n scope and manifold power. The
subject had fallen to his hands at the very fulness of his maturity,
by 'predestination,' as it seemed to him. In the poem, as he planned
his treatment, there was opportunity for every phase of his peculiar
genius.... so that the completed masterpiece becomes the macrocosm of
his work.... Without doubt it may be held to be the greatest poetic
work, in a long poem, of the nineteenth century. It is a drama of
profound spiritual realities.

'So write a book shall mean beyond the facts,
Suffice the eye, and save the soul beside.'

Browning was the only important poet of the Victorian age who did not
draw upon the Morte d'Arthur legends; and the rich mythology of the
Greeks tempted him as little. The motive that always appealed to him
most was that of the activity of the human spirit, its power to
dominate all material barriers to transcend every temporary limit, by
the very power of its own energy."

In his historic researches Professor Hodell found reason to believe that
the Pope, in "The Ring and the Book," was Stephen VI, and not VII; and
writing to Robert Barrett Browning to inquire regarding this point, he
received from the poet's son the following interesting letter, which, by
Dr. Hodell's generous courtesy, is permitted to appear in this book.

LA TORRE ALL' ANTELLA, FLORENCE, Jan. 6, 1904.

MY DEAR SIR,--I wish I were able to give you the information you ask
me for, but my father's books are in Venice, and I have not any here
touching on the matter to refer to.

If Pope Stephen was, as you say, the Sixth and not the Seventh, of
course the mistake is obvious and perhaps attributable to an
unconscious slip of the memory, which with my father was not at its
best in dates and figures. It is not likely that such an error should
have appeared in any old work, such as he would have consulted; and
certainly it was not caused by carelessness, for he was painstaking to
a degree, and had a proper horror of blundering, which is the word he
would have used. I can only account for such a mistake as this--which
he would have been the first to pronounce unpardonable--by his
absent-mindedness, his attention being at the moment absorbed by
something else. Absent-mindedness was one of his characteristics, over
instances of which he used to laugh most heartily. My father'