e reasons which he
elsewhere asserts, and others still more cogent, have secured my
indulgence for this paper, which otherwise I should have advised him to
throw into the fire. I believe none the less in the great principle of
all composition--in that principle of Shakespeare, of Raphael, and of
Beethoven, according to which concentration of ideas is due much more to
their conception than to their execution; I have every reason to fear
that the first of these qualities is still foreign to my friend, and I
much doubt whether redoubled labour would enable him to acquire the
second. It would be best to burn this, but what can I do?"--(_Mrs.
Orr_.)]

"Pauline" is a confession, fragmentary in detail but synthetic in range,
of a young man of high impulses but weak determination. In its
over-emphasis upon errors of judgment, as well as upon real if
exaggerated misdeeds, it has all the crudeness of youth. An almost
fantastic self-consciousness is the central motive: it is a matter of
question if this be absolutely vicarious. To me it seems that the author
himself was at the time confused by the complicated flashing of the
lights of life.

The autobiographical and autopsychical lines and passages scattered
through the poem are of immediate interest. Generously the poet repays
his debt to Shelley, whom he apostrophises as "Sun-treader," and invokes
in strains of lofty emotion--"Sun-treader--life and light be thine for
ever." The music of "Alastor," indeed, is audible ever and again
throughout "Pauline." None the less is there a new music, a new poetic
voice, in

"Thou wilt remember one warm morn, when Winter
Crept aged from the earth, and Spring's first breath
Blew soft from the moist hills--the black-thorn boughs,
So dark in the bare wood, when glistening
In the sunshine were white with coming buds,
Like the bright side of a sorrow--and the banks
Had violets opening from sleep like eyes."

If we have an imaginary Browning, a Shelleyan phantasm, in

"I seemed the fate from which I fled; I felt
A strange delight in causing my decay;
I was a fiend, in darkness chained for ever
Within some ocean-wave:"

we have the real Browning in

"So I will sing on--fast as fancies come
Rudely--the verse being as the mood it paints.
* * * * *
I am made up of an intensest life,"

and all the succeeding lines down to "T