“Pauline” concludes with lines which must have been in the minds of many on that sad day when the tidings from Venice sent a thrill of startled, half-incredulous, bewildered pain throughout the English nations—­

“Sun-treader, I believe in God, and truth, And love; ... ... but chiefly when I die ...  All in whom this wakes pleasant thoughts of me, Know my last state is happy—­free from doubt, Or touch of fear.”

Never again was Browning to write a poem with such conceptive crudeness, never again to tread the byways of thought so falteringly or so negligently:  but never again, perhaps, was he to show so much over-rapturing joy in the world’s loveliness, such Bacchic abandon to the ideal beauty which the true poet sees glowing upon the forlornest height and brooding in the shadow-haunted hollows of the hills.  The Browning who might have been is here:  henceforth the Browning we know and love stands unique among all the lords of song.  But sometimes do we not turn longingly, wonderingly at least, to the young Dionysos upon whose forehead was the light of another destiny than that which descended upon him?  The Icelanders say there is a land where all the rainbows that have ever been, or are yet to be, forever drift to and fro, evanishing and reappearing, like immortal flowers of vapour.  In that far country, it may be, are also the unfulfilled dreams, the visions too perfect to be fashioned into song, of the young poets who have gained the laurel.

We close the little book lovingly: 

     “And I had dimly shaped my first attempt,
      And many a thought did I build up on thought,
      As the wild bee hangs cell to cell—­in vain;
      For I must still go on:  my mind rests not.”

CHAPTER III.

It has been commonly asserted that “Pauline” was almost wholly disregarded, and swiftly lapsed into oblivion.

This must be accepted with qualification.  It is like the other general assertion, that Browning had to live fifty years before he gained recognition—­a statement as ludicrous when examined as it is unjust to the many discreet judges who awarded, publicly and privately, that intelligent sympathy which is the best sunshine for the flower of a poet’s genius.  If by “before he gained recognition” is meant a general and indiscriminate acclaim, no doubt Browning had, still has indeed, longer to wait than many other eminent writers have had to do:  but it is absurd to assert that from the very outset of his poetic career he was met by nothing but neglect, if not scornful derision.  None who knows the true artistic temperament will fall into any such mistake.