It found few readers, but the admiration of one of these, who discovered _Pauline_ many years later, was a sufficient compensation for the general indifference or neglect.

"When Mr Browning was living in Florence, he received a letter from a young painter whose name was quite unknown to him, asking him whether he were the author of a poem called _Pauline_, which was somewhat in his manner, and which the writer had so greatly admired that he had transcribed the whole of it in the British Museum reading-room.

The letter was signed D.G.

Rossetti, and thus began Mr Browning's acquaintance with this eminent man."[14] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: By Dr Furnivall; see _The Academy_, April 12, 1902.] [Footnote 2: "Letters of R.B.and E.B.B.," ii.

477.] [Footnote 3: Letter of R.B.to E.B.B.] [Footnote 4: Dr Moncure Conway states that Browning told him that the original name of the family was De Buri.