The Study of Poetry • Paragraph 340
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“What the parenthesis means,” he says, “I have not the most distant notion. Mr. Browning might as well have said, ‘to be by him her himself herself themselves made act’, etc., for any vestige of meaning I attach to this curious mob of pronouns and verbs. It is exactly like the short notes of a speech intended to be interpreted afterwards by one who had heard and understood it himself.” *