lips always carried with it an implicit
assumption that the preacher had himself somehow got outside the human
limitations he insisted on; that he could measure the plausibility of
man's metaphysics and theology, and distinguish between the
anthropomorphism which is to be acquiesced in because we know no better,
and that which is to be spurned because we know too much. Ferishtah's
thought is a game of hide-and-seek, and its movements have all the
dexterity of winding and subterfuge proper to success in that game.
Against the vindictive God of the creeds he trusts his human assurance
that pain is God's instrument to educate us into pity and love; but
when it is asked how a just God can single out sundry fellow-mortals

"To undergo experience for our sake,
Just that the gift of pain, bestowed on them,
In us might temper to the due degree
Joy's else-excessive largess,"--

instead of admitting a like appeal to the same human assurance, he falls
back upon the unfathomable ways of Omnipotence. If the rifts in the
argument are in any sense supplied, it is by the brief snatches of song
which intervene between the _Fancies_, as the cicada-note filled the
pauses of the broken string. These exquisite lyrics are much more
adequate expressions of Browning's faith than the dialogues which
professedly embody it. They transfer the discussion from the jangle of
the schools and the cavils of the market-place to the passionate
persuasions of the heart and the intimate experiences of love, in which
all Browning's mysticism had its root. Thus Ferishtah's pragmatic,
almost philistine, doctrine of "Plot-culture," by which human life is
peremptorily walled in within its narrow round of tasks, "minuteness
severed from immensity," is followed by the lyric which tells how Love
transcends those limits, making an eternity of time and a universe of
solitude. Finally, the burden of these wayward intermittent strains of
love-music is caught up, with an added intensity drawn from the poet's
personal love and sorrow, in the noble Epilogue. As he listens to the
call of Love, the world becomes an enchanted place, resounding with the
triumph of good and the exultant battle-joy of heroes. But a "chill
wind" suddenly disencharms the enchantment, a doubt that buoyant faith
might be a mirage conjured up by Love itself:--

"What if all be error,
If the halo irised round my head were--Love, thine arms?"

He disda