Bishop Blougram’s Apology represents the after-dinner talk of a great Roman Catholic dignitary.  It is addressed to Mr. Gigadibs, a young and shallow literary man, who poses as free-thinker and as critic of the Bishop’s position.  Mr. Gigadibs’ implied opinion is, that a man of Blougram’s intellect and broad views cannot, with honesty, hold and teach Roman Catholic dogma; that his position is anomalous and unideal.  Blougram retorts with his voluminous and astonishingly clever “apology.”  In this apology we trace three distinct elements.  First, there is a substratum of truth, truth, that is, in the abstract; then there is an application of these true principles to his own case and conduct, an application which is thoroughly unjustifiable—­

      “He said true things, but called them by wrong names—­”

but which serves for an ingenious, and apparently, as regards Gigadibs, a triumphant, defence; finally, there is the real personal element, the man as he is.  We are quite at liberty to suppose, even if we were not bound to suppose, that after all Blougram’s defence is merely or partly ironical, and that he is not the contemptible creature he would be if we took him quite seriously.  It is no secret that Blougram himself is, in the main, modelled after and meant for Cardinal Wiseman, who, it is said, was the writer of a good-humoured review of the poem in the Catholic journal, The Rambler (January, 1856).  The supple, nervous strength and swiftness of the blank verse is, in its way, as fine as the qualities we have observed in the other monologues:  there is a splendid “go” in it, a vast capacity for business; the verse is literally alive with meaning, packed with thought, instinct with wit and irony; and not this only, but starred with passages of exquisite charm, such as that on “how some actor played Death on the stage,” or that more famous one:—­

      “Just when we’re 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!”

At least six of the poems contained in Men and Women deal with painting and music.  But while four of these seem to fall into one group, the remaining two, Andrea del Sarto and Fra Lippo Lippi, properly belong, though themselves the greatest of the art-poems as art-poems, to the group of monodramas already noticed.  But Old Pictures in Florence, The Guardian Angel, Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha and A Toccata of Galuppi’s, are chiefly and distinctively notable in their relation to art, or to some special picture or piece of music.