Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1883 edition. Excerpt: ... THE POETRY OF ROBERT BROWNING. THE following selection from the poems of Robert Browning was not made by me, but took shape in a way much more likely to produce a collection which would be on the one hand characteristic of the poet, and on the other suited to the needs and the taste of the general reader. First, he himself made a selection, which, however, was so large that it filled two goodly volumes of 350 and 370 pages, and, moreover, as men are not always and in all respects the best judges of their own work, he included in those volumes a few poems which his most ardent admirers thought he might better have omitted. This collection some half a dozen lovers and students of his poetry read carefully, and made a list, each of them without the knowledge of the other, of the pieces which he or she would choose; and those for which there was a union, or nearly a union, of all voices, were selected. A few were then added from his more recently published poems. Upon the collection thus formed, I was honored by being asked to give my opinion; and in accordance with my suggestion, it was modified, with the result which is now before the reader. It presents, I am sure and am presuming enough to say, Browning at his best, and nearly all the best of Browning, exclusive, it need hardly be remarked, of his nominally dramatic works, from which extracts could not be made without deforming and destructive mutilation. A poet real and strong is always phenomenal, but Browning is the intellectual phenomenon of the last half century, even if he is not the poetical aloe of modern English literature. His like we have never seen before. He is not what he is by mere excelling. No writer that ever wrought out his fretted fancies in English verse is the model...
