63 sirvent: Sordello, II.514–16. Quotations are from my Oxford Standard Authors edition of the Poetical Works 1833–1864 (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970Google Scholar; reprinted with corrections 1975). On one or two occasions I have omitted quotation marks which are confusing in brief extracts.

My co-editor, in Volume I of the Oxford English Texts edition, is Mrs. Margaret Smith. While a few of the corruptions in Sordello were corrected in the OSA edition, the work is carried further in the text which will appear in the OET edition.

64 comment: In Volume II (1970) of the Ohio edition of The Complete Works of Robert Browning (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1970).Google Scholar

65 Birrell: His edition of The Poetical Works, in two volumes, first appeared in 1896 (London: Smith, Elder). Although Mrs. Sutherland Orr had pointed out that the text of Sordello was marred by “misprints, and errors in punctuation” (A Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning [London: G. Bell, 1885], p. 34Google Scholar), Birrell wrote, in his Editor's Note, “Happily there are no corrupt passages in Browning.” etc”: “Over-,” senses 21 and 11. At the beginning of the entry Murray rightly points out that “many words have senses falling under two, three, or more” of the senses of the prefix. Since Browning knew Quarles well, it may be worth mentioning “She smiles; she wonders, being overdaz'd / With his [Solomon's] bright beams, stands silent” (Divine Fancies [1641]Google Scholar, Lib. II, no. 33,11. 27–28 [my italics]).

66 Fancies: It occurs twice in the section entitled “A Bean-Stripe: Also, Apple-Eating,” in ll. 239 and 243 (The Poetical Works of Robert Browning [London: Smith, Elder, 1889], XVI.78–79).Google Scholar “Annotations”: “As a general principle, we have annotated proper names, phrases that function as proper names, and words or groups of words the full meaning of which requires factual, historical, or literary background.…Specifically, we have annotated the following: (1) proper names; (2) geographical locations; (3) allusions to Biblical and other literature; (4) words not included in Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Seventh Edition…and (5) other items requiring factual information which is not of current common knowledge or easily available.…” The vagueness of this statement—which is a common statement of policy repeated in each volume, no qualification being made for the case of Sordello, where special problems surely arise—is characteristic. The notes are heavily dependent on those provided by Berdoe for The Poetical Works, Volume XVII, Whyte's, Arthur J. admirable edition of 1913Google Scholar, and other obvious authorities, and (even so) are frequently inaccurate. I find very few “allusions to…literature” other than to the Bible in Professor King's notes, but in fact he does gloss a number of words included in Webster.

67 Francion: The Comical History of Francion (London, 1655), II.29.Google Scholartyrants: In the classic study translated as The Civilization of the Renaissance and first published in German in 1860, Jacob Burckhardt described Ezzelino da Romano as being “as a political type…a figure of no less importance for the future than his imperial protector Frederick.…Here for the first time the attempt was openly made to found a throne by wholesale murder and endless barbarities.…None of his successors, not even Cesare Borgia, rivalled the colossal guilt of Ezzelino; but the example once set was not forgotten, and his fall led to no return of justice among the nations, and served as no warning to future transgressors” ([New York: Phaidon Press, 1944], pp. 3–4). The extreme wickedness of Ecelin III, and its historical significance, is an important part of the donnée of Browning's poem.

68 Transfiguring: as the editors of OED notice, this is used intransitively, as if reflexive: they cite no other example. soul”: Pagel, Walter, Paracelsus (Basel and New York: S. Karger, 1958), p. 62.Google Scholar

69 class”: Hartmann, Franz, The Life of…Paracelsus and the Substance of His Teachings, 2nd ed. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1896), p. 121.Google Scholar It is to the credit of David Duff, the author of a heroic study, An Exposition of Browning's ‘Sordello’ (Edinburgh and London: Blackwood, 1906)Google Scholar, that he mentioned that the word “gnome” had been traced to Paracelsus, a fact with which my work on Paracelsus had made me familiar. it?: The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett 1845–1846, ed. Kintner, Elvan, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1969), I, 239, 241, 553; II, 619.Google Scholar

71 4th”: For the first letter, see Letters of Robert Browning Collected by Thomas J. Wise, ed. Hood, Thurman L. (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1933), pp. 91–92Google Scholar; for the second, New Letters of Robert Browning, ed. DeVane, William C. and Knickerbocker, Kenneth L. (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1951), pp. 18–19.Google Scholar1863: This is one of three lines cited by Whyte, A. J., in his valuable edition of Sordello (London: Dent, 1913)Google Scholar, as part of the “residuum” of obscurities “which will puzzle readers for many a long day to come” (p. 16). I also hope to offer suggestions about the other two passages.

