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The Dilettante Library.

1. DANTE AND HIS IDEAL. By HERBERT Baynes, M.R.A.S. With a Portrait.

2. BROWNING'S MESSAGE TO HIS TIMES. By Dr. EDWARD BERDOE. With a Portrait and Facsimile Letters.

3, 4. THE DOCTOR, AND OTHER POEMS. By T. E. BROWNE, M.A., of Clifton College, Author of "Fo'c's'le Yarns." 2 vols.

5. GOETHE. By OSCAR BROWNING, M.A., Tutor of King's College, Cambridge. With a Portra't. 6. DANTE. By OSCAR BROWNING, M.A. Frontispiece.

Nos. 5

With a

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7. BROWNING'S CRITICISM CF LIFE. By W. F. REVELL, Member of the London Browning Society. With a Portrait.

8. HENRIK IBSEN. By the Rev. PHILIP H. WICKSTEAD, M.A. With a Portrait.

9. THE ART OF ACTING.

With a Portrait.

10. WALT WHITMAN.

By PERCY FITZGERALD.

By WILLIAM CLARKE, M.A.,

Cambridge. With a Portrait.

11. VICTOR HUGO. By J. PRINGLE NICHOL. With a Portrait.

12. BROWNING AND WHITMAN. By OSCAR L.

TRIGGS.

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PREFACE.

THE volume now given to the public is an expansion of a paper read before the London Browning Society at their meeting of May 27th of the present year. The purpose of the paper was to point out the essential democracy of Robert Browning. The intent of the present work is to suggest the need of an exegesis of modern prophetical literature. And the endeavour is therefore made in the case of Browning and Whitman to identify life and literature. The result will be, for a few readers, not incurious. It is found that some poems which prove well in lecture-rooms and parlours prove not at all in the open air, in the streets and workshops, in contact with the varied life of man.

The thoughts which prompt the several essays may be stated as follows: God is a living will, who is realised by men and women in their practical activities and creations. To realise the will of God, by whatever institutional means of State or church or school, is the purport of democracy. Democracy cares supremely for the soul; this, before all laws, forms, institutions, policies, economics, is the one thing worthy of conserving.

For the purposes of world-profession, art can no longer be separated from life. Art is the union of the real and the ideal, it is matter receiving spirit, it is spirit taking form. Art is a witness of ideality; at the same time it shows the possibility of the realisation of highest thought.

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