an, a Greek
poet, a Jewish shepherd or rabbi, or from Christians yet farther from
the centre than these, like Blougram and the Abbe Deodaet. In method as
in conception these pieces are among the most Browningesque things that
Browning ever wrote. It is clear, however, that while his way of
handling these topics is absolutely his own, his peculiar concern with
them is new. The _Karshish_, the _Clean_, and the _Blougram_ have no
prototype or parallel among the poems of Browning's previous periods. In
the early Dramatic Lyrics and Romances, and in the plays, there is
exquisite rendering of religion, and also of irreligion; but the
religion is just the simple faith of Pippa or of Theocrite that "God's
in his world"; and the irreligion is the Humanist paganism of St
Praxed's, not so much hostile to Christianity as unconscious of it. No
single poem written before 1850 shows that acute interest in the
problems of Christian faith which constantly emerges in the work of this
and the following years. _Saul_, which might be regarded as signally
refuting this view, strikingly confirms it; the David of the first nine
sections, which alone were produced in 1845, being the naive, devout
child, brother of Pippa and of Theocrite; the evolution of this harping
shepherd-boy into the illuminated prophet of Christ was the splendid
achievement of the later years.[33] And to all this more acutely
Christian work the _Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day_ (1850) served as a
significant prologue.

[Footnote 33: It is, indeed, clear, as has been seen, from Browning's
correspondence that a sequel of this kind was intended when the first
nine sections were published. The traditional legend of David would in
any case suggest so much. That the intention was not then executed is
just the significant fact.]

There can be little doubt that the devout Christian faith of his wife
was principally concerned in this new direction of his poetry. Yet we
may easily overstate both the nature of her influence and its extent.
She, as little as he, was a dogmatic Christian; both refused to put on,
in her phrase, "any of the liveries of the sects."[34] "The truth, as
God sees it, must be something so different from these opinions about
truth.... I believe in what is divine and floats at highest, in all
these different theologies,--and because the really Divine draws
together souls, and tends so to a unity, could pray anywhere and with
all sorts of worshippers, from the Si