caution and technicality of the Arab physician, his careful attempt at a statement of the case from a purely medical point of view, his self-reproachful uneasiness at the strange interest which the man’s story has caused in him, the strange credulity which he cannot keep from encroaching on his mind:  all this is rendered with a matchless delicacy and accuracy of touch and interpretation.  Nor can anything be finer than the representation of Lazarus after his resurrection, a representation which has significance beyond its literal sense, and points a moral often enforced by the poet:  that doubt and mystery, in life and in religion alike, are necessary, and indeed alone make either life or religion possible.  The special point in the tale of Lazarus which has impressed Karshish with so intense an interest is that

      “This man so cured regards the curer, then,
      As—­God forgive me! who but God himself,
      Creator and sustainer of the world,
      That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile! 
      —­’Sayeth that such an one was born and lived,
      Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house,
      Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know,
      And yet was ... what I said nor choose repeat,
      And must have so avouched himself, in fact,
      In hearing of this very Lazarus
      Who saith—­but why all this of what he saith? 
      Why write of trivial matters, things of price
      Calling at every moment for remark? 
      I noticed on the margin of a pool
      Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort,
      Aboundeth, very nitrous.  It is strange!”

How perfectly the attitude of the Arab sage is here given, drawn, against himself, to a conviction which he feels ashamed to entertain.  As in Cleon the very pith of the letter is contained in the postscript, so, after the apologies and farewell greetings of Karshish, the thought which all the time has been burning within him bursts into flame.

           “The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think? 
      So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too—­
      So, through the thunder comes a human voice
      Saying, ’O heart I made, a heart beats here! 
      Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself! 
      Thou hast no power nor may’st conceive of mine,
      But love I gave thee, with myself to love,
      And thou must love me who have died for thee!’
      The madman saith He said so:  it is strange.”

So far, the monologues are single-minded, and represent the sincere and frank expression of the thoughts and opinions of their speakers. Bishop Blougram’s Apology introduces a new element, the casuistical.  The Bishop’s Apology is, literally, an apologia, a speech in defence of himself, in which the aim is to confound an adversary, not to state the truth.  This form, intellectual rather than emotional, argumentative more than dramatic, has had, from this time forward, a considerable attraction for Browning, and it is responsible for some of his hardest work, such as Fifine at the Fair and Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.