It would have been shameful if I had not done my best to realize his expectations of me." After it was determined that Robert should "commence poet," he and his father came to the conclusion that a university training had many elements foreign to the aim the youth had set before him, and that a richer and more directly available preparation could be gained from "sedulous cultivation of the powers of his mind" at home, and from "seeing life in the best sense" at home and abroad. Mrs. Orr tells us that the first qualifying step of the zealous young poet was to read and digest the whole of Dr. Johnson's _Dictionary_. Browning's first published poem, _Pauline_, appeared anonymously in January, 1833, when he was twenty years old. This poem is of especial autobiographical interest. Its enthusiastic praise of Shelley recalls his early devotion to that poet, and in many scattered passages we find references to his own personality or experiences. The following lines show with what intensity he recreated the lives and scenes in the books he read: And I myself went with the tale--a god Wandering after beauty, or a giant Standing vast in the sunset--an old hunter Talking with gods, or a high-crested chief Sailing with troops of friends to Tenedos. I tell you, naught has ever been so clear As the place, the time, the fashion of those lives: I had not seen a work of lofty art, Nor woman's beauty, nor sweet nature's face, Yet, I say, never morn broke clear as those On the dim clustered isles in the blue sea, The deep groves and white temples and wet caves; And nothing ever will surprise me now-- Who stood beside the naked Swift-footed, Who bound my forehead with Proserpine's hair. There is true and powerful self-analysis in the lines beginning: I am made up of an intensest life; and the invocation in lines 811-854 reveals the passionately religious nature of the young poet. In _The Early Writings of Robert Browning_[1] Mr. Gosse gives an account of the impression made by this poem upon men so diverse as the Rev. William Johnson Fox, John Stuart Mill, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, to all of whom, in spite of its crudities and very evident immaturity, it seemed a production of exceptional promise.