ABSTRACT
Edward Thompson, a friend and neighbour of Robert Bridges, remarked that he knew no one who was so sensitive about human physical suffering. Bridges had trained and worked as a doctor in London hospitals; his comprehension of physical pain influenced his religious views, making him regard ideas of hell as abhorrent human inventions which should be disregarded in the formation of modern religious doctrines incorporating scientific understanding. Bridges referred privately to The Testament of Beauty, the long poem in which he set out his religious beliefs, as ‘De Hominum Natura’, in tribute to the De rerum natura, Lucretius’ sceptical metaphysical picture using the science of his day. In a letter to H.J.C. Grierson, Bridges disparages puns in Shakespeare and Donne in the face of Grierson’s attempts to justify them. He took the opportunity to explain why he found Donne himself so uncongenial (The Selected Letters of Robert Bridges, ed. D.E. Stanford, vol. II, 1984, p. 782).
