ic scene in the history of a soul; and Browning, with his
democratic feeling in things of the mind, held that every soul however
mean is worth understanding. If the poem is a satire, it is so only in a
way that is inevitable. Browning's desire is to be absolutely just, but
sometimes truth itself becomes perforce a satire. He takes an impostor
at the moment of extreme disadvantage; the "medium" is caught in the
very act of cheating; he will make a clean breast of it; and his
confession is made as nearly as possible a vindication. The most
contemptible of creatures, in desperate straits, makes excellent play
with targe and dagger; the poetry of the piece is to be found in the
lithe attitudes, absolutely the best possible under the circumstances,
by which he maintains both defence and attack. Half of the long
_apologia_ is a criticism not of those who feast fools in their folly,
but of the fools who require a caterer for the feast; it is a study of
the methods by which dupes solicit and educate a knave. The other half
is Sludge's plea that, knave though he be, he is not wholly knave; and
Browning, while absolutely rejecting the doctrine of so called
spiritualism, is prepared to admit that in the composition of a Sludge
there enters a certain portion of truth, low in degree, perverted in
kind, inoperative to the ends of truth, yet a fragment of that without
which life itself were impossible even for the meanest organism in the
shape of man.

Cowardly, cunning, insolent, greedy, effeminately sensual, playing upon
the vanity of his patrons, playing upon their vulgar sentimentality,
playing upon their vulgar pietisms and their vulgar materialism, Sludge
after all is less the wronger than the wronged. Who made him what he is?
Who, keen and clear-sighted enough in fields which they had not selected
as their special parade-ground for self-conceit, trained him on to
knavery and self-degradation? Who helped him through his blunders with
ingenious excuses--"the manifestations are at first so weak"; or "Sludge
is himself disturbed by the strange phenomena"; or "a doubter is in the
company, and the spirits have grown confused in their communications"?
Who proceeded to exhibit him as a lawful prize and possession, staking
their vanity on the success of his imposture? Who awakened in him the
artist's joy in rare invention? Who urged him forward from modest to
magnificent lies? Who fed and flattered him? What ladies bestowed their
soft c