The purpose of this volume is to afford some aid and guidance to the study of Robert Browning’s Poetry, which being the most complexly subjective of all English poetry, is, for that reason alone, the most difficult. And then the poet’s favorite art form, the dramatic, or rather psychologic, monologue, which is quite original with himself, and peculiarly adapted to the constitution of his genius, and to the revelation of themselves by the several “dramatis personæ,” presents certain structural difficulties, but difficulties which, with an increased familiarity, grew less and less. The exposition presented in the Introduction, of its constitution and skilful management, and the Arguments given to the several poems included in the volume, will, it is hoped, reduce, if not altogether remove, the difficulties of this kind. In the same section of the Introduction certain peculiarities of the poet’s diction, which sometimes give a check to the reader’s understanding of a passage, are presented and illustrated. It is believed that the notes to the poems will be found to cover all points and features of the texts which require explanation and elucidation. At any rate, no real difficulties have been wittingly passed by. The following Table of Contents will give a good idea of the plan and scope of the work:-- I. The Spiritual Ebb and Flow exhibited in English Poetry from Chaucer to Tennyson and Browning. II. The Idea of Personality and of Art as an intermediate agency of Personality, as embodied in Browning’s Poetry. (Read before the Browning Society of London in 1882.) III. Browning’s Obscurity. IV. Browning’s Verse. V. Arguments of the Poems. VI. Poems. (Under this head are thirty-three representative poems, the Arguments of which are given in the preceding section.) VII. List of criticisms of Browning’s works, selected from Dr. Furnivall’s “Bibliography of Robert Browning” contained in the Browning Society’s Papers. _From +Albert S. Cook+, Professor of English Literature in the University of California_:-- Among American expositors of Browning, Professor Corson is easily first. He has not only satisfied the English organization which devotes itself to the study of the poet, but, what is perhaps a severer test, he attracts the reader to whom Browning is only a name, and, in the compass of one small volume, educates him into the love and appreciation of the poet. If Browning is to be read in only a single volume, this, in my opinion, is the best; if he is to be studied zealously and exhaustively, Professor Corson’s book is an excellent introduction to the complete series of his works. _From +The Critic+:--