is a matter of little consequence; the merit of the study is independent of any connection with an individual; it answers delightfully the cynical—­yet not wholly cynical—­question:  How, for our gain in both worlds, can we best economise our scepticism and make a little belief go far?[69] The nineteenth century is not precisely the age of the martyrs, or, if we are to find them, we must in general turn to politics and to science; Bishop Blougram does not pique himself on a genius for martyrdom; if he fights with beasts, it is on this occasion with a very small one, a lynx of the literary tribe, and in the arena of his own dining-room over the after-dinner wine.  He is pre-eminently a man of his time, when the cross and its doctrine can be comfortably borne; both he and his table-companion, honoured for this one occasion only with the episcopal invitation, appreciate the good things of this world, but the Bishop has a vast advantage over the maker of “lively lightsome articles” for the reviews, and he uses his advantage, it must be confessed, to the full.  We are in company with no petty man while we read the poem and hear the great Bishop roll out, with easy affluence, his long crumpled mind.  He is delightfully frank and delightfully subtle; concealing himself by self-disclosure; opulent in ideas; shifting the pea of truth dexterously under the three gilded thimbles; blandly condescending and amiably contemptuous; a little feline, for he allows his adversary a moment’s freedom to escape and then pounces upon him with the soft-furred claws; assured of his superiority in the game, yet using only half his mind; fencing with one arm pinioned; chess-playing with a rook and pawn given to his antagonist; or shall we say chess-playing blindfold and seeing every piece upon the board?  Is Bishop Blougram’s Apology a poem at all? some literary critics may ask.  And the answer is that through it we make acquaintance with one of Browning’s most genial inventions—­the great Bishop himself, and that if Gigadibs were not present we could never have seen him at the particular angle at which he presents himself in his condescending play with truths and half-truths and quarter-truths, adapted to a smaller mind than his own.  The sixteenth century gave us a Montaigne, and the seventeenth century a Pascal.  Why should not the nineteenth century of mundane comforts, of doubt troubled by faith, and faith troubled by doubt, produce a new type—­serious yet humorous—­in an episcopal Pascal-Montaigne?

Browning’s moral sympathies, we may rest assured, do not go with one who like Blougram finds satisfaction in things realised on earth; one who declines—­at least as he represents himself for the purposes of argument—­to press forward to things which he cannot attain but might nobly follow after.  But Browning’s intellectual interest is great in seeing all that a Blougram can say for himself; and as a destructive piece of criticism directed against the position of a Gigadibs what he says may really