His "grey ultimate decrepitude" is fallible, Pope though he be; and he naively submits the verdict it has framed to the judgment of his former self, the vigorous, but yet uncrowned, worker in the world.

This summing-up of the case is in effect the poet's own, and is rich in the familiar prepossessions of Browning's individualist and unecclesiastical mind.

He vindicates Caponsacchi more in the spirit of an antique Roman than of a Christian; he has open ears for the wisdom of the pagan world, and toleration for the human Euripides; scorn for the founder of Jesuitism, sympathy for the heretical Molinists; and he blesses the imperfect knowledge which makes faith hard.

The Pope, like his creator, is "ever a fighter," and his last word is a peremptory rejection of all appeals for mercy, whether in the name of policy, Christian forgiveness, or "soft culture," and a resolve to "Smite with my whole strength once more, ere end my part, Ending, so far as man may, this offence." And with this solemn and final summing-up--this quietly authoritative keynote into which all the clashing discords seem at length to be resolved--the poem, in most hands, would have closed.

But Browning was too ingrained a believer in the "oblique" methods of Art to acquiesce in so simple and direct a conclusion; he loved to let truth struggle through devious and unlikely channels to the heart instead of missing its aim by being formally proclaimed or announced.