AN INTRODUCTION TO THE POETRY OF ROBERT BROWNING BY WILLIAM JOHN ALEXANDER, PH.D., MUNRO PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, DALHOUSIE COLLEGE BOSTON, U.S.A.: PUBLISHED BY GINN & COMPANY 1889. PREFACE. THE following Introduction to the Poetry of Robert Browning was originally delivered in the form of lectures to a class of advanced students. The writer is strongly averse to that study of literature which consists in reading about books rather than in reading the books themselves. Accordingly the present work consists largely of extracts, accompanied by careful analyses and a copious critical commentary. By the help of these, it is hoped that the reader will be enabled to feel the excellence, and will be led to make a wider study of the works of a poet who is, at first, confessedly difficult and somewhat repellent. For this wider study, the chapters on "Development" are intended to serve as a guide. The attention of those already familiar with Browning is specially directed to the Analysis of Sordello, much fuller and more exact, it is believed, than any hitherto published. The text of the extracts has been harmonized, as far as possible, with the new and complete edition of Browning's works, now in course of publication in England. References by pages are invariably to this edition. Besides being indebted to various articles cited in the body of this work, especially to the profound and suggestive criticisms of M. Milsand (Revue des Deux Mondes, 6me Série, tome xi.; Revue Contemporaire, 107 Livraison), the author is conscious of being under obligation to Professor Dowden's Mr. Tennyson and Mr. Browning (Studies in Literature), and Mr. Hutton's Mr. Browning (Essays, Theological and Literary). Much assistance has been afforded by the valuable collection of facts contained in Dr. Furnivall's Bibliography of Robert Browning, which also furnishes the text of the Essay on Shelley, quoted in Chapter IV. That it may not be supposed that obligations to various introductions to Browning now existing in book form, have been overlooked, it may be well to state that the present work was (with the exception of one or two statements of fact) already completed in manuscript, as it now stands, in September, 1886, before, as far as the author is aware, any of these books, except that. of Mrs. Sutherland Orr, had appeared. There is a debt, however, and that the greatest, which yet remains to be acknowledged. Although the author, in writing the following pages, had not the help of Professor Corson's Introduction to Browning, he had, some six years ago, the good fortune to hear My Last Duchess read and expounded (much as in the following pages) by Professor Corson himself. Those who have heard Professor Corson's extraordinarily sympathetic reading and interpretation of poetry, will easily understand that this occasion gave the impulse to the study of Browning, of which the present work is the outcome. W. J. A. DALHOUSIE COLLEGE, HALIFAX, |