SOURCE: "Part V," in Sordello and Cunizza, J. M. Dent & Co., 1903, pp. 59-87.

[In the following excerpt from his full-length study of the troubadour, Benson addresses the theory of two Sordellos: one a noble public figure and the other a reckless adventurer and lover. He suggests that Sordello's varied life might be understood as representative of one who abandons the passions of youth for the dignity of adulthood.]

There are two brief and ancient Provençal documents concerning Sordello—the lives of the Provençal poets, transcribed in red, preceding the specimens of their poetry. One describes him as a Mantuan of the Castle of Goito, a courteous Captain, most attractive in his person, a great lover, but crafty and false to women, and to his hosts with whom he stayed—and states that he loved Cunizza, the sister of Ser Ezzelino and of Ser Alberico of Romano, and wife of Count San Bonifazio; and that he was a great personage who went about with a splendid suite of knights. The other MS. adds he was the son of a poor knight, Ser El Cort, etc.

The first is one of the treasures of the Vatican, the other of the Bibl. Nationale de Paris. Both agree as to his excellence as a poet, his flight with Cunizza, and they alike leave no doubt as to his adventurous career and self-exile from Italy, and refuge at the court of the Count of Provence, where he lived in honour.

"Gallant and Bard and Knight" he was, and praising him as such, the Mantuan chroniclers are supported by all that has been found of contemporary testimony concerning him, though we must reject the incidents and orations with which they illustrate and magnify his public life. There is no evidence that he was a Prince Visconti or Lord of Mantua. The oldest Mantuan chronicle (Breve Chronicon Mantuanum ab anno 1095-1299) does not mention his name. It was first stated that he was Prince of Mantua by Volteranno, and repeated by Leandro Albertus in his Descrittione d'Lombardie; following both, Ziloti, Equiciola, Maffei, Sacchi, Gionta, Sainte-Pelaye, and others to our day call him Prince Visconti, and Lord of Mantua. Pietro Lambechie, in his annotations to Platina's "History of Mantua," remarks that no contemporary mentions Sordello as Prince of Mantua. Sordello may have been Podestá, or Governor of the city at some time. Its form of government was republican, and doubtless he may have been elected Podestá, an office held but for six months at a time, without re-election. It is not improbable that he filled the office with honour, and his position then would account for Volteranno's expression when he called him principe de Mantua. That he returned from Provence and distinguished himself in the defence of the city when Ezzelino ravaged the land, may be true, but we lack historic evidence of it. Legend alone, generally based on truth, first presents him as the valiant defender of his mother city. It is only when he is associated with Charles of Anjou that we have historic data of his later military life and of his public importance. He is spoken of as dominus Sordellus in an act of the year 1259 when Charles Count of Anjou and of Provence receives as a part of his dominion the city of Cuneo. He is one of the eight witnesses of the deed, and his name appears with other personages who are present: he also appeared in an official character as a follower of Charles of Anjou in the city of Riez, in the Bishop's palace; as a witness, with other dignitaries, to attest the treaty between Guido Delfino of Albona and of Vienne, and Charles of Anjou in 1257. Sordello is one of the signers with other persons of importance; and, on the same day, and at the same place, another document is signed by sixteen witnesses, the Bishop of Frioul, and other personages of rank and merit, including "il milite Sordello" That he was a man of consequence in the suite of Charles of Anjou is indisputable. The legend that so persistently associates his name with the time of Mantuan liberty, may stand as so much tribute to his fame—though of a later date. O. Schultze, whose researches have brought together some new facts concerning Sordello, refers to a notice by Bartholemy, from which it appears that Barral de Baux transmitted to Sordello, on the 15th of December 1255, fifty pounds, which were due to Sordello as part of the yearly pension paid to him by the commune of Marseilles. It is also apparent from Buffi, Histoire de Marseilles, referred to by O. Schultze, that Sordello lived at Marseilles at the Court of Barral, and later, that he served as witness in a matter between Anjou and the Bishop of Marseilles at San Remy in 1257.

