it in which they are mentioned. No person had
less animosity than Mrs. Browning; it seems as though she could hardly
bring herself to speak harshly of anyone. The omissions that have been
made are almost wholly of passages containing little or nothing of
interest, or repetitions of what has been said elsewhere; and
they have been made with the object of diminishing the bulk and
concentrating the interest of the collection, never with the purpose
of modifying the representation of the writer's character.

The task of arranging the letters has been more arduous owing to Mrs.
Browning's unfortunate habit of prefixing no date's, or incomplete
ones, to her letters. Many of them are dated merely by the day of the
week or month, and can only be assigned to their proper place in the
series on internal evidence. In some cases, however, the envelopes
have been preserved, and the date is then often provided by the
postmarks. These supply fixed points by which the others can be
tested; and ultimately all have fallen into line in chronological
order, and with at least approximate dates to each letter.

The correspondence, thus arranged in chronological order, forms an
almost continuous record of Mrs. Browning's life, from the early
days in Herefordshire to her death in Italy in 1861; but in order to
complete the record, it has been thought well to add connecting links
of narrative, which should serve to bind the whole together into the
unity of a biography. It is a chronicle, rather than a biography in
the artistic sense of the term; a chronicle of the events of a life in
which there were but few external events of importance, and in which
the subject of the picture is, for the most part, left to paint her
own portrait, and that, moreover, unconsciously. Still, this is a
method which may be held to have its advantages, in that it can hardly
be affected by the feelings or prejudices of the biographer; and if
it does not present a finished portrait to the reader, it provides him
with the materials from which he can form a portrait for himself. The
external events are placed upon record, either in the letters or in
the connecting links of narrative; the character and opinions of Mrs.
Browning reveal themselves in her correspondence; and her genius is
enshrined in her poetry. And these three elements make up all that may
be known of her personality, all with which a biographer has to deal.

It is essentially her character, not her gen