an see no real incongruity in imputing
to the seer of Patmos a prophetic insight into the future, no real
inconsequence in imagining the opponent of Cerinthus spending his last
breath in the defence of Christian truth against a foreseen scepticism.
In style, the poem a little recalls _Cleon_; with less of harmonious
grace and clear classic outline, it possesses a certain stilled
sweetness, a meditative tenderness, all its own, and certainly
appropriate to the utterance of the "beloved disciple."

_Caliban upon Setebos_; or, _Natural Theology In the Island_,[37] is
more of a creation, and a much greater poem, than _A Death in the
Desert_. It is sometimes forgotten that the grotesque has its own region
in art. The region of the grotesque has been well defined, in connection
with this poem, in a paper read by Mr. Cotter Morison before the
Browning Society. "Its proper province," he writes, "would seem to be
the exhibition of fanciful power by the artist; not beauty or truth in
the literal sense at all, but inventive affluence of unreal yet absurdly
comic forms, with just a flavour of the terrible added, to give a grim
dignity, and save from the triviality of caricature."[38] With the
exception of _The Heretic's Tragedy_, _Caliban upon Setebos_ is probably
the finest piece of grotesque art in the language. Browning's Caliban,
unlike Shakespeare's, has no active part to play: if he has ever seen
Stephano and Trinculo, he has forgotten it. He simply sprawls on the
ground "now that the heat of day is best," and expounds for himself, for
his own edification, his system of Natural Theology. I think Huxley has
said that the poem is a truly scientific representation of the
development of religious ideas in primitive man. It needed the subtlest
of poets to apprehend and interpret the undeveloped ideas and sensations
of a rudimentary and transitionally human creature like Caliban, to turn
his dumb stirrings of quaint fancies into words, and to do all this
without a discord. The finest poetical effect is in the close: it is
indeed one of the finest effects, climaxes, _surprises_, in literature.
Caliban has been venturing to talk rather disrespectfully of his God;
believing himself overlooked, he has allowed himself to speak out his
mind on religious questions. He chuckles to himself in safe
self-complacency. All at once--

"What, what? A curtain o'er the world at once!
Crickets stop hissing; not a bird--or, yes,
T