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An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry by Robert Browning
page 121 of 525 (23%)
to be construed with "blessing back".

See an elaborate analysis of this Invocation, by Dr. F. J. Furnivall,
read at the forty-eighth meeting of the Browning Society, February 25,
1887, being No. 39 of the Society's Papers.

But, after all, the difficulties in Browning which result from
the construction of the language, be that what it may,
are not the main difficulties, as has been too generally supposed.
THE MAIN DIFFICULTIES ARE QUITE INDEPENDENT OF THE CONSTRUCTION
OF THE LANGUAGE.

Many readers, especially those who take an intellectual attitude
toward all things, in the heavens above and in the earth beneath,
suppose that they are prepared to understand almost anything
which is understandable if it is only PUT right. This is a most
egregious mistake, especially in respect to the subtle and complex
spiritual experiences which the more deeply subjective poetry embodies.
What De Quincey says in his paper on Kant,* of the comprehension of
the higher philosophical truths, can, with still better reason,
be said of the responsiveness to the higher spiritual truths:
"No complex or very important truth was ever yet transferred
in full development from one mind to another: truth of that character
is not a piece of furniture to be shifted; it is a seed which must be sown,
and pass through the several stages of growth. No doctrine of importance
can be transferred in a matured shape into any man's understanding
from without: it must arise by an act of genesis within
the understanding itself."

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