the religious life of humanity.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 36: The first six stanzas of the sixth section of this poem,
the splendid song of the wind, were published in a magazine, as _Lines_,
in 1836. Parts II. & III., of Section VIII. (except the last two lines)
were added to the poem in 1868.]

[Footnote 37: The poem was originally preceded by the text, "Thou
thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself" (_Ps._ 1. 21).]

[Footnote 38: _Browning Society's Papers_, Part V., p. 493.]

[Footnote 39: The Abt or Abbe George Joseph Vogler (born at Wuerzburg,
Bavaria, in 1749, died at Darmstadt, 1824) was a composer, professor,
kapelmeister and writer on music. Among his pupils were Weber and
Meyerbeer. The "musical instrument of his invention" was called an
orchestrion. "It was," says Sir G. Grove, "a very compact organ, in
which four keyboards of five octaves each, and a pedal board of
thirty-six keys, with swell complete, were packed into a cube of nine
feet."--(See Miss Marx's "Account of Abbe Vogler," in the _Browning
Society's Papers_, Part III., p. 339).]

17. THE RING AND THE BOOK.

[Published, in 4 vols., in 1868-9: Vol. I., November, 1868;
Vol. II., December, 1868; Vol. III., January, 1869; Vol. IV.,
February, 1869. In 12 Books: 1., The Ring and the Book; II.,
Half-Rome; III., The Other Half-Rome; IV., Tertium Quid; V.,
Count Guido Franceschini; VI., Giuseppe Caponsacchi; VII.,
Pompilia; VIII., Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis, Pauperum
Procurator; IX., Juris Doctor Johannes-Baptista Bottinius,
Fisci et Rev. Cam. Apostol. Advocatus; X., The Pope; XI.,
Guido; XII., The Book and the Ring. (_Poetical Works_, 1889;
Vols. VIII.-X.)]

_The Ring and the Book_ is at once the largest and the greatest of
Browning's works, the culmination of his dramatic method, and the
turning-point, more decisively than _Dramatis Personae_, of his style. It
consists of twelve books, the first and last being of the nature of
Preface and Appendix. It embodies a single story, told ten times, each
time from an individual standpoint, by nine different persons (one of
them speaking twice), besides a summary of the story by the poet in the
first book, and some additional particulars in the last. The method thus
adopted is at once absolutely original and supremely difficult. To tell
the same story, without mere repetition, no less than ten times over, to
make each telling at once the same