eard he had written a fine poem, and that she wished to
have the pleasure of seeing it in print.

To this kindly act much was due. Browning, of course, could not now have
been dissuaded from the career he had forecast for himself, but his
progress might have been retarded or thwarted to less fortunate grooves,
had it not been for the circumstances resultant from his aunt's timely
gift.

The MS. was forthwith taken to Saunders & Otley, of Conduit Street, and
the little volume of seventy pages of blank verse, comprising only a
thousand and thirty lines, was issued by them in January 1833. It seems
to us, who read it now, so manifestly a work of exceptional promise,
and, to a certain extent, of high accomplishment, that were it not for
the fact that the public auditory for a new poet is ever extraordinarily
limited, it would be difficult to understand how it could have been
overlooked.

"Pauline" has a unique significance because of its autopsychical hints.
The Browning whom we all know, as well as the youthful dreamer, is here
revealed; here too, as well as the disciple of Shelley, we have the
author of "The Ring and the Book." In it the long series culminating in
"Asolando" is foreshadowed, as the oak is observable in the sapling. The
poem is prefaced by a Latin motto from the _Occult Philosophy_ of
Cornelius Agrippa, and has also a note in French, set forth as being by
Pauline, and appended to her lover's manuscript after his death.
Probably Browning placed it in the mouth of Pauline from his rooted
determination to speak dramatically and impersonally: and in French, so
as to heighten the effect of verisimilitude.[7]

[Footnote 7: "I much fear that my poor friend will not be always
perfectly understood in what remains to be read of this strange
fragment, but it is less calculated than any other part to explain what
of its nature can never be anything but dream and confusion. I do not
know, moreover, whether in striving at a better connection of certain
parts, one would not run the risk of detracting from the only merit to
which so singular a production can pretend--that of giving a tolerably
precise idea of the manner (_genre_) which it can merely indicate. This
unpretending opening, this stir of passion, which first increases, and
then gradually subsides, these transports of the soul, this sudden
return upon himself, and above all, my friend's quite peculiar turn of
mind, have made alterations almost impossible. Th