social organism. He recognises them, it is true,
without difficulty even in the most central and responsible organs of
government. None of his unofficial heroes--Paracelsus or Sordello or
Rabbi ben Ezra--has a deeper moral insight than the aged Pope. But the
Pope's impressiveness for Browning and for his readers lies just in his
complete emancipation from the bias of his office. He faces the task of
judgment, not as an infallible priest, but as a man, whose wisdom, like
other men's, depends upon the measure of his God-given judgment, and
flags with years. His "grey ultimate decrepitude" is fallible, Pope
though he be; and he naively submits the verdict it has framed to the
judgment of his former self, the vigorous, but yet uncrowned, worker in
the world. This summing-up of the case is in effect the poet's own, and
is rich in the familiar prepossessions of Browning's individualist and
unecclesiastical mind. He vindicates Caponsacchi more in the spirit of
an antique Roman than of a Christian; he has open ears for the wisdom of
the pagan world, and toleration for the human Euripides; scorn for the
founder of Jesuitism, sympathy for the heretical Molinists; and he
blesses the imperfect knowledge which makes faith hard. The Pope, like
his creator, is "ever a fighter," and his last word is a peremptory
rejection of all appeals for mercy, whether in the name of policy,
Christian forgiveness, or "soft culture," and a resolve to

"Smite with my whole strength once more, ere end my part,
Ending, so far as man may, this offence."

And with this solemn and final summing-up--this quietly authoritative
keynote into which all the clashing discords seem at length to be
resolved--the poem, in most hands, would have closed. But Browning was
too ingrained a believer in the "oblique" methods of Art to acquiesce in
so simple and direct a conclusion; he loved to let truth struggle
through devious and unlikely channels to the heart instead of missing
its aim by being formally proclaimed or announced. Hence we are hurried
from the austere solitary meditation of the aged Pope to the condemned
cell of Guido, and have opened before us with amazing swiftness and
intensity all the recesses of that monstrous nature, its "lips unlocked"
by "lucidity of soul." It ends, not on a solemn keynote, but in that
passionate and horror-stricken cry where yet lurks the implicit
confession that he is guilty and his doom just--

"Pompilia, will