“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.[7]

[Footnote 7:  “I much fear that my poor friend will not be always perfectly understood in what remains to be read of this strange fragment, but it is less calculated than any other part to explain what of its nature can never be anything but dream and confusion.  I do not know, moreover, whether in striving at a better connection of certain parts, one would not run the risk of detracting from the only merit to which so singular a production can pretend—­that of giving a tolerably precise idea of the manner (genre) which it can merely indicate.  This unpretending opening, this stir of passion, which first increases, and then gradually subsides, these transports of the soul, this sudden return upon himself, and above all, my friend’s quite peculiar turn of mind, have made alterations almost impossible.  The reasons which he elsewhere asserts, and others still more cogent, have secured my indulgence for this paper, which otherwise I should have advised him to throw into the fire.  I believe none the less in the great principle of all composition—­in that principle of Shakespeare, of Raphael, and of Beethoven, according to which concentration of ideas is due much more to their conception than to their execution; I have every reason to fear that the first of these qualities is still foreign to my friend, and I much doubt whether redoubled labour would enable him to acquire the second.  It would be best to burn this, but what can I do?”—­(Mrs. Orr.)]

“Pauline” is a confession, fragmentary in detail but synthetic in range, of a young man of high impulses but weak determination.  In its over-emphasis upon errors of judgment, as well as upon real if exaggerated misdeeds, it has all the crudeness of youth.  An almost fantastic self-consciousness is the central motive:  it is a matter of question if this be absolutely vicarious.  To me it seems that the author himself was at the time confused by the complicated flashing of the lights of life.

The autobiographical and autopsychical lines and passages scattered through the poem are of immediate interest.  Generously the poet repays his debt to Shelley, whom he apostrophises as “Sun-treader,” and invokes in strains of lofty emotion—­“Sun-treader—­life and light be thine for ever.”  The music of “Alastor,” indeed, is audible ever and again throughout “Pauline.”  None the less is there a new music, a new poetic voice, in