_One Word More_ was appended to Browning's volume _Men and
Women_ (1855), by way of dedication of the book to his wife. It is
characteristic of its author in its reality of feeling, in its seeking
an unusual point of view, in its parenthetic and allusive style, and
its occasional high felicity of expression. Those who feel overpowered
by Browning's vigor and profundity of thought, might stop here to note
the exquisite inconsistency between the examples cited and the thing
thus illustrated. The painter turning poet, the poet turning painter,
the moon turning her unseen face to a mortal lover; these are compared
to Browning the poet,--writing another poem. The only difference in
his art is that the poet here speaks for himself in the first person,
and not, as usual, dramatically in the third person. The idea of the
poem may be found, stripped of digression and fanciful comparisons, in
the eighth, twelfth, fourteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth stanzas.
Something of the same idea appears in _My Star_.
5. =Rafael,= etc. More commonly spelled Raphael. Born in Italy in
1483, died in 1520; generally regarded as the greatest of painters.
The Sistine Madonna, at Dresden, is considered his greatest work. See
lines 21-24.
Only four of his sonnets exist. A translation of these is given in
Cooke's _Guide Book to Browning_. There is no authentic record of
such a "century of sonnets" having ever existed.
10. Tradition is dim and uncertain as to the identity of this love of
Raphael's.
27. =Guido Reni= (1576-1642). A celebrated Italian painter. Berdoe
says that the volume owned by Guido Reni was a collection of a hundred
drawings by Raphael.
32-33. =Dante= (1265-1321). The greatest of Italian poets. His
_Divina Commedia_, consisting of the _Inferno_, _Purgatorio_,
and _Paradiso_, is his most famous work. His romantic passion
for Beatrice (pronounced B[=a]-[.a]-tr[=e]-che) is referred to in his
_Divina Commedia_, and is recounted in his _Vita Nuova_.
37-43. In allusion to the fact that Dante freely consigned his
enemies, political and personal, living or dead, to appropriate places
in his _Inferno_ and _Purgatorio_.
45-48. This interruption of his work is described in the thirty-fifth
section of the _Vita Nuova_. The hostile nature of the visit
seems to be of Browning's invention.--COOKE.