EDITORS'
FIFTH

PREFACE TO
EDITION.

OPPORTUNITY has been taken in this edition to make a few scattered corrections and additions; but as before, so now, the Editors have considered it their duty to follow and to keep intact Browning's own latest revised text.

Believing it is of primary importance in any edition of an author that his reader be able to rely upon the text being exactly as his last touch left it, they have not adopted such readings and punctuation as have been inserted without authority in other American editions.

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For instance, they advisedly do not adopt the rereading of The Ring and the Book," Book x., line 251, "All was error, lore," which is an entirely gratuitous alteration of Browning's "All was error, lord," the supposed speaker here addressing the Pope. Nor do they adopt the more plausible repointing of Book vi., line 134, Better late than never, law!" in lieu of Browning's "Better late than never, law You understand of a sudden," etc., which requires only a sympathetic construal of the context as a whole to see is perfectly clear, as it stands, and peculiarly suitable, too, in form of expression to Caponsacchi's unstopped grief-wrought rhetoric, as he pushes home to the court once so complacent, now so perturbed, the legal, ay, and the priestly pr

priety of his endeavor to murderer.

save Pompilia from her

Attempts to re-punctuate Browning, in "Sordello " in particular, although sometimes tempting, are perilous. For instance, the repointing, in the Cambridge edition, of the crucial passage in Book ii., lines 655-689, instead of lessening, adds difficulty and obscures the only way out of that many-linked passage, the way, namely, provided by Browning's last punctuation, adhered to in this edition.

A few manifest misprints in Browning's text, however, hitherto left undisturbed by anybody, the Editors have considered might be amended without presumption. For example, in " Donald " they have deleted the r in line 234, so as to make the passage read, "Within gate [instead of grate] Though teeth kept tongue, My whole soul growled Rightly rewarded, — Ingrate !' since the sense, the rhyme, the adaptation from Homer - all combines to reveal not only the verbal slip, but the poet's intention. So, again, in "Strafford," act i., scene i., line 27, the reading of all other editions, "Now, by Heaven, Then may be cool etc., has been amended to "

who can,

They may be cool who can, etc., the poet's intention being unmistakable, the first edition, moreover, confirming this. Such justifiable emendations are necessarily few. They do not invalidate the general working rule of this editioni.e., to follow the poet's text and not to seek occasions to amend it, but rather to seek to avoid such occasions by a sympathetic comprehension of the poet's meaning and habits of writing.

BOSTON, October 27, 1900.

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

"A peep through my window, if folk prefer;

But, please you, no foot over threshold of mine."

'House.

WHEN Some depreciator of the familiar declared that Only in Italy is there any romance left," Browning replied, "Ah! well, I should like to include poor old Camberwell;" and "poor old Camberwell," where Robert Browning was born, May 7, 1812, offered no meagre nurture for the fancy of a child gifted with the ardor that greatens and glorifies the real.

Nature still garlanded this suburban part of London with bowery spaces breathing peace. The view of the region from Herne Hill over softly wreathing distances of domestic wood "was, before railroads came, entirely lovely," Ruskin says. He writes of "the tops of twenty square miles of politely inhabited groves," of bloom of lilac and laburnum and of almond-blossoms, intermingling suggestions of the wealth of fruittrees in enclosed gardens, and companioning all this with the furze, birch, oak, and bramble of the Norwood hills, and the open fields of Dulwich "animate with cow and buttercup."

Nature was ready to beckon the young poet dreams and solitude, and, too close to need to vie