oded with the glory of a sun about to
set, profusely heaped with treasures of art; there the naked uplands of
Palestine, and the moon rising over jagged hills in a wind-swept sky.

In was in such grave _adagio_ notes as these that Browning chose to set
forth the "intimations of immortality" in the meditative wisdom and
humanity of heathendom. The after-fortunes of the Christian legend, on
the other hand, and the naive ferocities and fantasticalities of the
medieval world provoked him rather to _scherzo_,--audacious and
inimitable _scherzo_, riotously grotesque on the surface, but with a
grotesqueness so penetrated and informed by passion that it becomes
sublime. _Holy-Cross Day_ and _The Heretic's Tragedy_ both culminate,
like _Karshish_ and _Clean_, in a glimpse of Christ. But here, instead
of being approached through stately avenues of meditation, it is wrung
from the grim tragedy of persecution and martyrdom. The Jews, packed
like rats to hear the sermon, mutter under their breath the sublime song
of Ben Ezra, one of the most poignant indictments of Christianity in the
name of Christ ever conceived:--

"We withstood Christ then? Be mindful how
At least we withstand Barabbas now!
Was our outrage sore? But the worst we spared,
To have called these--Christians, had we dared!
Let defiance of them pay mistrust of Thee,
And Rome make amends for Calvary!"

And John of Molay, as he burns in Paris Square, cries upon "the Name he
had cursed with all his life." The _Tragedy_ stands alone in literature;
Browning has written nothing more original. Its singularity springs
mainly from a characteristic and wonderfully successful attempt to
render several planes of emotion and animus through the same tale. The
"singer" looks on at the burning, the very embodiment of the robust,
savagely genial spectator, with a keen eye for all the sporting-points
in the exhibition,--noting that the fagots are piled to the right height
and are of the right quality--

"Good sappy bavins that kindle forthwith, ...
Larch-heart that chars to a chalk-white glow:"

and when the torch is clapt-to and he has "leapt back safe," poking
jests and gibes at the victim. But through this distorting medium we see
the soul of John himself, like a gleam-lit landscape through the whirl
of a storm; a strange weird sinister thing, glimmering in a dubious
light between the blasphemer we half see in him with the singer's