ente resurgit Italia. Vesperi nuper,
dum huius idyllia forte meditabar, Cami inter arundines mihi videbar
vocem magnam audire clamantis, Pa\n o` me/gas ou' te/qnhken.
Vivit adhuc Pan ipse, cum Marathonis memoria et Pheidippidis
velocitate immortali consociatus."

--Eulogium pronounced by
Mr. J. E. Sandys, Public Orator at the University of Cambridge,
on presenting Mr. Browning for the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws,
June 10, 1879.

PREFACE.

The purpose of the present volume is to afford some aid and guidance
in the study of Robert Browning's Poetry, which, being the most
complexly subjective of all English poetry, is, for that reason alone,
the most difficult. And then the poet's favorite art-form,
the dramatic, or, rather, psychologic, monologue, which is quite
original with himself, and peculiarly adapted to the constitution
of his genius and to the revelation of themselves by the several
"dramatis personae", presents certain structural difficulties,
but difficulties which, with an increased familiarity,
grow less and less. The exposition presented in the Introduction,
of its constitution and skilful management, and the Arguments given
of the several poems included in the volume, will, it is hoped,
reduce, if not altogether remove, the difficulties of this kind.
In the same section of the Introduction, certain peculiarities
of the poet's diction, which sometimes give a check to the reader's
understanding of a passage, are presented and illustrated.

I think it not necessary to offer any apology for my going all the way
back to Chaucer, and noting the Ebb and Flow in English Poetry
down to the present time, of the spirituality which constitutes
the real life of poetry, and which should, as far as possible,
be brought to the consciousness and appreciation of students.
What I mean by spirituality is explained in my treatment
of the subject. The degree to which poetry is quickened with it
should always enter into an estimate of its absolute worth.
It is that, indeed, which constitutes its absolute worth.
The weight of thought conveyed, whatever that be, will not compensate
for the absence of it.

The study of poetry, in our institutions of learning, so far as I
have taken note of it, and the education induced thereby,
are almost purely intellectual. The student's spiritual nature
is left to take care of itself; and the consequence is that he becomes,
at best, only a thinking and analyzing machine