It is believed that the notes to the poems will be found to cover all points and features of the texts which require explanation and elucidation. At any rate, no real difficulties have been wittingly passed by.
The following Table of Contents will give a good idea of the plan and scope of the work:—
I. The Spiritual Ebb and Flow exhibited in English Poetry from Chaucer to Tennyson and Browning.
II. The Idea of Personality and of Art as an intermediate agency of Personality, as embodied in Browning’s Poetry. (Read before the Browning Society of London in 1882.)
III. Browning’s Obscurity.
IV. Browning’s Verse.
V. Arguments of the Poems.
VI. Poems. (Under this head are thirty-three representative poems, the Arguments of which are given in the preceding section.)
VII. List of criticisms of Browning’s works, selected from Dr. Furnivall’s “Bibliography of Robert Browning” contained in the Browning Society’s Papers.
From Albert S. Cook, Professor of English Literature in the University of California:—