1 For example, see his letter to Miss Irene Hardy, Poet Lore, 24:56.

2 Act III, Sc. IV, ll. 171-3.

3 I owe this suggestion to Professor G. L. Kittredge.

4 Browning Society Papers, Vol. I, p. 21* ff.

5 Lang (in his edition of Perrault's Popular Tales, Introduction, p. civ f) cites ultimate sources for this incident.

6 In The Ring and the Book (Bk. I) there is a reference to Jack and the Beanstalk; in Pachiarotto to Hop-o'-my-Thumb; in one of Browning's letters to Miss Barrett (Vol. II, p. 20) to Jack the Giant-killer.

7 Valiant was a stock epithet for Jack the giant-killer. On his belt appeared the words: “This is the valiant Cornishman Who killed the giant Comoran.”

8 See, for example, that included in John Cheap The Chapman's Library, Glasgow, 1878, Vol. III.

9 See the version printed in Craik, The Fairy Book. Macmillan, London, 1868, p. 132ff.

10 I quote from the version, the usual one, in Chap Books and Penny Histories (Ancient Literature of the Olden Times), Third Series.

11 In this imaginative elaboration Browning may have been aided by his father, whose skill with his drawing pencil was often employed in the illustration of familiar stories for his own and other children. See Griffin and Minchin, Life of Robert Browning, p. 20.

12 Browning's acquaintanceship with the romances seems to have dated from very early youth and to have been largely confined to that period. See Orr, Life and Letters of Browning, Revised ed., 1908, pp. 144, 201, 232, 378f.; Griffin and Minchin, Life of Browning, p. 71ff., Letters of R. B. and E. B. B., Vol. I, pp. 40, 523, Vol. II, pp. 388, 555; Letters of E. B. Browning, ed. Kenyon, 1897, Vol. I, pp. 420, 442.

13 Pt. II, cc. 15, 17.

14 For example, see Don Belianis of Greece, London, 1703, Pt. III, c. 38: “This great Adventure cannot finish'd be, Unless by those to whom the Fates decree.”

15 Bk. I, c. VIII, s. 30.

16 A “wicked mage” appears in Easter-Day, XIV, and one of the kinder sort in James Lee's Wife, V.

17 Bk. I, c. I, s. 29.

18 Bk. II, c. I, s. 23.

19 The third stanza of Childe Roland, which seems to indicate that the whereabouts of the Tower was common knowledge, has puzzled some commentators. These are, of course, not Roland's words, but the cripple's, which Roland quotes indirectly and ironically. Such ellipsis is common in Browning. Another writer might have introduced, “if I am to believe the cripple,” in parentheses at the end of the sentence.

20 As above, Pt. II, c. 11.

21 The “slug-horn” is merely a horn. Skeat and Murray note that Browning, following Chatterton, erred in his use of the word. It is “really Md. Sc. slugorne, a corruption of slogan,” and means “a war-cry.”

22 C. IV, ss. 15, 16.

23 For typical examples see Orlando Furioso, c. XXX, s. 44; Faerie Queene, bk. V, c. VII, s. 27; Morte d'Arthur (Everyman ed.), Vol. I, p. 203; Amadis of Gaul, bk. I, c. 42; L'Admirable Historie du Chevalier du Soleil, Vol. I, c. 44; Don Belianis of Greece, Pt. II, c. 12. Note also the horns of Huon, Roland, Astolpho, and Helias (The Knight of the Swanne).

24 Bk. I, c. VIII, s. 4. The quotations from the Faerie Queene may be taken as representative of the romances from which Spenser drew.

25 Yet it must be kept in mind that both of these romances, like the Faerie Queene, are synthetic. It is entirely possible that Browning drew not from them, but from their sources. What makes these two books especially significant is that they bring together many common details from the general field of romance and arrange them in an order resembling that we find in Childe Roland, and that their phraseology suggests Browning's in several instances. It must be added that one of the romances that Johnson used in compiling the Seven Champions was Arthur of Lytle Brytayne, known to English readers in Lord Berner's translation. Here occur (c. LVIII) the dark river, the monstrous birds, and the prevailing gloom, just as Johnson describes them in the first passage I cite from the Seven Champions; the object of the hero's quest, moreover, is here called ‘the Tenebrous, or Darke Tower’ (c. LV). In other respects Johnson's account of the adventure is closer than Lord Berner's to Browning's poem.

26 Quoted from the preface to the 1824 edition. There were many black-letter editions, and one good London edition of 1755, besides a host of chap-book abridgements which retain the main episodes. Coleridge, it will be remembered, was fond of acting out the incidents of this romance when a child.

27 This passage suggests that some association may have existed in Browning's mind between the Tower and the darkness, as well as the “penury, inertness and grimace,” about it.

28 That Roland travelled westward and a considerable distance Browning implies rather than distinctly states. The resemblance may easily be a coincidence.

29 Compare lines near the end of Pauline: —“I seem, dying, as one going in the dark To fight a giant.”—and in Strafford, Act. II, Sc. 2: “I, soon to rush Alone upon a giant in the dark.”—and: “—huge in the dark There's—Pym to face!”—and: “You need not turn a page of the romance To learn the Dreadful Giant's fate.”

30 I use Southey's translation, London, 1807.

31 Roland may be imagined phrasing his question to the cripple in this way.

32 Compare Roland's despair and his memories of Giles and Cuthbert.

33 Compare Childe Roland, ss. 3-7

34 Compare s. 30.

35 Compare ss. 32-34

36 For example: the references to Giles and Cuthbert in Childe Roland suggest Browning's familiar attitude toward lost friends (see Strafford, Act I, The Italian in England, and The Lost Leader); the sunset that closes Childe Roland appears also at the end of Sordello, Pippa Passes, and the second book of Paracelsus; the corpse which Roland expects to find in the river has a parallel in Sordello, bk. IV; “frothy spume” is mentioned at the end of Christmas-Eve, and a “new tract of death, calcined to ashes” in Easter-Day. The corpse and the river are, by the way, probably connected with Wordsworth's Peter Bell.

37 Such facts imply that the desolate country, as well as the blast from Roland's horn, may be regarded as indefinitely symbolic.

38 For example, see Symons, Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning, 1 86, p. 103.

39 The richness of the background in Kubla Khan will be more apparent when Dr. J. L. Lowes' studies in Coleridge are published.

40 When he called it a “fantasy,” he undoubtedly intended, in his usual manner, that the word should imply a great deal; but just what he meant it to imply we cannot be sure.

41 It may be that Browning, sharing somewhat in a Victorian reaction to the Romantic Movement, was actually ashamed to confess a vision origin for his poem.

42 The psychological background of this paper is of a very simple and fundamental sort, representing the consensus of modern opinion rather than any particular hypothesis. See, for example, such conservative texts as: Walsh, W. S., The Phychology of Dreams, N. Y. 1920, esp. pp. 17, 48, 55; Jastrow, J., The Subconscious, Houghton Mifflin, 1906, esp. pp. 138, 179, 188, 223f.; Long, C. E., Collected Papers on the Phychology of Phantasy, esp. pp. 20-24; Arnold-Forster, Studies in Dreams, Unwin, London, 1921, esp. pp. 20, 96, 121, 122, 168.