CHAPTER VI.

"SORDELLO."

"SORDELLO" was Browning's next work, and remained, until the publication of "The Ring and the Book," his most elaborate poem. Still more strongly than "Paracelsus," it marks the matters that were of interest to him in his early years of poetic work, his intellectual power and high purpose.

It is harder reading than "Paracelsus;" it even remains, with perhaps two exceptions, the most illegible, the least read, of all the poet's works. Most of his readers, and many of his critics, put it aside in impatience or despair. Some admit they have not read it, and don't mean to; others declare that they have tried and failed-and life, they think, is too valuable and too busy to be spent laboriously over the mysteries of the career of a dreamer who did. nothing, and whose inward achievement seems a blank or a puzzle.

And the poem is hard reading for the best practised; nor is it, save in parts, pleasant for the most devoted.

Now, why is this? Is it the weight of matter or the depth and subtlety of ideas in the poem? I can't think so, and those are not the reasons why some have broken down with it. It appears to me that its ideas are capable of such statement as should bring them within range of readers of the poet's other works. What, then, is it that makes the poem so great a trial of patience, and even of wits? Is it the theme, the structure, or the style? All three have to do with the matter. As to the subject, the poet said long after that it had roused but little interest. The structure of the poem is seldom satisfactory and often unsuitable; and the style has many faultsundue condensation, strange ellipses, abrupt transitions, long parentheses, an original and unpleasant use of inverted commas, and many things brought in that add to the substance, but do not conduce to the clearness of the poem.

The poet thought of re-writing the poem (vide dedication to edition of 1863), and one fears that is the only cure for its faults. But it was not possible, of course. He might have made another poem on the same theme; he could not remake the "Sordello" of 1840. So all he did was to put that analysis of the poem which you find in the form of headlines to the pages-brief lines that are often useful and often useless.

But for all its faults "Sordello" is well worth study. It has fine thought and poetry to reward its mastery. In every such poem there is part of a

poet's mind expressed that he does not again express; and great matters both of life and art are here. And so, without attempting exposition in detail, it may be enough to explain the source and theme of the poem, its plan and course of thought, and the poetical and vital questions it throws light on.

"Sordello" is a study similar in theme to “Paracelsus," though different in method and in the type and career chosen. In Paracelsus you have the student and thinker; in Sordello the type is poetic. He is more like Aprile than Paracelsus, though there are marked differences. Then in " Sordello" the whole "story" of a poet's life and growth are told, and told through the mind and with commentary of the author himself. The structure of the poem results from this. In its form it is narrative; but the story is so told, and so much broken by reflection and dramatic statement (brought in by help of inverted commas), that the form proves unfit for the matter, and is one of the causes of difficulty of the poem.

Browning calls the attempt made in "Sordello" quixotic, and describes its design as a “study of incidents in the development of a soul." And the poem is one of the first examples on a large scale of that kind of study. But "Sordello" has much matter that hardly comes within that design. The “story" of Sordello in its historical circumstances, the poetic function with its duties and perils, and the spiritual problems illustrated by the life and failure of Sordello, are the matter of the poem, and from elaboration of

those three lines of interest comes part of its difficulty. The poet was thinking of his own art, and of a special type of experience in relation to its higher tasks. He was thinking of the poet in contrast with the man of action, and in relation to the duties of the world. The career of Sordello interested him, because it gave scope for that theme, and led up to still larger spiritual problems.

The subject was suggested in part by the special position of the Mantuan poet Sordello in early Italian literature. Sordello was a troubadour, born in 1194, who wrote under Provençal influence and in that dialect. He is the most distinguished of Italian troubadours, and his service lay in what he did towards the rise of modern literature in Italy; the help he gave in rousing the Italian mind to, and preparing the Italian language for, the expression of poetic thought. Sismondi speaks of "the harmony and sensibility of his verses," and of the "pure and delicate style" of some of his songs, which have been collected. Yet his fame afterwards came less from what he did as a poet than from what he was said to have done as a knight. Sismondi quotes him as the most striking instance of the way in which the troubadour was invested with chivalric glories, and became the hero of romantic adventures.

But the conception and theme came rather out of the "Purgatorio" than out of the history or the legends about Sordello, for Dante's words about him, and not his own verses or fame, have kept his name alive.

Dante treats him with respect. He recognizes his place; he ascribes dignity and chivalry to him, composure and disdain—“ the manner of the couchant lion." And in the cordial greetings of Virgil and Sordello we have the meeting, not merely of two Mantuan poets, but of the classical and modern literatures of Italy (cf. " Purgatorio," cantos vi., vii.).

Dante calls the poet "the good Sordello;" but he places him at the entrance of "Purgatory" alone, yet among those who are expiating failure, and far from the Paradise of God. And the Mantuan troubadour singing, in the best verse he could make, the praises of love is in Dante a graver and more serious figure. I am not aware that the facts of Sordello's career warrant the notion that he had the ideas and opportunity of Dante, and missed his chance through lack of power. But there is enough in the "Purgatorio” to suggest that the great poet who founded modern Italian literature condemned the poet who came only a few years before himself, for not having done more than he did, both for the language and the literature of his country.

Browning credits Sordello with a perception of tasks and ideas that were neither conceived nor undertaken before Dante, and his poem becomes a study of the failure of a poet who had seen these things, but had not the power to realize them through his art. And his poem takes a still wider scope; for he not only attributes to Sordello impulses and ideas that belong to Dante, but thoughts and passions that