Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears
Of all the lost adventurers my peers —

"There they stood, ranged along the hill-side:"

The toiling poet had come into his own. He could
afford to review his meeting with

"That hoary cripple,"

perhaps meaning some one who advised him to write,
and when he had started, half repented, and

"Pausing to throw backward a last view
O'er the safe road, 'twas gone, gray plain all around :
Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.
I might go on ; naught else remained to do."

Go on he did, but any reader who believes that
Browning was not giving his own dark days to "Childe
Roland" will do well to read the poem again, horrid
as it is.
CHAPTER XIX

WAS BROWNING A CHRISTIAN?

Many students, reviewers and critics have praised
Browning's religious faith, always meaning religion
of the Christian brand ; and his faith, or settled belief,
was also of that order. Perhaps he did believe all
that is taught of the origin and founding of the Chris-
tian religion ; but he also believed that the early Chris-
tians were narrow, merciless, cruel in their treatment
of those whose lives were not measured by the Chris-
tian rules. He was not in the least jealous of his re-
ligion. He spoke his mind, told the truth about the
early or late Christians and their treatment of heretics.
Witness the fairly jocular poem commemorating the
death of Jaques du Bourg-Molay, the Grand Master
of the Templars, when that order was suppressed in
1312.
Molay was burned alive in Paris Square in 13 14.
