Delirious with the plenitude of light."[56]

[Footnote 55: _The Pope_, 1550 f.]

[Footnote 56: _The Pope_, 1563.]

It is easy to imagine how so grave an indictment would have been forced
home by the author of the _Cenci_ had this other, less famous, "Roman
murder-case" fallen into his hands. The old Godwinian virus would have
found ready material in this disastrous breakdown of a great
institution, this magnificent uprising of emancipated souls. Yet, though
the Shelleyan affinities of Browning are here visible enough, his point
of view is clearly distinct. The revolutionary animus against
institutions as the sole obstacle to the native goodness of man has
wholly vanished; but of historic or mystic reverence for them he has not
a trace. He parts company with Rousseau without showing the smallest
affinity to Burke. As sources of moral and spiritual growth the State
and the Church do not count. Training and discipline have their relative
worth, but the spirit bloweth where it listeth, and the heights of moral
achievement are won by those alone in whom it breathes the heroism of
aspiration and resolve. His idealists grow for the most part in the
interstices of the social organism. He recognises them, it is true,
without difficulty even in the most central and responsible organs of
government. None of his unofficial heroes--Paracelsus or Sordello or
Rabbi ben Ezra--has a deeper moral insight than the aged Pope. But the
Pope's impressiveness for Browning and for his readers lies just in his
complete emancipation from the bias of his office. He faces the task of
judgment, not as an infallible priest, but as a man, whose wisdom, like
other men's, depends upon the measure of his God-given judgment, and
flags with years. His "grey ultimate decrepitude" is fallible, Pope