dditional currency to a book which the best sort of readers
will recognize as an excellent and certainly very versatile companion,
not to be forgotten.

17th March 1886

III. BROWNING

An Introduction to the Study of Browning. By Arthur Symons. Cassells.

[41] WHETHER it be true or not that Mr. Browning is justly chargeable
with "obscurity"--with a difficulty of manner, that is, beyond the
intrinsic difficulty of his matter--it is very probable that an
Introduction to the study of his works, such as this of Mr. Symons,
will add to the number of his readers. Mr. Symons's opening essay on
the general characteristics of Mr. Browning is a just and acceptable
appreciation of his poetry as a whole, well worth reading, even at this
late day. We find in Mr. Symons the thoughtful and practised yet
enthusiastic student in literature--in intellectual problems; always
quiet and sane, praising Mr. Browning with tact, with a real refinement
and grace; saying well many [42] things which every competent reader of
the great poet must feel to be true; devoting to the subject he loves a
critical gift so considerable as to make us wish for work from his
hands of larger scope than this small volume. His book is, according to
his intention, before all things a useful one. Appreciating Mr.
Browning fairly, as we think, in all his various efforts, his aim is to
point his readers to the best, the indisputable, rather than to the
dubious portions of his author's work. Not content with his own
excellent general criticism of Mr. Browning, he guides the reader to
his works, or division of work, seriatim, making of each a distinct and
special study, and giving a great deal of welcome information about the
poems, the circumstances of their composition, and the like, with
delightful quotations. Incidentally, his Introduction has the interest
of a brief but effective selection from Mr. Browning's poems; and he
has added an excellent biography.

Certainly we shall not quarrel with Mr. Symons for reckoning Mr.
Browning, among English poets, second to Shakespeare alone--"He comes
very near the gigantic total of [43] Shakespeare." The quantity of his
work? Yes! that too, in spite of a considerable unevenness, is a sign
of genius. "So large, indeed, appear to be his natural endowments that
we cannot feel as if even thirty volumes would have come near to
exhausting them." Imaginatively, indeed, Mr. Browning has been a
multitude of p