Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Strafford's career. (The reader will notice how few dates Browning, poet-like, has given.) Mr. Firth also suggested the addition of an Appendix II of the chief fresh Letters and documents of and about Strafford, which Prof. Gardiner and others have printed of late years. Our London and Boston Browning Societies are greatly indebted to Mr. Firth for his valuable help, and all Browning students will thank him for his contribution to this book. They will also feel grateful to our member Mr. Benjamin Sagar, for his famously full Index. 3 St. George's Sqr. London, N. W. 26 November, 1890. chapter{Section 4 INTRODUCTION By C. H. FIRTH. Forster in the life of Eliot, which he published in 1836, quotes a few lines from a poet, "whose genius," he says, "has just risen amongst us." In a footnote he explains that the writer of the verses is " the author of Paracelsus, Mr. Robert Browning. There would be little danger in predicting that this writer will soon be acknowledged as a first-rate poet. He has already proved himself one." 1 Under what circumstances it was that Browning undertook to write the life of Strafford for his friend Forster, Dr. Furnivall explains in his 'Forewords.' A biography written under such conditions naturally shows occasional traces of haste and incompleteness. Moreover, the evidence at the disposal of a biographer in 1836 was in many respects defective; and time has brought to light so many new facts and new documents that there is much to add to any life of Strafford written so long ago, and something to correct in it. On the other hand, even in 1836 a biographer of Strafford had a larger amount of information at his disposal than in the case of any other statesman of the 1 British Statesmen, vol. ii. p. 104. seventeenth century. The ar...