NEW EDITION REVISED AND ENLARGED
LONDON, PARIS AND TORONTO J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
10-13 BEDFORD STREET, W.C. 1916
" ... Browning, a great poet, a very great poet indeed, as the world will have to agree with us in thinking."—LANDOR.
This Introduction to the Study of Browning, which is now reprinted ina new form, revised throughout, and with everything relating to factscarefully brought up to date, has been for many years out of print. Iwrote it as an act of homage to the poet whom I had worshipped from myboyhood; I meant it to be, in almost his own words, used of Shelley,some approach to "the signal service it was the dream of my boyhood torender to his fame and memory."
It was sufficiently rewarded by three things: first, by the generouspraise of Walter Pater, in the Guardian, which led to the beginning ofmy friendship with him; then, by a single sentence from George Meredith,"You have done knightly service to a brave leader"; lastly, by a letterfrom Browning himself, in which he said: "How can I manage even tothank—much more praise—what, in its generosity of appreciation, makesthe poorest recognition 'come too near the praising of myself'?"
I repeat these things now, because they seem to justify me in draggingback into sight a book written when I was very young, and, as I am onlytoo conscious, lacking in many of the qualities which I have sinceacquired or developed. But, on going over it, I have found, for the mostpart, what seems to me a sound foundation, though little enough may bebuilt on that foundation. I have revised many sentences, and a fewopinions; but, while conscious that I should approach the whole subjectnow in a different way, I have found surprisingly few occasions for anyfundamental or serious change of view. I am conscious how much I owed,at that time, to the most helpful and judicious friend whom I couldpossibly have had at my elbow, Dykes Campbell. There are few pages of mymanuscript which he did not read and criticise, and not a page of myproofs which he did not labour over as if it had been his own. He forcedme to learn accuracy, he cut out my worst extravagances, he kept mesternly to my task. It was in writing this book under his encouragementand correction that I began to learn the first elements of literarycriticism.
This new edition, then, of my book is new and yet the same. I havealtered everything that seemed to require altering, and I have made thestyle a little more equable; but I have not, I hope, broken anywhereinto a new key, or added any sort of decoration not in keeping with theoriginal plainness of the stuff. When Pater said: "His book is,according to his intention, before all things a useful one," heexpressed my wish in the matter; and also when he said: "His aim is topoint his