But here, instead of being approached through stately avenues of meditation, it is wrung from the grim tragedy of persecution and martyrdom.

The Jews, packed like rats to hear the sermon, mutter under their breath the sublime song of Ben Ezra, one of the most poignant indictments of Christianity in the name of Christ ever conceived:-- "We withstood Christ then?
Be mindful how At least we withstand Barabbas now! Was our outrage sore?
But the worst we spared, To have called these--Christians, had we dared! Let defiance of them pay mistrust of Thee, And Rome make amends for Calvary!" And John of Molay, as he burns in Paris Square, cries upon "the Name he had cursed with all his life." The _Tragedy_ stands alone in literature; Browning has written nothing more original.

Its singularity springs mainly from a characteristic and wonderfully successful attempt to render several planes of emotion and animus through the same tale.

The "singer" looks on at the burning, the very embodiment of the robust, savagely genial spectator, with a keen eye for all the sporting-points in the exhibition,--noting that the fagots are piled to the right height and are of the right quality-- "Good sappy bavins that kindle forthwith, ...
Larch-heart that chars to a chalk-white glow:" and when the torch is clapt-to and he has "leapt back safe," poking jests and gibes at the victim.

But through this distorting medium we see the soul of John himself, like a gleam-lit landscape through the whirl of a storm; a strange weird sinister thing, glimmering in a dubious light between the blasphemer we half see in him with the singer's eyes and the saint we half descry with our own.