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Updated: May 29, 2025
He is supremely important in the history of Browning's mind, for he is the first of that great series of the apologiæ of apparently evil men, on which the poet was to pour out so much of his imaginative wealth Djabal, Fra Lippo, Bishop Blougram, Sludge, Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, and the hero of Fifine at the Fair.
Like Shakespeare, as Bishop Blougram has it, he "Saved money, spent it, owned the worth of things." He had no fine and senseless disregard for money or the good things of this world, but on the contrary saw in them not the value attached to them by vulgar minds, but their true worth. He was a solid, square, evenly-balanced man in those days, believing that whatever he did was worth doing well.
Not a single poem is "stark-naked thought"; not a single poem is addressed solely to the intellect; even Bishop Blougram is rather a presentation of character than a train of argument or a chain of ideas.
In "Men and Women" the intensely dramatic quality of his genius found its best scope, for here are to be found such masterpieces as "Karshish," "The Arab Physician," "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Bishop Blougram," and "Cleon."
It was a matter of course that in this expression of his dramatic genius, the intellectual and emotional should exhibit the varying relations which are developed by the natural life: that feeling should begin by doing the work of thought, as in 'Saul', and thought end by doing the work of feeling, as in 'Fifine at the Fair'; and that the two should alternate or combine in proportioned intensity in such works of an intermediate period as 'Cleon', 'A Death in the Desert', the 'Epistle of Karshish', and 'James Lee's Wife'; the sophistical ingenuities of 'Bishop Blougram', and 'Sludge'; and the sad, appealing tenderness of 'Andrea del Sarto' and 'The Worst of It'.
Blougram told it first It could not owe a farthing, not to him More than St. Paul! So the bishop goes on with his role, but uneasily conscious of the contempt of intellectual people. But, as he says, you have to keep a tight hold upon the chain of faith, that is what Gives all the advantage, makes the difference, With the rough, purblind mass we seek to rule.
The members, however, did not take kindly to this suggestion in the present instance. The question passed unnoticed, while a severe-faced woman inquired, with an air of vast superiority, "I have understood that Bishop Blougram is intended as a portrait of Cardinal Wiseman; can any one tell me if Gigadibs is also a portrait?" "Oh, Lord!" muttered Fenton, half audibly.
Browning's was a simple character, and therefore very difficult to understand, since it was impulsive, unconscious, and kept no reckoning of its moods. Probably in a great many cases, the original impulse which led Browning to plan a soliloquy was a kind of anger mixed with curiosity; possibly the first charcoal sketch of Blougram was a caricature of a priest.
What I have been saying is not strictly original. I took it on the stump, that's all. I didn't expect it to have much effect in this campaign, but it was an opportunity to sow a few seeds, to start a sense of personal dissatisfaction in the minds of a few voters. What is it Browning says? It's in Bishop Blougram, I believe.
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