fear from the penalties of heresy, and has even outlived the exultation of free thought:-- "His dam held that the Quiet made all things Which Setebos vexed only: 'holds not so; Who made them weak, made weakness He might vex." [Footnote 43: It is characteristic that M. Maeterlinck found no place for Caliban in his striking fantasia on the _Tempest, Joyzelle_.] Caliban's theology has, moreover, very real points of contact with Browning's own. His god is that sheer Power which Browning from the first recognised; it is because Setebos feels heat and cold, and is therefore a weak creature with ungratified wants, that Caliban decides there must be behind him a divinity that "all it hath a mind to, doth." Caliban is one of Browning's most consummate realists; he has the remorselessly vivid perceptions of a Lippo Lippi and a Sludge. Browning's wealth of recondite animal and plant lore is nowhere else so amazingly displayed; the very character of beast or bird will be hit off in a line,--as the pie with the long tongue "That pricks deep into oakwarts for a worm, And says a plain word when she finds her prize," or the lumpish sea-beast which he blinded and called Caliban (an admirable trait)-- "A bitter heart that bides its time and bites." And all this curious scrutiny is reflected in Caliban's god. The sudden catastrophe at the close ("What, what? A curtain o'er the world at once!") is one of Browning's most superb surprises, breaking in upon the leisured ease of theory with the suddenness of a horrible practical emergency, and compelling Caliban, in the act of repudiating his theology, to provide its most vivid illustration.