Preface.
play would be found to have been altered almost past recognition. So long and so lovingly did the poet brood over his nestling before he allowed himself to leave it to its flight.
It may therefore be confidently anticipated that the present re-issue of "Bells and Pomegranates" will prove as acceptable to the old "Browningite" as it will to the reader who through its pages makes for the first time an acquaintance with the author of "The Ring and the Book." The former will now have access to the original text, and will be enabled to contrast it with the revised reading, the whole of the poems and plays having been printed precisely from the first edition of 1841-46.
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