Erwing to help la poem and the nerve MOD make up the numbers of the Magazine wille Hood lay dying. p. 312 water During the last nam.. his physical strength has completely given way: and, Almist as nail through incapacity of Els hni w hill the pen, as of his brain for any length of time to grille i he has at list been compelled to dels from composition. M:. Hood is more seriously ill than even he has ever been before." On Samrday, May 3, 1845, he died a Work, 1973, L 373. The Title of the Poem was changed to "The Eiship orders his Tomb in St. Prazed's Church) Nis 26-32 were first reprinted in Bells and Pomegranates, VIL See next page, and p. 30.] 1845. The Flight of the Ducness. By Robert Browning. Part the 334 First, "You're my friend:" to "you shall hear" (9 sections, -216 (chiefly) iambic lines, 1-measure, 2-, 3-, but mainly 4-; in couplets, triplets, fours, fives, a 7 and 11;-§ 10-16 were added in Bells and Pomegranates, No. VII), in Hood's Magazine, April, 1845, No. IV, vol. iii, p. 313-318. 1845. BELLS AND POMEGRANATES. NO. VII.-DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND LYRICS. By Robert Browning, Author of "Paracelsus." London Edward Moxon, Dover Street. MDCCCXLV. p. 1-24. Price 2s. Dedication to John Kenyon, dated Nov. 1845. 34 35 36 37 38 39 CONTENTS. How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix (16—). Pictor Ignotus. Florence, 15-. ("I could have painted pictures ... ... ... The Lost Leader.3 "Just for a handful of silver he left us:" 2 st. ... 40, 41 I. "Oh, to be in England:" 1 stanza of 8, and 1 of 12.4 II. “Here's 42 (32) (29) I. The Flower's Name. "Here's the garden she walked across : ... Page 3 8 8 8 8 9 ... 10 10 1 "There is no sort of historical foundation about 'Good News to [that is, from] Ghent.' I wrote it under the bulwark of a vessel, off the African Coast [when on a yachting trip in the Mediterranean], after I had been at sea long enough to appreciate even the fancy of a gallop on the back of a certain good horse York,' then in my stable at home. It was written in pencil on the fly-leaf of Bartoli's Simboli, I remember." R. B.'s letter of Jan. 23, 1881 (? to an American correspondent), in Academy, April 2, 1881, from the Boston Literary World. In st. iv. the sch of 'Aerschot' is pronounet sk. (The poem has been reprinted in Routledge's Popular Readings, &c.) "The good news" suppozed is that of the Pacification of Ghent,' which was welcomd with great delight, because it was believd to end the desperate struggle between Spain and the United Netherlands. See Motley's "Rise of the United Netherlands," vol. iii, Pt I.-Boston Literary World. 2 Note in the last lines Browning's wonder that English stupidity could be great enough to doubt whether abolishing the abominable Corn-Laws was wise or not. 3 Wordsworth, having turnd Tory, was chiefly aimd at here; but other men and incidents were mixt up with him and his career. The excellent review of Browning's prose Essay and Works to 1864 in the Contemporary Review, Jan. and Feb. 1867, well says in its second Paper, p. 135, "We know not what individual leader, if any, Mr. Browning had in view; but if the early admirers of the French Revolution had wished to utter their hearts over the Toryism of Wordsworth or Southey, or the Chartists and Christian Socialists of 1848 over Mr. Kingsley's panegyric on the peerage and his vindication of martial law ad libitum, they could hardly find fitter language.' Though both offences have long been condoned, they were none the less grievous at the time to the two Writers' liberal friends, as I—one of the old Christian Socialists-can witness as to Kingsley. 4 St. 1 is abab (3-measure), cc, dd, 4-measure, except d 2 two-measure. eefgfg, hhiijj; ee, 4-measure, h 2 three-measure, the rest 5-measure. BROWNING 2. St. 2 is E 3 4 1836. Porphyria: "The rain set early in to-night:" 60 four-measure iambic lines in 12 fives, ababb. (Not alterd up to 1868, but cald "Porphyria's Lover" in 1863, Works, i. 310-12; and in 1868, iv. 299. § VI of (107) James Lee was written in 1835 or 1836.) Johannes Agricola. "There's Heaven above: and night by night." 60 four-measure iambic lines in 12 fives: ababb. Line 42, "With unexhausted blessedness," alterd in 1842, Bells, III, p. 13, to "By unexhausted power to bless." Title also alterd in 1863 (Works, i. 284) to "Johannes Agricola in Meditation." (See in 1825, Lord Dillon's Eccelino.-R. G.) Lines. "Still ailing, wind? wilt be appeased or no?" 6 stanzas 1836. 107' of 5, ababa, a 1, a 2 and b being 5-measure, b 2 four-measure, (really 6) and a 3 three-measure: 30 iambic lines. This poem, revized, was in 1864 reprinted in Dramatis Personæ as the first 6 stanzas of § VI of (107) "James Lee": see p. 59 and 60, n., below. These four poems (7', 3, 4, 107') are in The Monthly Repository, edited by W. J. Fox' (London: Charles Fox, 67 The edition of 1863, Works, iii. 50, cuts out lines 54-57 of the 1841 version, and for lines 58-60 has 1 Mr. Fox was the first noticer of Browning's boyish poems before he and the past had met. Then they met once or twice. After some years Pauline was 5 Paternoster Row; and William Tait, Edinburgh). The King "ANTINOMIANS, So denominated for rejecting the Law as a thing of no use under the Gospel dispensation: they say, that good works do not further, nor evil works hinder salvation; that the child of God cannot sin, that God never chastiseth him, that murder, drunkenness, &c. are sins in the wicked but not in him, that the child of grace being once assured of salvation, afterwards never doubteth... that God doth not love any man for his holiness, that sanctification is no evidence of justification, &c. Pontanus, in his Catalogue of Heresies, says John Agricola was the author of this sect, A.D. 1535."