stating at the same time that his admiration for "Pauline" had led him
to transcribe the whole of it.

Concerning this episode, Robert Browning wrote to me, some seven years ago,
as follows: --

==
St. Pierre de Chartreuse,
Isere, France.

. . . . .

"Rossetti's `Pauline' letter was addressed to me at Florence
more than thirty years ago. I have preserved it, but, even were I at home,
should be unable to find it without troublesome searching.
It was to the effect that the writer, personally and altogether unknown to me,
had come upon a poem in the British Museum, which he copied the whole of,
from its being not otherwise procurable -- that he judged it to be mine,
but could not be sure, and wished me to pronounce in the matter --
which I did. A year or two after, I had a visit in London
from Mr. (William) Allingham and a friend -- who proved to be Rossetti.
When I heard he was a painter I insisted on calling on him,
though he declared he had nothing to show me -- which was far enough
from the case. Subsequently, on another of my returns to London,
he painted my portrait, not, I fancy, in oils, but water-colours,
and finished it in Paris shortly after. This must have been in the year
when Tennyson published `Maud', for I remember Tennyson reading the poem
one evening while Rossetti made a rapid pen-and-ink sketch of him, very good,
from one obscure corner of vantage, which I still possess, and duly value.
This was before Rossetti's marriage."*