In _Pippa Passes_ he has the only less easy task of giving an account of humanity.

In _The Return of the Druses_ he has for the first time the task which is so much harder than giving an account of humanity--the task of giving an account of a human being.

Djabal, the great Oriental impostor, who is the central character of the play, is a peculiarly subtle character, a compound of blasphemous and lying assumptions of Godhead with genuine and stirring patriotic and personal feelings: he is a blend, so to speak, of a base divinity and of a noble humanity.
He is supremely important in the history of Browning's mind, for he is the first of that great series of the apologiae of apparently evil men, on which the poet was to pour out so much of his imaginative wealth--Djabal, Fra Lippo, Bishop Blougram, Sludge, Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, and the hero of _Fifine at the Fair_.
With this play, so far as any point can be fixed for the matter, he enters for the first time on the most valuable of all his labours--the defence of the indefensible.

It may be noticed that Browning was not in the least content with the fact that certain human frailties had always lain more or less under an implied indulgence; that all human sentiment had agreed that a profligate might be generous, or that a drunkard might be high-minded.

He was insatiable: he wished to go further and show in a character like Djabal that an impostor might be generous and that a liar might be high-minded.