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. He is foreshadowed, no doubt, by a series of those accomplished
mundane ecclesiastics whom Browning at all times drew with so keen a
zest,--by Ogniben, the bishop in _Pippa Passes_, the bishop of St
Praxed's. But mundane as he is, he bears the mark of that sense of the
urgency of the Christian problem which since _Christmas-Eve and
Easter-Day_ had so largely and variously coloured Browning's work. It
occurred to none of those worldly bishops to justify their
worldliness,--it was far too deeply ingrained for that. But Blougram's
brilliant defence, enormously disproportioned as it is to the
insignificance of the attack, marks his tacit recognition of loftier
ideals than he professes. Like Cleon, he bears involuntary witness to
what he repudiates.

But there is much more in Blougram than this. The imposing personality
of Wiseman contained much to attract and conciliate a poet like