Sordello's adventures, his losses at play—one satire in Provençal plainly charges him with being a desperate gambler—his love of good company, his disputes, in the fashion of his day, with rival wits and troubadours, and later, his professed distaste for military life, have so far compromised his name that there is question of two Sordellos, for some have found it difficult to reconcile the youth of Sordello, his early manhood even, with the impressive personality described by Dante—the lover and companion of Virgil in the Under World—the translator of Cæsar, the austere patriot, grieved and indignant at the condition of Italy. Several writers, who have attempted to tell Sordello's story, have resorted to this theory of two Sordellos, attributing to one an illustrious origin, the honours of the defence of Mantua, a grave and studious life, and the violent death of an Italian patriot of the thirteenth century, whom they call Prince Visconti, Podestá of Mantua; the other Sordello is the famous troubadour who went to Provence, to whom it pleased the early Italian chroniclers to attribute the heroic deeds and lost writings of the great Mantuan who was so admired by Dante. To confirm the theory of two Sordellos they cited Dante's treatise in prose, de la volgare eloquenza in which he speaks of a poet called Gotto, Mantovano, and elsewhere, in the same work alludes to Sordello of Mantua, in a passage which, if not taken in its obvious sense, is perplexing. Tiraboschi's conjecture that Dante's poet, called Gotto, Mantovano, is one and the same person as Sordello Mantovano, seems to be correct, and there are satisfactory reasons for thinking that the Sordello of the Ante Purgatorio is the Sordello alluded to in Dante's Volgare eloquenza. In that treatise, he says, Sordello is admirable in his language; not only in his poems, but in whatever fashion he expresses himself; for he abandoned the common speech or dialect. Dante does not say that Sordello wrote Provençal, but speaks of him as a poet, and we must infer that Sordello expressed himself in the aulic or courtly language, il linguagio nobile. Nothing of his Italian poetry but a conjectural piece attributed to him has reached us.

Benvenuto da Imola, who relates Sordello's adventurous love for Cunizza, affirms that Ezzelino drove him away and that his emissaries followed and assassinated him. The story no doubt was the popular version, for a long time accepted, to account for Sordello's disappearance from North Italy. Rolandino's expression concerning him has not escaped comment. In his account of Ezzelino, he says, Sordellus de ipsius familia. Did he mean that he was by birth of the same family, or merely that he was of the household, or in the service of the family of Romano? There is no other indication of a family tie. The Chronicle of Pietro Gerardo of Padua, purporting to have been written in the time of Ezzelino (but its geniuneness has since been questioned), mentions Sordello as a man faithful to Ezzelino. The fact that he carried off Ezzelino's sister from her husband at her own brother's instigation, indicates that he held close and trusted relations with the family of Romano. Rolandino's allusion to Sordello as of the family of Ezzelino, gives probability to Browning's representation of the famous troubadour in his youth living under the care of Adelaide, the Florentine wife of Ezzelino III. As we have pointed out, conjecture can lead us in no more alluring path, nor find a more interesting situation, than by following Sordello and Cunizza from the days of their childhood in one of the many castles of the Ezzelini, at the base of the Venetian Alps—at Bassano, or Verona,—to the time of her marriage with Count Richard, the hereditary foe of her family, and to her flight with Sordello two years later. That Sordello should have become notorious as a gallant by this adventure with the young wife of a prominent nobleman, is to say he bore himself like a knight who was bound to rescue and serve his lady; the law of honour of the time, made such service paramount to all other obligations. Whatever claims his host, the Count of Saint Boniface had in his absence upon Sordello, they were not sufficient to make him resist the wishes and the commands of the family of Romano urging him to assist Cunizza to escape from her husband's castle. As it is expressly stated that he took her away at the instigation of her brothers, it is not improbable that some tie of blood bound him to execute their wishes; some potency of association, some urgent necessity, enlisted him to act for them and for his lady. So much at least is suggested if not defined by Rolandino, who does not censure Sordello for his conduct in the affair—that is left to the older Provençal biographer. He rather seems to justify him, while he relates Cunizza's own adventures, and depicts her as an extravagant and restless spirit. The precise degree of family interest and personal passion, or the chivalric disinterestedness of his age, that gave impetus to Sordello's conduct at the castle of San Bonifazio, is hardly to be determined at this late hour, and we must accept it as we find it, an incident of mediæval private life. For thirty-five years the rival families of Romano and Bonifazio were battling with each other, now in the streets of Verona, now at Vicenza, Padua, Ferrara,—ravaging each other's lands and assaulting each other's castles. The whole Trevisian March, and part of Lombardy, followed the fortunes of one or the other of these leaders—the one Guelph, the other Ghibelline— Bonifazio, partisan of the Pope, Ezzelino, Vicar of the German Emperor, Frederic II. Both sought their own aggrandisement, and each other's destruction; for they were not less intent on public sway than private vengeance. Contemporary testimony tells us that Sordello was pros e valens, as he was called in a tenzon by Alberico of Romano, then Podestá of Treviso. But he was not a man to remain a mere partisan or but a man of action. Probably his sincerity, his sensibility, his imagination, made it impossible for him to give himself entirely to the personal animosities of his time. Be this as it may, his own humanising passion had compromised him with the two most potent lords of North Italy. On one side was his enemy Count Richard of San Bonifazio, allied with the great Lord of Este, on the other was Ezzelino, the Ghibelline, for the most part master of all between the Brenta and the Piave. Sordello had given mortal offence to both. He found himself in danger of sudden death at the hands of one, or both, united to drive him from Italy, or to destroy him. He seems to have gone first to the Court of Alberic of Romano, at the time at enmity with his brother Ezzelino. There, too, Cunizza went, for she also left Verona and her dreaded brother, to live under the roof of Alberic at Treviso. Before or later, Sordello went beyond, to Onigo, and perhaps to the Court of the Patriarch of Aquileia. According to the brief biography in the Provençal Codex, at the Vatican, he became involved in a love affair with Otta of Onigo. She was the sister of his hosts, two brothers, the lords of the land.

