issed. When some seven years afterwards he produced "Mr.
Sludge the Medium," every one supposed that it was an attack upon
spiritualism and the possibility of its phenomena. As we shall see
when we come to that poem, this is a wholly mistaken interpretation of
it. But what is really curious is that most people have assumed that a
dislike of Home's investigations implies a theoretic disbelief in
spiritualism. It might, of course, imply a very firm and serious
belief in it. As a matter of fact it did not imply this in Browning,
but it may perfectly well have implied an agnosticism which admitted
the reasonableness of such things. Home was infinitely less dangerous
as a dexterous swindler than he was as a bad or foolish man in
possession of unknown or ill-comprehended powers. It is surely curious
to think that a man must object to exposing his wife to a few
conjuring tricks, but could not be afraid of exposing her to the loose
and nameless energies of the universe.

Browning's theoretic attitude in the matter was, therefore, in all
probability quite open and unbiassed. His was a peculiarly hospitable
intellect. If any one had told him of the spiritualist theory, or
theories a hundred times more insane, as things held by some sect of
Gnostics in Alexandria, or of heretical Talmudists at Antwerp, he
would have delighted in those theories, and would very likely have
adopted them. But Greek Gnostics and Antwerp Jews do not dance round a
man's wife and wave their hands in her face and send her into swoons
and trances about which nobody knows anything rational or scientific.
It was simply the stirring in Browning of certain primal masculine
feelings far beyond the reach of argument--things that lie so deep
that if they are hurt, though there may be no blame and no anger,
there is always pain. Browning did not like spiritualism to be
mentioned for many years.

Robert Browning was unquestionably a thoroughly conventional man.
There are many who think this element of conventionality altogether
regrettable and disgraceful; they have established, as it were, a
convention of the unconventional. But this hatred of the conventional
element in the personality of a poet is only possible to those who do
not remember the meaning of words. Convention means only a coming
together, an agreement; and as every poet must base his work upon an
emotional agreement among men, so every poet must base his work upon a
convention. Every art is, of cou