T was in the second or 1850 edition of the Poems in two volumes that the Sonnets from tba Portuguese were first given to the public. The circumstances attending their composition have never been clearly related. Mr. Browning, however, eight years before his death, made a statement to a friend, with the understanding that at some future date, after his own decease, the story might be more widely told. The time seems to have arrived when there can be no possible indis cretion in recording a very pretty episode of literary history.