The immediate cause of Sordello's flight from Italy was not only the enmity of Count Bonifazio, but the nearer and more pressing one of the exasperation of the brothers—the lords of Strasso—whose sister, Otta, he had clandestinely married, after which we hear of him at Treviso, where, in spite of powerful protection, he was not secure. At any rate then and there was closed his experience in the marca Treviziana. He appears next in Provence, and there is evidence that he went to Spain and Portugal. De Lollis, who traces him step by step from his part in a tavern brawl at Florence on to the last historic record of his life in the suite of Charles of Anjou in the Kingdom of Naples, has left no fact unexamined concerning him. His deductions sometimes lower rather than enhance the historic figure of Sordello, who, like Dante, or King David, outgrew the sins of his youth— the rank dressing of his lusty years—nor did they prevent him from becoming, as we have seen, one of the most honoured and striking personalities of a great epoch. One modern critic censures his conduct both as regards Cunizza and Otta, and another would induce us to think that he gave a platonic love to Cunizza, but acquitted himself badly in eloping with Otta, whom he abandoned. How culpable he was towards one or both of his hosts is not for us to determine at this late date. But it is manifest that he was without defence. His situation was not only one of great peril, it meant certain destruction for him if he remained in Italy. And furthermore he probably had little sympathy for the ruthless purpose of either party who sought the headship of Italy to rule in the name of Pope or Emperor. He went into exile. He went to the most civilised court of Europe—to Provence, where his fame preceded him. He had already become known as a Provençal poet, and he was appealed to as a judge of good verse. Americ de Peguillan of Toulouse, who lived some time in Italy, concludes one of his own pieces of verse by saying that his messenger will carry it to Sordello, who will give a true verdict upon it according to his custom. This circumstance is cited as a proof that the Provençals themselves regarded him as a judge of Provençal poetry.

