osely he saw and
dealt with his characters in the world of the senses, the conscience, or
the understanding, Browning led them all at last.

The first of these poems is _Natural Theology on the Island; or, Caliban
upon Setebos_. Caliban, with the instincts and intelligence of an early
savage, has, in an hour of holiday, set himself to conceive what
Setebos, his mother's god, is like in character. He talks out the
question with himself, and because he is in a vague fear lest Setebos,
hearing him soliloquise about him, should feel insulted and swing a
thunder-bolt at him, he not only hides himself in the earth, but speaks
in the third person, as if it was not he that spoke; hoping in that
fashion to trick his God.

Browning, conceiving in himself the mind and temper of an honest,
earthly, imaginative savage--who is developed far enough to build
nature-myths in their coarse early forms--architectures the character of
Setebos out of the habits, caprices, fancies, likes and dislikes, and
thoughts of Caliban; and an excellent piece of penetrative imagination
it is. Browning has done nothing better, though he has done as well.

But Browning's Caliban is not a single personage. No one savage, at no
one time, would have all these thoughts of his God. He is the
representative of what has been thought, during centuries, by many
thousands of men; the concentration into one mind of the ground-thoughts
of early theology. At one point, as if Browning wished to sketch the
beginning of a new theological period, Caliban represents a more
advanced thought than savage man conceives. This is Caliban's
imagination of a higher being than Setebos who is the capricious creator
and power of the earth--of the "Quiet," who is master of Setebos and
whose temper is quite different; who also made the stars, things which
Caliban, with a touch of Browning's subtle thought, separates from the
sun and moon and earth. It is plain from this, and from the whole
argument which is admirably conducted, that Caliban is an intellectual
personage, too long neglected; and Prospero, could he have understood
his nature, would have enjoyed his conversation. Renan agreed with
Browning in this estimate of his intelligence, and made him the
foundation of a philosophical play.

There is some slight reason for this in Shakespeare's invention. He
lifts Caliban in intellect, even in feeling, far above Trinculo,
Stephano, the Boatswain and the rest of the common men. The