and betrays a keen consciousness of its limitation, and particularly of
its utter inadequacy to represent the infinite. In the speech of the
Pope---which can scarcely be regarded otherwise than as the poet's own
maturest utterance on the great moral and religious questions raised by
the tragedy of Pompilia's death--we find this view vividly expressed:--

"O Thou--as represented here to me
In such conception as my soul allows,--
Under Thy measureless, my atom width!--
Man's mind, what is it but a convex glass
Wherein are gathered all the scattered points
Picked out of the immensity of sky,
To reunite there, be our heaven for earth,
Our known unknown, our God revealed to man?"[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1308-1315.]

God is "appreciable in His absolute immensity solely by Himself," while,
"by the little mind of man, He is reduced to littleness that suits man's
faculty." In these words, and others that might be quoted, the poet
shows that he is profoundly impressed with the distinction between human
knowledge, and that knowledge which is adequate to the whole nature and
extent of being. And in _Christmas-Eve_ he repudiates with a touch of
scorn, the absolute idealism, which is supposed to identify altogether
human reason with divine reason; and he commends the German critic for
not making

"The important stumble
Of adding, he, the sage and humble,
Was also one with the Creator."[A]