Sordello is best explained as one of those rich organisations more often met with perhaps in Italy, but which every man of genius in greater or less degree illustrates. His life reveals the difference which exists in such a man between his youth and age. We see he outlived the mob of his passions, and reached the dignity of a grand character. He became entirely delivered from what are called the sins of youth. They had their time of blossoming. It is correct to represent him as too finely organised, too much in advance of his time, to be willing to give himself wholly to the life of action, and as a fighting man and politician emulate or succeed to Salinguerra, or do the work of an Ezzelino. This is in strict conformity with the historic evidence concerning Sordello. He did indeed keep himself more or less apart from the bloody business of his time—till the last account of him in 1267, when Charles of Anjou sends him to Naples and he is referred to as Sordello of Godio. He was for many years in the service of one of the most implacable men of the age. Strange destiny, associated briefly, in his youth with the terrible Ezzelino, in his latest years with Anjou—the two greatest soldiers and tyrants of his time! But even Ezzelino was not always a horror to men. He comes to us splendid and pleasant, at a moment of knightly life, in an anecdote kept in the Cento Novelle.

Sordello's residence at the court of the Count of Provence lets us see him in the most brilliant and honoured conditions of his being, and knowing something of it at least adds to our sense of the milieu of his life at that time.

Provence is a country of fervid and dazzling skies, rivalling both Italy and Spain in colour, in light, and in form. The afterglow of Greece and Rome shone there, for Roman refinement survived longest between the Alps and the Pyrenees. From the eleventh to the thirteenth century a brilliant life and a new literature made the country a centre of cultivated interest. Its literature was formative even in Italy. It drew from Italy poets of great name. The three elements of what has been called artistic poetry, love of glory, enjoyment of life, and worship of woman, found the most remarkable expression in the poets of its refined and passionate people. Everything favoured their delicate and ardent imagination. Moorish influences from Spain enriched their life after Greek and Latin influences had been exhausted. Provence gave to the world what has been well called the courtly poetry, the poetry of a privileged class, of privileged lives; it was brilliant, exclusive, extravagant; an expression of studied art, of delicate sentiment. It was admired and praised by Dante. Its poets were princes, barons, knights; and yet in the crowd of courtly poets of rank were men of obscure origin and poor estate, lifted by their gifts and rewarded for their talents. Any man of merit and fame was sure of a welcome at the castle courts of the great lords of the South of France.

Sordello was fortunate in seeking this land of princes and poets. Count Raymond Berenger the Fifth was surrounded by men of distinction from all parts of Europe, and his court was perhaps the most splendid of all the great seigneurs of Provence. It was compared to King Arthur's.

It is affirmed that Sordello first went to Provence at the age of seventeen, called to the service of Count Berenger V. because of his excellence as a poet, and his "curious and learned inventions."

The family of the Count of Provence was of singular interest and high in fortune. His four daughters made illustrious marriages: each one became a queen. Marguerite was married to Louis, King of France; Eleanor to Henry III., King of England; Souci to Richard, Count of Cornwall; and the youngest daughter, Beatrice, became wife of Charles, Count of Anjou, in 1246, one year after the death of her father, and lived to be crowned Queen of Naples. Sordello remained attached to the fortunes of this princely family about forty years after the death, in 1245, of his protector, Count Raymond. It is not without interest to know that the tombs of his great patrons are in the church of St John at Aix in Provence, where you may still see the effigy of the old lover of a splendid and cultivated life. He holds in one hand his sword and in the other the Rose of Gold given by Innocent IV.; and there, also at his side, is the statue of Beatrice of Savoy, his wife.

There is but the barest indication of Sordello's presence at other courts in the South of France—at Marseilles, at Montpellier, at Toulouse. But to all the long period of his life in Provence we are guided by a few widely separated dates and the mention of a few cities.

