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n of a decayed house. Trace the origin of this idea of a poet's non-sanity. He was not ordinary, as other men, but was extraordinary, and as such belonged to the upper rather than the lower world; for we must be convinced how wholly the ancients kept the super-earthly in mind in their logical processes-an attitude wise and in consonance with the wisest of this world's thinking. Heaven must not be left out of our computations, just as the sun must not be omitted in writing the history of a rose or a spike of golden-rod. In harmony with this exalted origin of the poet went the notion that he was under an afflatus. A breath from behind the world blew in his face; nay, more, a breath from behind the world blew noble ideas into his soul, and he spake as one inspired of the gods. This conception of a poet

ra on a thread for a pathway, was so absolute in his balance as Shakespeare. He saw all the world. Nor is this all; for there are those who see an entire world, but see it distorted as an anamorphism. There is a cartoon world, where everybody is apprehended as taking on other shapes than his own, and is valued in proportion as he is susceptible of caricature. But plate-glass is better for looking through than is a prism. What men need is eyes which are neither far-sighted nor near-sighted, but right-sighted. Shakespeare was that. There is no hint of exaggeration in his characters. They are people we have met on journeys, and some of whom we have known intimately. To be a poet it is not necessary to be a madman-a doctrine wholesome and encouraging. I lay down, then, as one of the canons for testing a poet's greatness, this, "Is he sane?" and purpose applying the canon to Robert Browning, giving results of such application rather than the modus operandi of such results. I assert that he bears the te

onviction, not a theme treated in the domain of investigation and reason whose chapters may not be headed from the Book Divine. In his "Cleon," Browning has taken his text from the words of Paul; in "Caliban upon Setebos," his text is found in Asaph's psalm, and the words are, "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one a

in the knight, as in the slave, only animal instincts dominate. Lust is tyrant. Animality destroys all manhood, and lowers to the slush and ooze of degradation every one given over to its control. A man degraded to the gross level of a beast because he prefers the animal to the spiritual-this is Caliban. His mind is atrophied, in part, because lust sins against reason. Caliban is Prospero's slave, but he is lust's slave more-a slavery grinding and ignominious as servitude to Prospero can be. Prospero must always, in the widest sense, lord it over Caliban, with his diminished understanding and aggravated appetites, who vegetates rather than lives. His days are narrow as the days of browsing sheep and cattle; but his soul knows the lecherous intent, the petty hate, the cankerous envy, the evil discontents, indigenous only to the soul of man. Plainly, Caliban is man, not beast; for his proclivities, while bestial, are still human. In a

become readers of pages in his soul. He thinks himself talking about things; while we, if wise, know he is giving glimpses of individual memorabilia. Caliban is talking. He is tal

This poem presents that satire which constitutes Browning's humor. Conceive that he here satirizes those omniscient rationalists who demolish, at a touch, all supernatural systems of theology, and proceed to construct purely natural systems in their place as devoid of vitality and inspiration as dead tree-trunks are of vital saps. So conceive this dramatic monologue, and the baleful humor appears, and is captivating in its biting sarcasm and unanswerable argument. Caliban is, in his own opinion, omniscient. He trusts hi

, they are what might be anticipated when man engages in the task of god-making. "Caliban upon Setebos" is the reductio ad absurdum of the attempt of man to create God. God rises not from man to the firmament, but falls from the firmament to man. God does not ascend as the vapor, but descends as the light. This is the wide meaning of this uncanny poem. It is the sanity of the leading poet of the nineteenth century, and the greatest poet since Shakespeare, who saw clearly the inanity of so-called scientific conclusions and godless theories of the evolution of mankind. Mankind can not create God. God creates mankind. All the man-made gods are fashioned after the similitude of Caliban's Setebos. They are grotesque, carnal, devilish. Paganism was but an installment of Caliban's theory. God was a bigger man or woman, with aggravated human characteristics, as witness Jove and Venus and Hercules and Mars. Greek mythology is a commentary on Caliban's monologue. For man to evolve a god who shall be non-human, actually divine in cha

d admirable. Stealing time from service to be truant (seeing Prospero sleeps), he giv

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read and forehead bent to earth, he walks erect, unhumbled; nay, without a sense of worship. How could he or another find God so? The mood of prayer is the mood of finding God. Who seeks Him must seek with thought aflame with love. Caliban's reasoning ambles like a drunkard staggering home from late debauch. His grossness shames us. And yet were he only Caliban, and

ars; the stars

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ls, is, he is not myth, man-made. God made man, and revealed to him the Maker. Thus only do we explain the surpassing picture the prophets and the Christ and the evangelists have left us of the mighty God. Caliban will persist in the belief that the visible system was created in Setebos's moment of being ill at ease and in cruel sportiveness. Nature is a freak of a foul mind. But Caliban's god is not solitary. How hideous were the Aztec gods! The

or right nor

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repit in all save power!

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acts from spleen, and by simple caprice; is loveless; to be feared, deceived, tricked, as Caliban tricks Prospero,-so run the crude theological speculations of this man. He gets no step nearer truth. He walks in circles. He is shut in by common human limitations. Man can not dream about the sky until he has seen a sky, nor can he dream out God till God has been revealed. Caliban is no more

atch his fea

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ors Prospero;

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Setebos, o

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fitful, spiteful, everything but good and noble; and his votary will live t

ign of reformation in character; rises not a cubit above the ground where he constructs his monologue; puts into

o'er the wo

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ared dust, death's

ing fires begi

-and there, there,

ollows! Fool

lat and love

, abject in fear, with not a ray of love. Hopeless, loveless, see h

ch. They settle matters with a "Thus it is, and thus it is not." Would not those men do well to read the parable, "Caliban upon Setebos?" Grant Allen and Huxley would be generously helped; for the more they would lose in dogmatism, so much the more would they gain in wisdom. An

rth, "down from God out of heaven." Men will do better to receive theologies from God than to create them. A life we may live, having the Pattern "showed us in the mount." Christ gives the lie to Caliban's estimate of Deity. Not spite, nor misused mig