once again, did Browning
stoop; and that something removes, for me, all difficulty in
understanding his rejection, despite its exquisite verbal beauties, of
this work. Moreover, it is interesting to observe the queer
sub-conscious sense of the lover's inferiority betrayed in the prose
note at the end. This is in French, and feigns to be written by Pauline
herself. She is there made to speak of "_mon pauvre ami_." Let any woman
ask herself what that phrase implies, when used by her in speaking of a
lover--"my poor dear friend"! We cannot of course be sure that Browning,
as a man, was versed in this scrap of feminine psychology; but we do
gather with certainty from Pauline's fabled comment that her view of the
confession--for the poem is merely, as Mr. Chesterton says, "the typical
confession of a boy"--was very much less lachrymose than that of _mon
pauvre ami_. Unconsciously, then, here--but in another poem soon to be
discussed, not unconsciously--there sounds the humorous note in regard
to men which dominates so many of women's relations with them. "The big
child"--to some women, as we all know, man presents himself in that
aspect chiefly. Pauline, remarking of her lover's "idea" that it was
perhaps as unintelligible to him as to her, is a tender exponent of this
view; the girl in _Youth and Art_ is gayer and more ironic. Here we have
a woman, successful though (as I read the poem)[12:1] _not_ famous,
recalling to a successful and famous sculptor the days when they lived
opposite one another--she as a young student of singing, he as a budding
statuary--

"We studied hard in our styles,
Chipped each at a crust like Hindoos,
For air looked out on the tiles,
For fun watched each other's windows.

* * * * *

And I--soon managed to find
Weak points in the flower-fence facing,
Was forced to put up a blind
And be safe in my corset-lacing.

* * * * *

No harm! It was not my fault
If you never turned your eyes' tail up
As I shook upon E in alt,
Or ran the chromatic scale up.

* * * * *

Why did you not pinch a flower
In a pellet of clay and fling it?
Why did I not put a power
Of thanks in a look, or sing it?"

* * * * *

I confess that this lyric, except for its penultimate ve