PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MCMV




TO THE
REV. F.E. MILLSON.


DEAR OLD FRIEND,

A generation has passed since the day when, in your study at Brackenbed
Grange, your reading of "Ben Ezra," the tones of which still vibrate in
my memory, first introduced me to the poetry of Robert Browning. He was
then just entering upon his wider fame. You had for years been one not
merely of the few who recognised him, but of those, yet fewer, who
proclaimed him. The standpoint of the following pages is not, I think,
very remote from your own; conversations with you have, in any case,
done something to define it. You see, then, that your share of
responsibility for them is, on all counts, considerable, and you must
not refuse to allow me to associate them with a name which the old
Rabbi's great heartening cry: "Strive, and hold cheap the strain, Learn,
nor account the pang, Dare, never grudge the throe," summons
spontaneously to many other lips than mine. To some it is brought yet