R651201A. Selection (1865).
The Fortnightly Review, 1 December 1865, p. 256.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 391.
This is the third volume of Moxon’s “Miniature Poets,” a series with which thousands of drawing-room tables are already familiar, and which deserves its success: daintier “gift-books” cannot be mentioned. The series is not meant for the readers of the poets: they want the works and not selections. But it is charmingly adapted to the large class who wish to have “a taste,” many of whom will be lured by that taste into more serious acquaintance with the poets; and it is just the sort of series to place in the hands of the young. Were these books intended for the poetical public, we should consider it extremely hard upon Robert Browning, that while his great rival, Tennyson, is presented in selections taken from all his works, Browning’s finest works are here excluded, by the fact that a “selection” (and a most precious volume it is) has already been published by Messrs. Chapman and Hall. To make up the present volume, Mr. Browning had to glean, from what had already been gleaned by skilful and loving hands, or else to rely mainly on the volume which was published after that selection had been made. This he has done. The present selection contains nothing that had a place in the former selection; but it contains some favourite pieces which had been omitted, and the rest are from “James Lee and other Poems.”
[George Henry Lewes.]
Reviewed:
A Selection (RB), London: Edward Moxon, 1865.
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