alk underlies its appearance acts on Gigadibs and
sends him into a higher life. The discussion--as it may be called though
the Bishop only speaks--concerning faith and doubt is full of admirable
wisdom, and urges me to modify my statement that Browning took little or
no interest in the controversies of his time. Yet, all through the
fencing, nothing is decided. The button is always on the Bishop's foil.
He never sends the rapier home. And no doubt that is the reason that his
companion, with "his sudden healthy vehemence" did drive his weapon home
into life--and started for Australia.

Mr. Sludge, the medium, excuses his imposture, and then thinks "it may
not altogether be imposture. For all he knows there may really be
spirits at the bottom of it. He never meant to cheat; yet he did cheat.
Yet, even if he lied, lies help truth to live; and he must live himself;
and God may have made fools for him to live on;" and many other are the
twists of his defence. The poem is as lifelike in its insight into the
mind of a supple cheat as it is a brilliant bit of literature; but
Browning leaves the matter unconcluded, as he would not have done, I
hold, had he been writing poetry. Prince Hohenstiel's defence of
expediency in politics is made by Browning to seem now right, now wrong,
because he assumes at one time what is true as the ground of his
argument, and then at another what is plainly false, and in neither case
do the assumptions support the arguments. What really is concluded is
not the question, but the slipperiness of the man who argues. And at the
end of the poem Browning comes in again to say that words cannot be
trusted to hit truth. Language is inadequate to express it. Browning was
fond of saying this. It does not seem worth saying. In one sense it is a
truism; in another it resembles nonsense. Words are the only way by
which we can express truth, or our nearest approach to what we think it
is. At any rate, silence, in spite of Maeterlinck, does not express it.
Moreover, with regard to the matter in hand, Browning knew well enough
how a poet would decide the question of expediency he has here brought
into debate. He has decided it elsewhere; but here he chooses not to
take that view, that he may have the fun of exercising his clever brain.
There is no reason why he should not entertain himself and us in this
way; but folk need not call this intellectual jumping to and fro a poem,
or try to induce us to believe that it