He is pre-eminently a man of his time, when the cross and its doctrine can be comfortably borne; both he and his table-companion, honoured for this one occasion only with the episcopal invitation, appreciate the good things of this world, but the Bishop has a vast advantage over the maker of "lively lightsome articles" for the reviews, and he uses his advantage, it must be confessed, to the full.

We are in company with no petty man while we read the poem and hear the great Bishop roll out, with easy affluence, his long crumpled mind.

He is delightfully frank and delightfully subtle; concealing himself by self-disclosure; opulent in ideas; shifting the pea of truth dexterously under the three gilded thimbles; blandly condescending and amiably contemptuous; a little feline, for he allows his adversary a moment's freedom to escape and then pounces upon him with the soft-furred claws; assured of his superiority in the game, yet using only half his mind; fencing with one arm pinioned; chess-playing with a rook and pawn given to his antagonist; or shall we say chess-playing blindfold and seeing every piece upon the board?
Is _Bishop Blougram's Apology_ a poem at all?
some literary critics may ask.

And the answer is that through it we make acquaintance with one of Browning's most genial inventions--the great Bishop himself, and that if Gigadibs were not present we could never have seen him at the particular angle at which he presents himself in his condescending play with truths and half-truths and quarter-truths, adapted to a smaller mind than his own.

The sixteenth century gave us a Montaigne, and the seventeenth century a Pascal.