My dear Smith,--When I received the Proofs of the 1st. vol. on Friday evening, I made sure of returning them next day--so accurately are they printed. But on looking at that unlucky 'Pauline', which I have not touched for half a century, a sudden impulse came over me to take the opportunity of just correcting the most obvious faults of expression, versification and construction,--letting the _thoughts_--such as they are--remain exactly as at first: I have only treated the imperfect expression of these just as I have now and then done for an amateur friend, if he asked me and I liked him enough to do so. Not a line is displaced, none added, none taken away. I have just sent it to the printer's with an explanatory word: and told him that he will have less trouble with all the rest of the volumes put together than with this little portion. I expect to return all the rest to-morrow or next day. As for the sketch--the portrait--it admits of no very superior treatment: but, as it is the only one which makes me out youngish,--I should like to know if an artist could not strengthen the thing by a pencil touch or two in a few minutes--improve the eyes, eyebrows, and mouth somewhat. The head too wants improvement: were Pen here he could manage it all in a moment. Ever truly yours, Robert Browning. Any attempt at modifying the expressed thoughts of his twenty-first year would have been, as he probably felt, a futile tampering with the work of another man; his literary conscience would have forbidden this, if it had been otherwise possible. But he here proves by his own words what I have already asserted, that the power of detail correction either was, or had become by experience, very strong in him. The history of this summer of 1888 is partly given in a letter to Lady Martin. 29, De Vere Gardens, W.: Aug. 12, '88.