IT is not often that a poet, writing under the stress of some such partial emotion as patriotism, achieves poetry. There are, of course, great exceptions : Shakespeare himself is probably the most patriotic of all our poets. But then Shakespeare's patriotism was not merely local; it transcended the locality and voiced all men's love, everywhere, for the country that gave them birth. Patriotic poetry is one of the aspects of his subject that Mr. Ridley will talk upon tonight.