much impressed by it, though his father made severe strictures upon its
lack of polish, its terminal inconcision, and its vagueness of thought.
That he was not more severe was accepted by his son as high praise. The
author had, however, little hope of seeing it in print. Mr. Browning was
not anxious to provide a publisher with a present. So one day the poet
was gratified when his aunt, handing him the requisite sum, remarked
that she had heard 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