So also is his love of music, of music especially as bringing us nearest to what is ineffable in God, of music with human aspiration in its heart and sounding in its phrases.

It was this Jewish element in Browning, in all its many forms, which caused him to feel with and to write so much about the Jews in his poetry.

The two poems in which he most fully enshrines his view of human life, as it may be in the thought of God and as it ought to be conceived by us, are both in the mouth of Jews, of _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ and _Jochanan Hakkadosh_.

In _Filippo Baldinucci_ the Jew has the best of the battle; his courtesy, intelligence and physical power are contrasted with the coarseness, feeble brains and body of the Christians.

In _Holy-Cross Day_, the Jew, forced to listen to a Christian sermon, begins with coarse and angry mockery, but passes into solemn thought and dignified phrase.