ties which I have since
acquired or developed. But, on going over it, I have found, for the most
part, what seems to me a sound foundation, though little enough may be
built on that foundation. I have revised many sentences, and a few
opinions; but, while conscious that I should approach the whole subject
now in a different way, I have found surprisingly few occasions for any
fundamental or serious change of view. I am conscious how much I owed,
at that time, to the most helpful and judicious friend whom I could
possibly have had at my elbow, Dykes Campbell. There are few pages of my
manuscript which he did not read and criticise, and not a page of my
proofs which he did not labour over as if it had been his own. He forced
me to learn accuracy, he cut out my worst extravagances, he kept me
sternly to my task. It was in writing this book under his encouragement
and correction that I began to learn the first elements of literary
criticism.

This new edition, then, of my book is new and yet the same. I have
altered everything that seemed to require altering, and I have made the
style a little more equable; but I have not, I hope, broken anywhere
into a new key, or added any sort of decoration not in keeping with the
original plainness of the stuff. When Pater said: "His book is,
according to his intention, before all things a useful one," he
expressed my wish in the matter; and also when he said: "His aim is to
point his readers to the best, the indisputable, rather than to the
dubious portions of his author's work." In the letter from which I have
quoted, Browning said: "It does indeed strike me as wonderful that you
should have given such patient attention to all those poems, and (if I
dare say further) so thoroughly entered into--at any rate--the spirit in
which they were written and the purpose they hoped to serve." If
Browning really thought that, my purpose, certainly, had been
accomplished.

_April 1906_.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

I have ever held that the rod with which popular fancy invests criticism
is properly the rod of divination: a hazel-switch for the discovery of
buried treasure, not a birch-twig for the castigation of offenders. It
has therefore been my aim in the following pages to direct attention to
the best, not to forage for the worst--the small faults which acquire
prominence only by isolation--of the poet with whose writings I am
concerned. I wish also to give information, more or