-Dictionary of all Religions, 1704. 'Porphyria' and 'Johannes Agricola,' transpozed, are cald 'Madhouse Cells,' I, II, in 1842, Bells and Pom. III, where they were first reprinted: see p. 45, below. 1837. STRAFFORD: an historical Tragedy. By Robert Browning, Author of "Paracelsus." London: Printed for Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, Paternoster Row. 1837. 8vo, p. i-vi, 1-131.. Dedicated to William C. Macready, April 23, 1837. Preface, p. iii, iv. Dramatis Persona1 (Theatre-Royal, Covent Garden, May 1, 1837), p. vi (also, "Nearly ready. Sordello, in six Books. By the Author of 'Paracelsus.'"). In 5 Acts. Blank verse. Act I, sc. i, 266 lines; ii, 297 lines; Act II, sc. i, 115 lines; sc. ii, 296 lines; Act III, sc. i, 62 lines; ii, 236 lines; iii, 97 lines; Act IV, sc. i, 141 lines; ii, 196 lines; iii, 103 lines; Act V, sc. i, 41 lines; ii, 350 lines in all, 2200 lines. PREFACE. "I had for some time been engaged in a Poem of a very different nature, when induced to make the present attempt; and am not without apprehension that my eagerness to freshen a jaded mind by diverting it to the healthy natures of a grand reviewd generously by Mr. Fox in 1833, and three years after, Browning sent him two poems for his Repository. Fox's review says: "The work before us. . has truth and life in it, . . . gave us the thrill, and laid hold of us with the power, the sensation of which has never yet failed us as a test of genius. Whoever the anonymous author may be, he is a poet. . . . We felt certain of Tennyson ... we are not less certain of the author of Pauline. . . . The whole composition is of the spirit, spiritual. The scenery is in the chambers of thought; the agencies are powers and passions; the events are transitions from one state of spiritual existence to another. And yet the composition is not dreamy; there is on it a deep stamp of reality." 1 Lady Percy, Countess of Carlisle-Helen Faucit, now Lady (Theodore) Martin.' On Macready's production of Strafford and The Blot in the Scutcheon, see his Reminiscences, &c., 1875. 6 epoch, may have operated unfavourably on the represented play, which is one of Action in Character, rather than Character in Action. To remely this, in some degree, considerable curtailment will be necessary, and, in a few instances, the supplying details not required. I suppose, by the mere reader. While a trifling success would much gratify, failure will not wholly discourage me from another effort: experience is to come; and earnest endeavour may yet remove many disadvantages. “The portraits are, I think, faithful; and I am exceedingly fortunate in being able, in proof of this, to refer to the subtle and eloquent exposition of the characters of Eliot and Strafford, in the Lives of Eminent British Statesmen now in the course of publication in Lardner's Cyclopædia, by a writer [John Forster] whom I am proud to call my friend; and whose biographies of Hampden, Pym, and Vane, will, I am sure, fitly illustrate the present year—the Second Centenary of the Trial concerning Ship-Money. My Carlisle, however, is purely imaginary: I at first sketched her singular likeness roughly in, as suggested by Matthew and the memoir-writers -but it was too artificial, and the substituted outline is exclusively from Voiture and Waller. “The Italian boat-song in the last scene is from Redi's Bacco, long since naturalized in the joyous and delicate version of Leigh Hunt." [Strafford was reprinted (without the Preface) in the Poetical Works, 1863, 3 vols, where it's the last piece in vol. ii, p. 503-605; and in the Poetical Works, 1868, 6 vols, where it's the 3rd and last piece in vol. i, p. 207-310.] In 1840. SORDELLO. | By Robert Browning. | London: | Edward Moxon, Dover Street. | MDCCCXL. | post 8vo, p. i-iv, 1-253. 6 Books. 5-measure iambic couplet-ryme. in Reprinted (and revis'd) in Poetical Works, 3 vols, 1863: it's the 3rd and last piece in vol. iii, p. 251-465, where it has the following Dedication or Forewords (whose italics are mine) and fresh head-lines :— "To J. MILSAND, OF DIJON. "Dear Friend,-Let the next poem be introduced by your name, and so repay all trouble it ever cost me. I wrote it twenty-five years ago1 for only a few, counting even in these on somewhat more care about its subject than they really had. My own faults of expression were many; but with care for a man or book, such would be surmounted, and without it what avails the faultlessness of either? I blame nobody, least of all myself, who did my best then and since; for I lately gave That is, in round numbers; really 23 years: the poem is dated and was written |