72 Homer: Professor King glosses this word, although as usual he makes no mention of other writers who have used it.

73 times”: Preface to A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford English Dictionary) (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1888), I, ix.Google ScholarIvanhoe: “mangonel,” Ivanhoe, ch. xxviii; “arblast,” Ivanhoe, ch.xxix; “mangonel,” The Betrothed, ch. iii, and other references (the definition being in ch. viii); “arblasts,” The Betrothed, chs. iii and v.; “truncheon,” Ivanhoe, ch. iii, etc.; “sirvente” and “virelai,” Ivanhoe, ch. xviii; “hacqueton,” Ivanhoe, ch. xxix; “sprout,” chs. xxxiii and xlv; “miniver,” Ivanhoe, ch. iii, and The Betrothed (“minivair”), ch. xvii; “basnet,” The Betrothed, chs. iii (“basenet”) and xviii (“basnet”); “slaughter-weapons,” The Heart of Mid-Lothian, ch. X; “sumpter-cloth,” The Bride of Lammermoor, ch. ix; “chafe” and “emergence,” Peveril, chs. xxi and vi.

74 sound': Cary's Hell, IX.80, echoing Collins, “Ode to Liberty,” 1. 69: “He passed with unwet feet through all our land.” XVII.93: While OED knows of no parallel to “twy-prong” (Sordello, III.1021), “twyfold” occurs twice in Cary's Purgatory (XXIV.121 and XXXI.122) and “twy-form” once (XXXII.95). universe”: Preface to Alastor. Quotations from Shelley are from Hutchinson's, Thomas edition of The Complete Poetical Works (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1947).Google Scholar

75 us”: Kintner, , I, 356Google Scholar; and cf. I, 27.

77 Shelley: Letters, ed. Hood, , p. 246.Google Scholar

78 notion: The Diary of Alfred Domett 1872–1885, ed. Horsman, E. A. (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1953), pp. 164–65.Google Scholar

79 times: “Fetlock-high” (cf. “fetlock deep,” Henry V, IV.vii.76); “fern-seed” (I Henry IV, II.i.84); “flesh and fell” (King Lear, V.iii.24); “bitter-sweetling” (cf. “bitter sweeting,” Romeo and Juliet, II.iv.77); “to meddle or to make” (Troilus and Cressida, I.i.14, etc.); “a lion's whelp” (I Henry IV, III.iii.148, etc.). him”: Cf. “Infinitati Sacrum…The Progresse of the Soule,” ll. 51–53:

But if my dayes be long, and good enough,

In vaine this sea shall enlarge, or enrough

It selfe.

The full title of The Second Anniversary is of course Of the Progresse of the Soule…The Second Anniversary.

80 Browning: Sordello, V.43; cf. More, “Resolution,” I. 44 (Philosophicall Poems, p. 314).Google Scholarbook”: Griffin, W. Hall and Minchin, Harry Christopher, The Life of Robert Browning (London: Methuen, 1910), p. 31.Google Scholaroccasions: “Thriveless hands,” Quarles, Emblems, I.xii.25; “thriuelesse labours,” A Feast for Wormes (2nd ed., 1626), l. 763Google Scholar; cf. Paracelsus, I.256 (“thriveless quest”), III.712 (“thriveless longing”), and V.581 (“thriveless cares”).

81 places: Argalus and Parthenia (1629), 1.491Google Scholar (“mollitious aire”), and III.129 (“mollitious ayres”): Observations concerning Princes and States, upon Peace and Warre (1642)Google Scholar, dedication (“Mollitious Straynes”) and (most interestingly) in the section of Judgement and Mercy (1646) entitled “The Lascivious man's Heaven” (“mollicious rest”). I am indebted to Mr. John Horden for these references. meaning: Murray, K. M. Elisabeth, Caught in the Web of Words: James A. H. Murray and the “Oxford English Dictionary” (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1977), p. 235.Google Scholar The importance of the role of F. J. Furnivall in the early history of OED may help to explain the care with which Browning's writings were studied. Several words and compounds in Sordello otherwise unknown to the editors are recorded, e.g. “lamp-flies” III.105 (“? a glow-worm”), “twy-prong” (III.1021, as well as Ferishtah's Fancies [“A Camel-Driver,” l. 51]).

82 propriety”: Lives of the English Poets, ed. Hill, George Birkbeck, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1905), I, 435.Google Scholarbefore”: Robert Browning and Alfred Domett, ed. Kenyon, Frederic G. (London: Smith, Elder, 1906), pp. 28–29.Google Scholarnature”: Life, p. 89.Google Scholar