The Browning Cyclopaedia Part 40

[1] One of the most remarkable instances of the use made of ant.i.thesis I ever heard was at Friern Barnet Church, into the porch of which I strolled when walking one summer day some twenty-five years ago. I was just in time to hear the preacher use words which I have never forgotten. The ant.i.thesis of the sentence was perfect:

If _thou_ wouldst _hereafter be_ where _Christ_ is, see _thou_ be not found _now_ where _He_ is _not_, lest _when He come_ he say to _you_, what _now_ by your conduct you say to _Him_ 'Depart from Me--where _I_ am _you_ cannot come!'" If any one would investigate this principle of ant.i.thetic reading further, let him take Macaulay's "Essay on Von Ranke's Popes,"

vol. ii., p. 128, and beginning at the words, "There is not, and there never was," see how to place the correct emphasis by observation of the opposed ideas. This is the one great secret of good reading. Printers'

punctuation is horribly misleading, and should usually be disregarded.

[2] See _Browning Society's Papers_, Pt. XII., p. 81.

[3] This is a mistake: it should be Ongar, not Norwich.

[4] The name Druses is generally, but not universally, believed to be derived from this Darazi.--E. B.

[5] By means of riddles, as related in the Bible.

[6] The above sonnet, by Robert Browning, is copied from _The Monthly Repository_ (edited by W. J. Fox) for 1834, New series, vol. viii., p.

712.

[7] For the above suggestions I am indebted to the _Notes of the Browning Society_, Part VII., p. 42*.

[8] Browning stopped his work on _Sordello_ to write _Strafford_.

[9] Compare this use of the Light metaphor with Browning's frequent use of it in his poems, as I explain in the article on "Browning as a Scientific Poet" in my _Browning's Message to his Time_.