This belief in the strength of the dramatic element in _Christmas Eve_ is confirmed when we turn to _The Ring and the Book_, and the question suggests itself--Would the critic of the earlier poem have been capable of representing any member of the Church which he condemns in the light in which Browning gives us Innocent XII? A nature to which is possible in age the purity and simplicity of a childlike personal faith. O God, Who shall pluck sheep Thou holdest, from Thy hand? (_The Pope_, ll. 641-642.) Of a tenderness which yearns in memory over the defenceless member of his flock, lately the victim of brutality and disappointed avarice. Pompilia, then as now Perfect in whiteness.... (ll. 1005-1006.) ... My flower, My rose, I gather for the breast of God. (ll. 1046-1047.) With tenderness is coupled that humility which can say to this child of the Faith: Go past me And get thy praise,--and be not far to seek Presently when I follow if I may! (ll. 1092-1094.) * * * * * Stoop thou down, my child, Give one good moment to the poor old Pope Heart-sick at having all his world to blame. (ll. 1006-1008.) Yet, in spite of the heart-sickness, is present also the moral rectitude which refuses to shrink from the task demanding fulfilment--the censure of "all his world"--from the archbishop who repulsed the injured wife's appeal for protection, "the hireling who did turn and flee," through the entire list of offenders to the "fox-faced, horrible priest, this brother-brute, the Abate," and the chief criminal, Guido, for whom also his friends would claim clerical immunity from the penalty attaching to his offence. Realizing to the full the character of his office, the weight of authority and historical continuity lying behind, the old Pope might well be tempted to grant to the miscreants that shelter which they crave. But the very fact which leads him to magnify the dignity of his official position, "next under God," leads him also to recognize the immensity of personal responsibility attaching thereto. The sentence to be passed is the outcome of a _personal_ decision. How should I dare die, this man let live? Yet whilst laying bare before his mental vision the evils existent in his Church, obvious alike in the individual even though he should himself "have armed and decked him for the fight"; and in the communal life of convent and monastery; whilst rejoicing that Caponsacchi should have had the necessary courage to break through ecclesiastical convention and Let light into the world Through that irregular breach o' the boundary: (ll. 1205-1206.)