Of explicit pathos there is not a touch.

Yet how subtly the inner pathos and the outward scorn are fused in the imagery of these last stanzas:-- "Ha, ha, John plucketh now at his rose To rid himself of a sorrow at heart! Lo,--petal on petal, fierce rays unclose; Anther on anther, sharp spikes outstart; And with blood for dew, the bosom boils; And a gust of sulphur is all its smell; And lo, he is horribly in the toils Of a coal-black giant flower of hell! So, as John called now, through the fire amain, On the Name, he had cursed with, all his life-- To the Person, he bought and sold again-- For the Face, with his daily buffets rife-- Feature by feature It took its place: And his voice, like a mad dog's choking bark, At the steady whole of the Judge's face-- Died.

Forth John's soul flared into the dark." None of these dramatic studies of Christianity attracted so lively an interest as _Bishop Blougram's Apology._ It was "actual" beyond anything he had yet done; it portrayed under the thinnest of veils an illustrious Catholic prelate familiar in London society; it could be enjoyed with little or no feeling for poetry; and it was amazingly clever.

Even Tennyson, his loyal friend but unwilling reader, excepted it, on the last ground, from his slighting judgment upon _Men and Women_ at large.

The figure of Blougram, no less than his discourse, was virtually new in Browning, and could have come from him at no earlier time.