It was crude and confused, but the stuff in it was original and poetic; wonderful stuff for a young man.
The first design of it was huge.

_Pauline_ is but a fragment of a poem which was to represent, not one but various types of human life.

It became only the presentation of the type of the poet, the first sketch of the youth of Sordello.

The other types conceived were worked up into other poems.
The hero in _Pauline_ hides in his love for Pauline from a past he longed to forget.

He had aspired to the absolute beauty and goodness, and the end was vanity and vexation.