PAULINE, Browning’s first poem, written at 19 and published at 21, “breathless, intense, melodramatic,” says Professor Saintsbury, “eschewing incident, but delighting in analysis, which was to be one of the poet’s points throughout, and ultimately to prevail over the others.”

PAULINUS, the first archbishop of York, sent in company with Augustin from Rome by Gregory to Britain in 601:  laboured partly in Kent and partly in Northumbria, and persuaded Edwin of Northumbria to embrace Christianity in 629; d. 644.

PAULUS, HEINRICH, one of the founders of German rationalism, born near Stuttgart; held in succession sundry professorships; denied the miraculous in the Scripture history, and invented ingenious rational explanations, now out of date (1761-1851).

PAUSANIAS, a famous Spartan general, the grandson of Leonidas, who, as commander-in-chief of the Greeks, overthrew the Persian army under Mardonius at Plataea in 479, but who, elated by this and other successes, aimed at the sovereignty of Greece by alliance with Xerxes, and being discovered, took refuge in a temple at Athens, where he was blockaded and starved to death in 477 B.C., his mother throwing the first stone of the pile that was cast up to bar his exit.

PAUSANIAS, a Greek traveller and topographer, lived during the reigns of Antoninus Pius and M. Aurelius; wrote an “Itinerary of Greece” in 10 books, the fruit of his own peregrinations, full of descriptions of great value both to the historian and the antiquary.

PAVIA (30), on the Ticino, in Lombardy, is an imposing “city of a hundred towers,” with little industry or commerce; in its unfinished cathedral St. Augustine was buried; San Michele, where the early kings of Italy were crowned, dates from the 7th century; the University was founded by Charlemagne, and has now attached to it colleges for poor students, a library, museum, botanic garden, and school of art; stormed by Napoleon in 1796, Pavia was in Austrian possession from 1814 till its inclusion in the kingdom of Italy 1859.

PAXTON, SIR JOSEPH, architect of the Crystal Palace, born in Bedfordshire, was originally a gardener in the service of the Duke of Devonshire, and promoted to the charge of the duke’s gardens at Chatsworth, where he displayed the architectural ability in the construction of large glass conservatories which developed itself in the construction of the Great Exhibition of 1851, for which he received the honour of knighthood (1803-1865).

PAYN, JAMES, English novelist, born at Cheltenham; edited Chambers’s Journal and Cornhill Magazine; his novels were numerous and of average quality, “Lost Sir Massingberd” and “By Proxy” among the most successful (1830-1899).

PAYNE, JOHN, actor and playwright, born in New York; resided in London from 1813 to 1832; most of his days a stranger in a strange land, immortalised himself as the author of “Home, Sweet Home”; only his remains buried at home 30 years after his death at Tunis (1792-1852).