Preface.
Browning's poetry which is most calculated to become generally admired, and to take a firm and lasting hold upon popular appreciation.
The two charges most frequently and most successfully brought against the poetry of Robert Browning are, firstly, obscurity of thought, and, secondly, roughness of execution. That these charges are amply justified cannot be gainsaid. But, upon the other hand, it is also a fact beyond reasonable dispute that these faults of mannerism, grave though they be, are more than amply atoned for by the wealth of bright and vivid poetry to be found, mainly, in the earlier volumes, almost hidden and buried by the bulk and weight of the heavier work.
With the exception of "Prospice" from ("Dramatis Personæ"), and some half dozen of the pieces contained in the two volumes of "Men and Women," no selection could possibly be made more adapted to the perusal of a reader approaching for the first time the writings of Robert Browning, than the series of poems and plays united under the general title of "Bells and Pomegranates,"[1] Nowhere is Browning's lyrical faculty more
- ↑ This happy title was certainly a poetic inspiration. It is thus explained by the poet in a Note appended to the eighth (the final) number:
"Here ends my first Series of 'Bells and Pomegranates,' and I take the opportunity of explaining, in reply to inquiries, that I only meant by that title to indicate an endeavour towards something like an alternation, or mixture, of music with discoursing, sound with sense, poetry with thought; which looks ambitious, thus expressed, so the symbol was preferred. It is little to the purpose, that such is actually one of the most familiar of the many Rabbinical {and Patristic) acceptations of the phrase; because I confess that, letting authority alone, I supposed the
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