[Footnote 8: The quoted passage is from the works of Cornelius Agrippa,
a well-known professor of occult philosophy, and is indeed introductory
to a treatise upon it. The writer is quite aware that his work may be
scandalizing, hurtful, and even poisonous to narrow minds, but is sure
that readers of a superior understanding will get no little good, and
plenty of pleasure from it; and he concludes by claiming indulgence on
the score of his youth, in case he should have given even the better
judges any cause for offence. For those who read this preface with any
previous knowledge of Mr. Browning's life and character, there will be
an obvious inference to his own youthfulness in the exaggerated estimate
thus implied of his imaginative sins; for the tendency of "Pauline" is
both religious and moral; and no man has been more innocent than its
author, from boyhood up, of tampering with any belief in the black art.
His hatred for that "spiritualism," which is its modern equivalent, is
indeed matter of history. But the trick he has here played himself may
confuse the mind of those who only know him from his works, and for whom
his vivid belief in the supernatural may point to a different kind of
mysticism.]
[Footnote 9: Vol. i. of the new uniform edition of 1888-89. This will be
the one always referred to.]
[Footnote 10: The "Andromeda," described as "with" the speaker at pages
29 and 30, is that of Polidoro di Caravaggio, of which Mr. Browning
possesses an engraving, which was always before his eyes as he wrote his
earlier poems. The original was painted on the wall of a garden attached
to the Palazzo Bufalo--or del Bufalo--in Rome. The wall has been pulled
down since Mr. Browning was last there.]
[Footnote 11: Aristotle.]
[Footnote 12: He rose to meet him from the place at which he stood,
saying, "Oh Mantuan, I am Sordello of thy land!" and they embraced each
other.]
[Footnote 13: The name of Naddo occurs in this book, and will often
reappear in the course of the story. This personage is the typical
Philistine--the Italian Brown, Jones, or Robinson--and will represent
genuine common-sense, or mere popular judgment, as the case may be.]
[Footnote 14: Elys, the subject of this song, is any woman of the then
prevailing type of Italian beauty: having fair hair, and a "pear-shaped"
face.]
[Footnote 15: Bocafoli and Plara, mannerists: one of the sensuous
school, the other of the pompously pure; imaginary personages, but to
whom we may give real names.]
[Footnote 16: The belief in personal experience is very strong here.]
[Footnote 17: The third of these, vol. i. p. 168, is very characteristic
of the state of Sordello's, and therefore, at that moment, of his
author's mind. The poet who _makes others see_ is he who deals with
abstractions: who makes the mood do duty for the man.]
[Footnote 18: Walter Savage Landor.]
[Footnote 19: The word "Eyebright" at page 170 stands for Euphrasia its
Greek equivalent, and refers to one of Mr. Browning's oldest friends.]
[Footnote 20: Here, as elsewhere, I give the spirit rather than the
letter, or even the exact order of Sordello's words. The necessary
condensation requires this.]