The deeply painful circumstances in which the Handbook re-appears have
compelled me to defer the fulfilment of Mr. Browning's wish, that its
quotation references should be adapted to the use of readers of his new
edition. They also leave it the poorer by some interesting notes which
he more than once promised me for my next reprint; I had never the heart
to say to him: "Is it not safer to give them now?"

The correction, p. 149, of the note referring to p. 184 of
"Aristophanes' Apology," was lately made by Mr. Browning in the
Handbook, pending the time when he could repeat it in his own work. The
cancelled footnote on my 353rd page means that he did remove the
contradiction of which I spoke.

An open discussion on "Numpholeptos," which took place some months ago,
made me aware that my little abstract was less helpful even than its
brevity allowed, because I had emphasized the imagery of the poem where
it most obscured--or least distinctly illustrated--its idea; and I
re-wrote a few sentences which I now offer in their amended form. A
phrase or two in "One Word More" has been altered for the sake of more
literal accuracy. No other correction worth specifying has been made in
the book.

A. ORR.

_January 7th, 1890._


PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION.

The changes made in the present edition have been almost entirely