226 notes to chapter 4
Demosthenes, Pindar, Plato’s Republic, and aselection of Greek tragedies and
comedies. The examinations which Robert took in at Eton in 1863 show clearly
the emphasis on parsing, on translation, on being able to write in Greek and
Latin.Phillips also notes how in 1859 Eton became the first of the schools to be caught up in
the Rifle Volunteer Movement, which soon spread to the universities and throughout
the country. She writes, “by the summer of 1860 nearly half of the upper school boys
at Eton (some 300) were enrolled in the Corps, among them Robert and his friend
Lionel Muirhead” (Phillips, Robert Bridges: A Biography, 16, 22).
- Palmer, in The Rise of English Studies, describes the evolving association with the
Greek language as “purely literary” rather than “practical” or, as in the case of Latin
and English, a method of studying “words as things.” The “thinginess” of Latin and
English grammar, and of words as signs (of meaning ) in general, is certainly tied to the
growing need to define grammar and philolog y as “scientific” as opposed to literary, a
trend which caused divisions in English language departments between the literary
and philological camps (Palmer, The Rise of English Studies, 13). - James Brinsley Richards, Seven Years at Eton, 17.
- Harold Monro’s stated aim with the publication he edited in 1912, The Poetry
Review, was to make the review “the representative organ chiefly of the younger gen-
eration of poets” (10). Monro’s Poetry and Drama was seen as the successor to The
Poetry Review after he had a falling out with the society (The Poetry Society) that
backed the original review. - Bridges, “Flycatchers,” l. 7–8.
- Bridges scrawled “Free rhythm” next to this poem in the holograph copy of his
book manuscript. - Bridges, Milton’s Prosody, 1901, v.
- Bridges, Correspondence of Robert Bridges and Henry Bradley, 59.
Chapter 4: The Discipline of Meter- This is a later moment in the history John Guillory describes in his chapter,
“Mute Inglorious Miltons,” 85–133: “Coleridge understood very well that the life of
this dialect was sustained by the schools, just as it was originally produced by the insti-
tutional lag between Latin and vernacular literacy.” This “vernacular poetics” is, in
some way, what I am attempting to argue for, here, but with an abstracted concept of
“meter” that really means regular rhythm and has little to do with “meter” at all. - Cf. Eagleton, “The Rise of English,” 15–46; Graff, Professing Literature: An Insti-
tutional History. - Baldick, The Social Mission of English Studies 1848–1932, 63.
- John Churton Collins, The Study of English Literature, 148.
- On education and English studies, see Eagleton, “The Rise of English,” 15–46;
Palmer, The Rise of English Studies; Court, Institutionalizing English Literature; Ma-
thieson, The Preachers of Culture; Soffer, Discipline and Power: The University, History,
& the Making of an English Elite, 1870–1930; Shayer, The Teaching of English in
Schools. On education in England, see Neuberg, Popular Education in Eighteenth Cen-
tury England, 93–138; Lawson and Silver, A Social History of Education in England.
On the classical ideal of education, see McPherson, Theory of Higher Education in