completed before he was twenty-one years old. His aunt, Mrs.
Silverthorne, gave him one hundred and fifty dollars, which paid the
expenses of publication. Not a single copy was sold, and the unbound
sheets came home to roost. The commercial worth of _Pauline_ was
exactly zero; today it is said that only five copies exist. One was
sold recently for two thousand four hundred dollars.

In 1834 Browning visited Russia, going by steamer to Rotterdam, and
then driving fifteen hundred miles with horses. Although he was in
Russia about three months, and at the most sensitive time of life,
the country made surprisingly little impression upon him, or at
least upon his poetry. The dramatic idyl, _Ivan Ivanovitch_, is
practically the only literary result of this journey. It was the
south, and not the north, that was to be the inspiration of Browning.

He published his second poem, _Paracelsus_, in 1835. Although this
attracted no general attention, and had no sale, it was
enthusiastically reviewed by John Forster, who declared that its
author was a man of genius. The most fortunate result of its
appearance was that it brought Browning within the pale of literary
society, and gave him the friendship of some of the leading men in
London. The great actor Macready was charmed with the poem, and
young Browning haunted Macready's dressing-room at the theatre for
years; but their friendship ceased in 1843 when _A Blot in the
'Scutcheon_ was acted. Browning wrote four plays for Macready, two
of which were accepted.

Although Browning late in life remarked in a casual conversation
that he had visited Italy in 1834, he must have been mistaken, for
it is impossible to find any record of such a journey. To the best