In a climactic discussion from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s verse novel Aurora Leigh, Romney Leigh, Aurora’s cousin, acknowledges that the En glish “talk by aggregates, / And think by systems, and, being used to face / Our evils in statistics, are inclined / to cap them with unreal remedies / Drawn out in haste on the other side of the slate” (8.801–805).1 Although Romney had earlier criticized Aurora for failing to “generalise” (2.183), by book 8, he has learned his lesson: thinking of people as general groups is a failing proposition. Here he uses the term “aggregation” to mean the troubling po liti cal absorption of individuals into masses and recommends instead that “each individual man / Remains an Adam to the general race” (8.854–855). Romney’s understanding of aggregation is initially that of the emerging social sciences he studies and practices.2 Later, however, he reimagines the nation instead as a “loud sum” of many individual “ silent units” and as the collective “expression of single men’s lives”:

中文翻译：

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“半诗人”和“整个民主党人”：奥罗拉·利的诗歌聚合政治

在伊丽莎白·巴雷特·布朗宁 (Elizabeth Barrett Browning) 的诗歌小说奥罗拉·利 (Aurora Leigh) 的高潮讨论中，奥罗拉 (Aurora) 的堂兄罗姆尼·利 (Romney Leigh) 承认，英语“按总量说话，/ 按系统思考，并且习惯于面对 / 我们在统计中的邪恶，倾向于 /用不真实的补救措施来限制他们/在石板的另一边匆忙抽出”（8.801-805）。1 尽管罗姆尼早些时候批评奥罗拉未能“概括”（2.183），但在第 8 卷中，他已经学会了他的教训：将人视为一般群体是一个失败的命题。在这里，他使用“聚合”一词来表示令人不安的将个人纳入大众的政治吸收，并建议“每个人/仍然是整个种族的亚当”（8.854-855）。