To this kindly act much was due. Browning, of course, could not now have been dissuaded from the career he had forecast for himself, but his progress might have been retarded or thwarted to less fortunate grooves, had it not been for the circumstances resultant from his aunt's timely gift.
The MS. was forthwith taken to Saunders & Otley, of Conduit Street, and the little volume of seventy pages of blank verse, comprising only a thousand and thirty lines, was issued by them in January 1833. It seems to us, who read it now, so manifestly a work of exceptional promise, and, to a certain extent, of high accomplishment, that were it not for the fact that the public auditory for a new poet is ever extraordinarily limited, it would be difficult to understand how it could have been overlooked.
"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.*
—
* "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
"Thou wilt remember one warm morn, when Winter
Crept aged from the earth, and Spring's first breath
Blew soft from the moist hills — the black-thorn boughs,
So dark in the bare wood, when glistening
In the sunshine were white with coming buds,
Like the bright side of a sorrow — and the banks
Had violets opening from sleep like eyes."
If we have an imaginary Browning, a Shelleyan phantasm, in
"I seemed the fate from which I fled; I felt
A strange delight in causing my decay;
I was a fiend, in darkness chained for ever
Within some ocean-wave:"
we have the real Browning in