Of other poems bearing more or less directly upon the subject, the most notable as well as the most familiar, are probably _Rabbi Ben Ezra_, _An Epistle of Karshish_, and _A Death in the Desert_. Of these, _Rabbi Ben Ezra_, in its treatment of the theory of asceticism and of the working out of the design of the perfect unity of the individual human life, goes further afield and carries us beyond the limits of any definite dogma: though on the ascetic side it may serve as comment on some of the conclusions of _Easter Day_. _An Epistle of Karshish_ embodies two of Browning's favourite themes: (1) the essentially probationary character of human life as exemplified by the attitude of Lazarus towards things temporal, an attitude at once becoming _super_-human through a revelation obviating the necessity for faith; (2) the collateral suggestions contained in the estimate of Christianity conceived by the Arab physician. Of these, the first may be well employed as a comparison with the final decision of _Easter Day_, the second with the references of Cleon to the Apostolic teaching. _A Death in the Desert_ offers but another form of refutation of the results of the German methods of Biblical criticism represented by the teaching of the Göttingen Professor of _Christmas Eve_. Direct declarations of faith such as those contained in _Prospice_ and the _Epilogue_ to _Asolando_ serve but as confirmation of the assertion standing at the head of this Lecture. To a superficial consideration the first of the dramatic poems is not pre-eminently attractive, nor as a soliloquist is Caliban attractive in the ordinary acceptation of the term as an appeal to the senses affording distinctly pleasurable sensations. But the attraction peculiar to the grotesque in any form is here present in a marked degree: an attraction frequently stronger than that exerted by the purely beautiful, involving as it does a more direct intellectual appeal; since grotesqueness, whether in Nature or in Art, does not usually denote simplicity. And Caliban is by no means a simple being, rather is he a singularly remarkable creation even for the genius of Browning. As we know, the idea suggested itself whilst the poet was reading _The Tempest_, when there flashed through his mind the passage from the Psalms (l, 21) which stands beneath the title: "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself." In a recognition of the full significance of this fact may be found the key to all seeming inconsistencies which have evoked criticisms describing the poem from its theological aspect as a "monstrous Bridgewater treatise,"[5] and "a fragment of Browning's own Christian apologetics," the "reasoning" of Caliban as "an initial absurdity,"[6] whilst Caliban himself is designated "a savage with the introspective powers of a Hamlet and the theology of an Evangelical clergyman"[7]--the entire scheme of this "wonderful" work being even summarized as a "design to describe the