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.”