for its own sake, in his love of nature and friends
and wife and child. His voice, in both speech and laughter, had a ring
and joyousness such as reminded us of Charles Dickens in his youth.
His appreciation of life was intense and immense. This world and all
worlds reported to him as if he were an officer to whom they all, as
subalterns, must report. The pendulum in the clock on a lady's
mantel-shelf is not more natural than the pendulum swung in a cathedral
tower, though the swing of the one is a slight and the swing of the
other a great arc. Browning is a pendulum whose vibrations touch the
horizons. He does business with fabulous capital and on a huge scale,
and thinks, sees, serves, and loves after a colossal fashion, but is as
natural in his large life as a lesser man is in his meager life.
"Caliban upon Setebos" is a hint of the man's immense movement of soul
and his serene rationality.

Browning will be preacher; and as preachers do--and do wisely--he takes
a text from the Scriptures, finding in a psalm a sentence embodying the
thought he purposes elaborating, as a bud contains the flower. The
Bible may safely be asserted to be the richest treasure-house of
suggestive thought ever discovered to the soul. In my conviction, 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 as thyself." A word will
set a great brain on fire, as if the word were a torch and the brain a
pine-forest, and to thoughtful minds it must be deeply interesting to
know that this study in psychology, which stands distinctly alone in
English literature and in universal literature, was suggested by a
phrase from the Book of God.

To begin with, Caliban is one of Shakespeare's finest conceptions in
creative art. Caliban is as certain in our thoughts as Ferdinand,
Miranda, or Prospero. He is become, by Shakespeare's grace, a person
among us who can not be ignored. Study his biography in "The Tempest,"
and find how masterly the chief dramatist was in rendering visible
those forms lying in the shadow-land of psychology. As Dowden has
suggested, doubtless Caliban's name is a poet's spelling, or anagram,
of "cannibal;" and, beyond question, Setebos is a character in
demonolo