not upon God or the Virgin, but upon his innocent and murdered wife --
"Abate, -- Cardinal, -- Christ, -- Maria, -- God, . . .
Pompilia, will you let them murder me?" Thus we can imagine Browning,
with his characteristic perception of the profound significance
of a circumstance or a single word even, having written of the knocking
at the door in "Macbeth", or having used, with all its marvellous
cumulative effect, the word `wrought' towards the close of "Othello",
when the Moor cries in his bitterness of soul, "But being wrought,
perplext in the extreme": we can imagine this, and yet could not credit
the suggestion that even the author of "The Ring and the Book"
could by any possibility have composed the two most moving tragedies
writ in our tongue.

In the late autumn of 1832 Browning wrote a poem of singular
promise and beauty, though immature in thought and crude in expression.*
Thirty-four years later he included "Pauline" in his "Poetical Works"
with reluctance, and in a note explained the reason of his decision --
namely, to forestall piratical reprints abroad. "The thing was
my earliest attempt at `poetry always dramatic in principle,
and so many utterances of so many imaginative persons, not mine,'
which I have since written according to a scheme less extravagant,
and scale less impracticable, than were ventured upon
in this crude preliminary sketch -- a sketch that, on reviewal,
appears not altogether wide of some hint of the characteristic features
of that particular `dramatis persona' it would fain have reproduced:
good draughtsmanship, however, and right handling were far beyond the artist
at that time." These be hard words. No critic will ever adventure upon
so severe a censure of "Pauline": most capable judges agree that,
with all its shortcomings, it is a work of genius, and therefore
ever to be held treasurable for its own sake as well as for its significance.