain. I am blinded, or the beggar-man Hath waxed in strength. He is changed, he is young. O strange! He is all in golden armour. These are gods That slay the suitors. (_Runs to Penelope._) O lady, forgive me. ’Tis Ares’ self. I saw his crispèd beard; I saw beneath his helm his curlèd locks.’ The coming of Athene helmed ‘in silver or electron’ and her transformation of Ulysses are not, as the way is with the only modern dramas that popular criticism holds to be dramatic, the climax of an excitement of the nerves, but of that unearthly excitement which has wisdom for fruit, and is of like kind with the ecstasy of the seers, an altar flame, unshaken by the winds of the world, and burning every moment with whiter and purer brilliance. Mr. Bridges has written it in what is practically the classical manner, as he has done in _Achilles in Scyros_—a placid and charming setting for many placid and charming lyrics— ‘And ever we keep a feast of delight The betrothal of hearts, when spirits unite, Creating an offspring of joy, a treasure Unknown to the bad, for whom The gods foredoom The glitter of pleasure And a dark tomb.’ The poet who writes best in the Shakespearian manner is a poet with a circumstantial and instinctive mind, who delights to speak with strange voices and to see his mind in the mirror of Nature; while Mr. Bridges, like most of us to-day, has a lyrical and meditative mind, and delights to speak with his own voice and to see Nature in the mirror of his mind. In reading his plays in a Shakespearian manner, I find that he is constantly arranging his story in such and such a way because he has read that the persons he is writing of did such and such things, and not because his soul has passed into the soul of their world and understood its unchangeable destinies. His _Return of Ulysses_ is admirable in beauty, because its classical gravity of speech, which does not, like Shakespeare’s verse, desire the vivacity of common life, purifies and subdues all passion into lyrical and meditative ecstasies, and because the unity of place and time in the late acts compels a logical rather than instinctive procession of incidents; and if the Shakespearian _Nero: Second Part_ approaches it in beauty and in dramatic power, it is because it eddies about Nero and Seneca, who had both, to a great extent, lyrical and meditative minds. Had Mr. Bridges been a true Shakespearian, the pomp and glory of the world would have drowned that subtle voice that speaks amid our heterogeneous lives of a life lived in obedience to a lonely and distinguished ideal. II