In was in such grave _adagio_ notes as these that Browning chose to set forth the "intimations of immortality" in the meditative wisdom and humanity of heathendom. The after-fortunes of the Christian legend, on the other hand, and the naïve ferocities and fantasticalities of the medieval world provoked him rather to _scherzo_,--audacious and inimitable _scherzo_, riotously grotesque on the surface, but with a grotesqueness so penetrated and informed by passion that it becomes sublime. _Holy-Cross Day_ and _The Heretic's Tragedy_ both culminate, like _Karshish_ and _Clean_, in a glimpse of Christ. But here, instead of being approached through stately avenues of meditation, it is wrung from the grim tragedy of persecution and martyrdom. The Jews, packed like rats to hear the sermon, mutter under their breath the sublime song of Ben Ezra, one of the most poignant indictments of Christianity in the name of Christ ever conceived:-- "We withstood Christ then? Be mindful how At least we withstand Barabbas now! Was our outrage sore? But the worst we spared, To have called these--Christians, had we dared! Let defiance of them pay mistrust of Thee, And Rome make amends for Calvary!" And John of Molay, as he burns in Paris Square, cries upon "the Name he had cursed with all his life." The _Tragedy_ stands alone in literature; Browning has written nothing more original. Its singularity springs mainly from a characteristic and wonderfully successful attempt to render several planes of emotion and animus through the same tale. The "singer" looks on at the burning, the very embodiment of the robust, savagely genial spectator, with a keen eye for all the sporting-points in the exhibition,--noting that the fagots are piled to the right height and are of the right quality-- "Good sappy bavins that kindle forthwith, ... Larch-heart that chars to a chalk-white glow:" and when the torch is clapt-to and he has "leapt back safe," poking jests and gibes at the victim. But through this distorting medium we see the soul of John himself, like a gleam-lit landscape through the whirl of a storm; a strange weird sinister thing, glimmering in a dubious light between the blasphemer we half see in him with the singer's eyes and the saint we half descry with our own. Of explicit pathos there is not a touch. Yet how subtly the inner pathos and the outward scorn are fused in the imagery of these last stanzas:-- "Ha, ha, John plucketh now at his rose To rid himself of a sorrow at heart! Lo,--petal on petal, fierce rays unclose; Anther on anther, sharp spikes outstart; And with blood for dew, the bosom boils; And a gust of sulphur is all its smell; And lo, he is horribly in the toils Of a coal-black giant flower of hell!