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 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.*

--
* "I much fear that my poor friend will not be always perfectly understood