“Just when we are safest, there’s a sunset-touch,
    A fancy from a flower-bell, some one’s death,
    A chorus ending from Euripides,—­
    And that’s enough for fifty hopes and fears
    As old and new at once as Nature’s self,
    To rap and knock and enter in our soul,
    Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,
    Round the ancient idol, on his base again,—­
    The grand Perhaps!”

Nobler diction and a nobler meaning could not have been put into the mouth of Pompilia, or Rabbi Ben Ezra.  It is in reality put into the mouth of a vulgar, fashionable priest, justifying his own cowardice over the comfortable wine and the cigars.

Along with this tendency to poetry among Browning’s knaves, must be reckoned another characteristic, their uniform tendency to theism.  These loose and mean characters speak of many things feverishly and vaguely; of one thing they always speak with confidence and composure, their relation to God.  It may seem strange at first sight that those who have outlived the indulgence, and not only of every law, but of every reasonable anarchy, should still rely so simply upon the indulgence of divine perfection.  Thus Sludge is certain that his life of lies and conjuring tricks has been conducted in a deep and subtle obedience to the message really conveyed by the conditions created by God.  Thus Bishop Blougram is certain that his life of panic-stricken and tottering compromise has been really justified as the only method that could unite him with God.  Thus Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau is certain that every dodge in his thin string of political dodges has been the true means of realising what he believes to be the will of God.  Every one of these meagre swindlers, while admitting a failure in all things relative, claims an awful alliance with the Absolute.  To many it will at first sight appear a dangerous doctrine indeed.  But, in truth, it is a most solid and noble and salutary doctrine, far less dangerous than its opposite.  Every one on this earth should believe, amid whatever madness or moral failure, that his life and temperament have some object on the earth.  Every one on the earth should believe that he has something to give to the world which cannot otherwise be given.  Every one should, for the good of men and the saving of his own soul, believe that it is possible, even if we are the enemies of the human race, to be the friends of God.  The evil wrought by this mystical pride, great as it often is, is like a straw to the evil wrought by a materialistic self-abandonment.  The crimes of the devil who thinks himself of immeasurable value are as nothing to the crimes of the devil who thinks himself of no value.  With Browning’s knaves we have always this eternal interest, that they are real somewhere, and may at any moment begin to speak poetry.  We are talking to a peevish and garrulous sneak; we are watching the play of his paltry features, his evasive eyes, and babbling lips.  And suddenly the face begins to change and harden, the eyes glare like the eyes of a mask, the whole face of clay becomes a common mouthpiece, and the voice that comes forth is the voice of God, uttering His everlasting soliloquy.