ombats the impression as best he can: recounts his scientific
discoveries--the new plants, minerals, sicknesses, or cures to which his
travels in Judea have introduced him; half apologizes for his digression
from these more important matters; tries to excuse the hold which
Lazarus has taken upon him by the circumstances in which they met; and
breaks out at last in this agitated appeal to Abib and the truth:--

"The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think
So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too--

* * * * *

The madman saith He said so: it is strange."
(vol. iv. p. 198.)

The solitary sage alluded to is of course imaginary. Like the doubtful
messenger to whom the letter will be entrusted, he helps to mark the
incidental character with which Karshish strives to invest his
"experience."

"CALIBAN UPON SETEBOS" carries us into an opposite sphere of thought. It
has for its text these words from Psalm 50: _Thou thoughtest that I was
altogether such an one as thyself_: and is the picture of an acute but
half savage mind, building up the Deity on its own pattern. Caliban is
much exercised by the government of the world, and by the probable
nature of its ruler; and he has niched an hour from his tasks, on a
summer noon, when Prospero and Miranda are taking his diligence upon
trust, to go and sprawl full length in the mud of some cave, and talk
the problem out. The attitude is described, as his reflections are
carried on, in his own words; but he speaks as children do, in the third
person.

Caliban worships Setebos, god of the Patagonians, as did his mother
before him; but her creed was the higher of the two, because it included
what his does not: the idea of a future life. He differs from her also
in a more original way. For she held that a greater power than Setebos
had made the world, leaving Setebos merely to "vex" it; while he
contends that whoever made the world and its weakness, did so for the
pleasure of vexing it himself; and that this greater power, the "Quiet,"
if it really exists, is above pain or pleasure, and had no motive for
such a proceeding.

Setebos is thus, according to Caliban, a secondary divinity. He may have
been created by the Quiet, or may have driven it off the field; but in
either case his position is the same. He is one step nearer to the human
nature which he cannot assume. He lives in