It is not claimed that the publication of these letters is a matter of universal interest, or indeed that they are likely to interest more than a somewhat Special class of readers. Browning's letters were in no sense literary compositions, nor have they the unconscious literary gift which distin guishes the letters, natural and unstudied though they be, of a very few such writers as fitzgerald and Charles Lamb. They serve, however — and serve all the more by reason of Browning's deliberate destruction of his intimate correspondence — to illus trate the character of one who has every thing to gain by being known in all the richness of a noble and a sympathetic nature. It is to those who find a special appeal to them in Browning's poetry, and to those who care to learn something of the character of one of the great poets of age.