.

The spiritual claims of the study of poetry are especially demanded
in the case of Browning's poetry. Browning is generally
and truly regarded as the most intellectual of poets.
No poetry in English literature, or in any literature,
is more charged with discursive thought than his. But he is,
at the same time, the most spiritual and transcendental of poets,
the "subtlest assertor of the Soul in Song". His thought is never
an end to itself, but is always subservient to an ulterior
spiritual end--always directed towards "a presentment of
the correspondency of the universe to Deity, of the natural to
the spiritual, and of the actual to the ideal"; and it is
all-important that students should be awakened, and made,
as far as possible, responsive to this spiritual end.

The sections of the Introduction on Personality and Art
were read before the Browning Society of London, in June, 1882.
I have seen no reason for changing or modifying, in any respect,
the views therein expressed.

The idea of personality as a quickening, regenerating power,
and the idea of art as an intermediate agency of personality,
are, perhaps, the most reiterated (implicitly, not explicitly)
in Browning's poetry, and lead up to the dominant idea of Christianity,
the idea of a Divine Personality; the idea that the soul,
to use an expression from his earliest poem, `Pauline',
must "rest beneath some better essence than itself in weakness".

The notes to the poems will be found, I trust, to cover all points
and features of the text which require explanation and elucidation.
I have not, at any rate, wittingly passed by any real difficulties.
Whether my explanations and interpretations will in all cases
be acceptable, remains to be seen.

Hiram Corson.

Cascadilla Cottage, Ithaca, N.Y.

September, 1886.

Note to the Second Edition.

In this edition, several errors of the first have been corrected.
For the notes on "fifty-part canon", p. 156, and "a certain precious
little tablet", p. 232, I am indebted to Mr. Browning.

H. C.

{p. 156--in this etext, see line 322 of "The Flight of the Duchess",
in the Poems section. p. 232--see Stanza 30 of "Old Pictures
in Florence", also in the Poems section.}

Note to the Third Edition.

In this edition have been added, `A Death in the Desert',
with argument, notes, and commentary, a fac-simile of a letter
from the poet, and a portrait copied from a photograph
(the last taken of him) wh