EXPLANATORY NOTES. NOTE 1, PAGE 5. Guinevere contains about seven hundred lines, and relates the story of Guinevere's flight from Camelot with Sir Lancelot, and her refuge, at Almesbury where Arthur chances to meet her on his way to wage war with the Lords of the White Horse. NOTE 2, PAGE II. The Holy Grail contains some nine hundred lines, and describes the adventures of certain knights of the Round Table in their search for the Holy Grail, or cup from which the Lord drank at the Last Supper, and which had appeared to them in a vision, when Galahad at a banquet in the hall at Camelot seated himself in the mystical chair fashioned by the wizard Merlin. On their return from their quest each knight relates in turn to Arthur, who had not joined them in the search, the story of his adventures. The story is in the form of a narrative told to the monk Ambrosius by Sir Percivale, who is represented as having entered a monastery shortly after the termination of his quest. NOTE 3, PAGE 14. · The Princess contains some four thousand lines, and consists of the story and a brief prologue and conclusion. The prologue describes a garden party given by Sir Walter Vivian to his constituents, at which a discussion arises between certain ladies and gentlemen of the party on the subject of 'woman's rights' - Then follows the story, told in the form of a monologue, and which is in brief as follows: The Princess Ida has refused to marry a prince, the son of a neighboring king, to whom she had been betrothed in infancy, and has founded a college from which men are excluded under penalty of death. The Prince and some of his companions obtain an entrance into this college disguised as women, and afterwards upon the accidental discovery of their sex the penalty of death is about to be inflicted upon them, which is however averted by the interference, in part, of the king, the father of the Prince. A tournament is then arranged between the brothers and friends of the Princess Ida and the Prince and his followers. In this tourna ment the Prince is wounded, and is nursed by the Princess, and the story ends with the complete reconciliation of the two. The conclusion consists of a return to the discussion which had occurred in the prologue, and a description of the breaking up of the party at nightfall. NOTE 4, PAGE 20.- In Memoriam contains seven hundred and twenty-five stanzas divided into one hundred and thirty-two brief cantos, and is a tribute to the memory of Arthur Henry Hallam, son of the historian, who was a classmate with Tennyson at Trinity College, Cambridge, and who died at Vienna in 1833. NOTE 5, PAGE 25.-Maud consists of three parts divided into twenty-eight short cantos of irregular length, and contains some two thousand lines. The poem is in the form of a monologue, and its professed theme is the Russian War and a protest against the foreign policy of the Peace Party. A slender narrative runs through the poem which may be outlined as follows: The father of a young Englishman has died under mysterious circumstances suggestive of suicide, as an unfortunate speculation has left him penniless. The son of the dead man and Maud, the daughter of his neighbor, have when children been informally plighted to each other. An estrangement has for a long time existed between the two families, due to the suspicion that Maud's father had been the cause of his neighbor's ruin. The action of the poem commences with Maud's return home, from which she had been absent since childhood. Her engagement to the speaker of the monologue then follows, which is however violently opposed by Maud's brother, who desires to marry his sister to a young English lord. The discovery of a tryst between Maud and her lover by the brother leads to a duel in which the brother is slain. The lover then flees and joins the English army in the Crimea. NOTE 6, PAGE 28. - Enone is a short idyl of some two hundred and eighty lines, and founded on the legend of the award of the golden apple thrown by Eris among the guests at the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. NOTE 7, PAGE 46.- The Ring and the Book is in twelve books, and contains some twenty-one thousand lines. It is monodramatic in form, and each separate book is a monologue. The story on which it is founded was suggested to Mr. Browning by a book three quarters print and one-fourth manuscript which he purchased in Florence, and which contained an account of the trial of an Italian Count for murdering his wife, in the last decade of the seventeenth century. The story, as told by Browning, is founded on fact in its main outlines, of which the following is a synopsis: Guido Franceschini, an impoverished middle-aged Count |