When some seven years afterwards he produced "Mr.
Sludge the Medium," every one supposed that it was an attack upon spiritualism and the possibility of its phenomena.

As we shall see when we come to that poem, this is a wholly mistaken interpretation of it.

But what is really curious is that most people have assumed that a dislike of Home's investigations implies a theoretic disbelief in spiritualism.

It might, of course, imply a very firm and serious belief in it.

As a matter of fact it did not imply this in Browning, but it may perfectly well have implied an agnosticism which admitted the reasonableness of such things.