s of so much and long-continued
eulogium, and fear the same reversal of judgment towards him on the part
of those who come after us as we ourselves have meted to many an one
among the high gods of our fathers.

Fortunately the deep humanity of his work in the mass conserves it
against the mere veerings of taste. A reaction against it will
inevitably come; but this will pass: what, in the future, when the
unborn readers of Browning will look back with clear eyes untroubled by
the dust of our footsteps, not to subside till long after we too are
dust, will be the place given to this poet, we know not, nor can more
than speculatively estimate. That it will, however, be a high one, so
far as his weightiest (in bulk, it may possibly be but a relatively
slender) accomplishment is concerned, we may rest well assured: for
indeed "It lives, If precious be the soul of man to man."

So far as has been ascertained there were only three reviews or notices
of "Pauline": the very favourable article by Mr. Fox in the _Monthly
Repository_, the kindly paper by Allan Cunningham in the _Athenaeum_,
and, in _Tait's Edinburgh Magazine_, the succinctly expressed impression
of either an indolent or an incapable reviewer: "Pauline; a Fragment of
a Confession; a piece of pure bewilderment"--a "criticism" which
anticipated and thus prevented the insertion of a highly favourable
review which John Stuart Mill voluntarily wrote.

Browning must have regarded his first book with mingled feelings. It was
a bid for literary fortune, in one sense, but a bid so handicapped by
the circumstances of its publication as to be almost certainly of no
avail. Probably, however, he was well content that it should have mere
existence. Already the fever of an abnormal intellectual curiosity was
upon him: already he had schemed more potent and more vital poems:
already, even, he had developed towards a more individualistic method.
So indifferent was he to an easily gained reputation that he seems to
have been really urgent upon his relatives and intimate acquaintances
not to betray his authorship. The Miss Flower, how ever, to whom
allusion has already been made, could not repress her admiration to the
extent of depriving her friend, Mr. Fox, of a pleasure similar to that
she had herself enjoyed. The result was the generous notice in the
_Monthly Repository_. The poet never forgot his indebtedness to Mr. Fox,
to whose sympathy and kindness much direct and indirect go