Introduction to Browning | Page 4

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.
The spiritual claims of the study of poetry are especially demanded in the case of Browning's poetry. Browning is generally?and truly regarded as the most intellectual of poets.?No poetry in English literature, or in any literature,?is more charged with discursive thought than his. But he is, at the same time, the most spiritual and transcendental of poets, the "subtlest assertor of the Soul in Song". His thought is never an end to itself, but is always subservient to an ulterior?spiritual end -- always directed towards "a presentment of?the correspondency of the universe to Deity, of the natural to the spiritual, and of the actual to the ideal"; and it is?all-important that students should be awakened, and made,?as far as possible, responsive to this spiritual end.
The sections of the Introduction on Personality and Art?were read before the Browning Society of London, in June, 1882. I have seen no reason for changing or modifying, in any respect, the views therein expressed.
The idea of personality as a quickening, regenerating power, and the idea of art as an intermediate agency of personality, are, perhaps, the most reiterated (implicitly, not explicitly) in Browning's poetry, and lead up to the dominant idea of Christianity, the idea of a Divine Personality; the idea that the soul,?to use an expression from his earliest poem, `Pauline',?must "rest beneath some better essence than itself in weakness".
The notes to the poems will be found, I trust, to cover all points and features of the text which require explanation and elucidation. I have not, at any rate, wittingly passed by any real difficulties. Whether my explanations and interpretations will in all cases be acceptable, remains to be seen.
Hiram Corson.
Cascadilla Cottage, Ithaca, N.Y.?September, 1886.
Note to the Second Edition.
In this edition, several errors of the first have been corrected. For the notes on "fifty-part canon", p. 156, and "a certain precious little tablet", p. 232, I am indebted to Mr. Browning.
H. C.
{p. 156 -- in this etext, see line 322 of "The Flight of the Duchess", in the Poems section. p. 232 -- see Stanza 30 of "Old Pictures in Florence", also in the Poems section.}
Note to the Third Edition.
In this edition have been added, `A Death in the Desert',?with argument, notes, and commentary, a fac-simile of a letter from the poet, and a portrait copied from a photograph?(the last taken of him) which he gave me when visiting him in Venice, a month before his death.
It may be of interest, and of some value, to many students?of Browning's poetry, to know a reply he made, in regard to the expression in `My Last Duchess', "I gave commands; then all smiles stopped together."
We were walking up and down the great hall of the Palazzo Rezzonico, when, in the course of what I was telling him about the study of his works in the United States, I alluded to the divided opinion as to the meaning of the above expression in `My Last Duchess', some understanding that the commands were to put the Duchess to death, and others, as I have explained the expression on p. 87 of this volume (last paragraph). {For etext use, section III (Browning's Obscurity) of the Introduction, sixth paragraph before the end of the section.} He made no reply, for a moment, and then said, meditatively, "Yes, I meant that the commands were that she should be put to death." And then, after a pause, he added, with a characteristic dash of expression, and as if the thought had just started