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. The 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,