Browning Critiques Author:Margret Holmes Bates from the author's foreword: — "....the characters [Browning] invents... usually come out first best in the dialogues and arguments they engage in against the Christian belief. In the following pages I have used, not my own opinions, but quotations from many of the poems that have been discussed in the Browning Society of New York--that is, these ... more »poems have been talked over and around, but never touched upon in their real meaning. Other quotations are made from poems that are studiously avoided."« less