Browning must have regarded his first book with mingled feelings.  It was a bid for literary fortune, in one sense, but a bid so handicapped by the circumstances of its publication as to be almost certainly of no avail.  Probably, however, he was well content that it should have mere existence.  Already the fever of an abnormal intellectual curiosity was upon him:  already he had schemed more potent and more vital poems:  already, even, he had developed towards a more individualistic method.  So indifferent was he to an easily gained reputation that he seems to have been really urgent upon his relatives and intimate acquaintances not to betray his authorship.  The Miss Flower, how ever, to whom allusion has already been made, could not repress her admiration to the extent of depriving her friend, Mr. Fox, of a pleasure similar to that she had herself enjoyed.  The result was the generous notice in the Monthly Repository.  The poet never forgot his indebtedness to Mr. Fox, to whose sympathy and kindness much direct and indirect good is traceable.  The friendship then begun was lifelong, and was continued with the distinguished Unitarian’s family when Mr. Fox himself ended his active and beneficent career.

But after a time the few admirers of “Pauline” forgot to speak about it:  the poet himself never alluded to it:  and in a year or two it was almost as though it had never been written.  Many years after, when articles upon Robert Browning were as numerous as they once had been scarce, never a word betrayed that their authors knew of the existence of “Pauline.”  There was, however, yet another friendship to come out of this book, though not until long after it was practically forgotten by its author.

One day a young poet-painter came upon a copy of the book in the British Museum Library, and was at once captivated by its beauty.  One of the earliest admirers of Browning’s poetry, Dante Gabriel Rossetti—­for it was he—­felt certain that “Pauline” could be by none other than the author of “Paracelsus.”  He himself informed me that he had never heard this authorship suggested, though some one had spoken to him of a poem of remarkable promise, called “Pauline,” which he ought to read.  If I remember aright, Rossetti told me that it was on the forenoon of the day when the “Burden of Nineveh” was begun, conceived rather, that he read this story of a soul by the soul’s ablest historian.  So delighted was he with it, and so strong his opinion it was by Browning, that he wrote to the poet, then in Florence, for confirmation, 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.

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