mine--I don't know, can't be sure
But there was something in it, tricks and all!"

It is strange to call a poem with so clear and fine a climax an attack
on spiritualism. To miss that climax is like missing the last sentence
in a good anecdote, or putting the last act of _Othello_ into the
middle of the play. Either the whole poem of "Sludge the Medium" means
nothing at all, and is only a lampoon upon a cad, of which the matter
is almost as contemptible as the subject, or it means this--that some
real experiences of the unseen lie even at the heart of hypocrisy, and
that even the spiritualist is at root spiritual.

One curious theory which is common to most Browning critics is that
Sludge must be intended for a pure and conscious impostor, because
after his confession, and on the personal withdrawal of Mr. Horsfall,
he bursts out into horrible curses against that gentleman and cynical
boasts of his future triumphs in a similar line of business. Surely
this is to have a very feeble notion either of nature or art. A man
driven absolutely into a corner might humiliate himself, and gain a
certain sensation almost of luxury in that humiliation, in pouring out
all his imprisoned thoughts and obscure victories. For let it never be
forgotten that a hypocrite is a very unhappy man; he is a man who has
devoted himself to a most delicate and arduous intellectual art in
which he may achieve masterpieces which he must keep secret, fight
thrilling battles, and win hair's-breadth victories for which he
cannot have a whisper of praise. A really accomplished impostor is the
most wretched of geniuses; he is a Napoleon on a desert island. A man
might surely, therefore, when he was certain that his credit was gone,
take a certain pleasure in revealing the tricks of his unique trade,
and gaining not indeed credit, but at least a kind of glory. And in
the course of this self-revelation he would come at last upon that
part of himself which exists in every man--that part which does
believe in, and value, and worship something. This he would fling in
his hearer's face with even greater pride, and take a delight in
giving a kind of testimony to his religion which no man had ever given
before--the testimony of a martyr who could not hope to be a saint.
But surely all this sudden tempest of candour in the man would not
mean that he would burst into tears and become an exemplary ratepayer,
like a villain in the worst parts of Dickens. The mom