One curious theory which is common to most Browning critics is that Sludge must be intended for a pure and conscious impostor, because after his confession, and on the personal withdrawal of Mr. Horsfall, he bursts out into horrible curses against that gentleman and cynical boasts of his future triumphs in a similar line of business.  Surely this is to have a very feeble notion either of nature or art.  A man driven absolutely into a corner might humiliate himself, and gain a certain sensation almost of luxury in that humiliation, in pouring out all his imprisoned thoughts and obscure victories.  For let it never be forgotten that a hypocrite is a very unhappy man; he is a man who has devoted himself to a most delicate and arduous intellectual art in which he may achieve masterpieces which he must keep secret, fight thrilling battles, and win hair’s-breadth victories for which he cannot have a whisper of praise.  A really accomplished impostor is the most wretched of geniuses; he is a Napoleon on a desert island.  A man might surely, therefore, when he was certain that his credit was gone, take a certain pleasure in revealing the tricks of his unique trade, and gaining not indeed credit, but at least a kind of glory.  And in the course of this self-revelation he would come at last upon that part of himself which exists in every man—­that part which does believe in, and value, and worship something.  This he would fling in his hearer’s face with even greater pride, and take a delight in giving a kind of testimony to his religion which no man had ever given before—­the testimony of a martyr who could not hope to be a saint.  But surely all this sudden tempest of candour in the man would not mean that he would burst into tears and become an exemplary ratepayer, like a villain in the worst parts of Dickens.  The moment the danger was withdrawn, the sense of having given himself away, of having betrayed the secret of his infamous freemasonry, would add an indescribable violence and foulness to his reaction of rage.  A man in such a case would do exactly as Sludge does.  He would declare his own shame, declare the truth of his creed, and then, when he realised what he had done, say something like this:—­

    “R-r-r, you brute-beast and blackguard!  Cowardly scamp! 
    I only wish I dared burn down the house
    And spoil your sniggering!”

and so on, and so on.

He would react like this; it is one of the most artistic strokes in Browning.  But it does not prove that he was a hypocrite about spiritualism, or that he was speaking more truthfully in the second outburst than in the first.  Whence came this extraordinary theory that a man is always speaking most truly when he is speaking most coarsely?  The truth about oneself is a very difficult thing to express, and coarse speaking will seldom do it.