When Sordello appeared in Provence a new life brightened again the land which but a few years before had been made a place of wailing by the merciless persecutions of Innocent III.; and it was in its liberated and awakened society that Sordello confirmed his fame as a Provençal poet. To this period of his life belong many of his poems. They emanated from a fearless spirit. In them he disputes, praises, or laments; or, in friendly contest with a rival poet, celebrates his lady. Sometimes he expresses the perfect submission of a Provençal lover; then in scornful terms he resents injurious comment on the cause of his flight from Lombardy. We learn from his verse the name of the Countess of Rhodes; of Agradiva; of Cunizza; great ladies whom he adored: and there is a mystery as to which one he calls his bel restaurs, which one he calls his doussa enemia. In these poems we find him, so to speak, in the full play of his spirit, all but a Provençal himself, rising to manly grandeur in the universally admired Serventes or Planh in which he sang his sorrow for the loss of Blacas. The grace of a perfect artist is shown in the turn he gives to his satire, which strikes to the quick the weakness or the vice it touches; but he does not leave with us the bitter sense of it, nor does he compromise himself, or appear as a mere railer. We feel his serene and amiable nature while he says that he is so hated by great barons because he openly tells the truth, yet turns to his Lady with: "Lady, beautiful restorer, dear as life, so long as I find you kind I care not who is unfriendly," and he leaves us with the thought of him as a tender and delicate soul. But in some of his poems he does not appear heroic, nor do they even express any elevation of mind.

It is perhaps best to be indulgent towards him concerning their significance. And in any case, we are not to take them as indicative of the temper and pitch of his character; for there is a point, a mood, when every man, no matter how great his genius, or how high his sentiment of life, is on the level of common things, and expresses them. A great dramatist, like Shakespeare, delivers himself of this vulgar mood in his comic characters. Shakespeare's Falstaff, his Sir Toby, his fools and clowns are at least so much of his mind, that we can say: so, at a given moment, he thought, saw life, used the stuff of his experience. A purely lyric genius has not this vicarious issue for his personal moods nor his commoner sympathies: he either keeps them voiceless, or, like Beaudelaire, compromises himself by confessing to the world what bad company he has met, and what reprehensible thoughts have possessed him.

Sismondi's sweeping conclusion about Provençal poetry, his censure of its scandalous element, is one that bears upon every literature of life. It is intemperate to press it exclusively against the Provençal poets; and Sismondi contradicts himself, and yet is nearer the truth when he says:—"Cependant c'est un merite de la poesie Provençale d'avoir rendu un culte a cette beauté cheveleresque, et d'avoir conservé au milieu des vices du siécle le respect de ce qui est honnête, et l'amour des sentiments élevés."

The exaggerated sentiments, the over-refined language, and constant interest in the springtime of life of the Provençal poets, and their worship of the lady, was an offset to mediæval invective contro fœminis. Before we object to it all, or repeat the usual phrase about the monotony and the immorality of the courtly poetry, we should consider how much more objectionable was the expression of the common or popular mind against women. The Provençal poets exalted "the Lady" as a true civiliser, they celebrated her as a purifying element of matter, while the clergy degraded woman as a provocation to "sin." Mediæval Latin abounds in gross invective, in ribald satire against women, because the ascetic mind of the time found in her, as in love, in marriage, and even in the family, not only its corrective, but its most potent adversary. All honour, then, to the Provençal poets who reacted against the darker mind of their age and broke through its restricting and false morality. Their sentiment of life was far more humanising and liberating than the teaching of the cloister and the practices of the cell. When Italy was traversed by thousands of flagellants grovelling and bleeding in pentitential abasement, or rushing wildly from city to city striving after the impossible, neither the Umbrian madman nor the Umbrian saint were justified. If we look then to Provence, or to the Marca Trevigiana, and to the last Provençal poets, we find something better, and Sordello in his disinterested worship of his lady appears nearer to us than the fanatics of his age. When he says he asks of love but consolation and honour he is like a modern man.

Though Sordello had early and frequent intercourse with the Provençals, he remained Italian in his spirit, and realistic rather than extravagant, like many of the poets of the South of France. He was a realist in love; he was not scholastic and metaphysic like Guido Guinecelli and Dante. He even said he would write for his lady simply, and things easily understood. Dante, though he developed the "philosophic" argument as it was not dreamed of by the Provençals, is in his most potent expression a true successor and imitator of Sordello—realistic in expression, ideal in sentiment, direct, vivid, personal. Italian poetry of the thirteenth century, while it derived much from the Provençal, embodied a new element—abstract and difficult for most readers. But Sordello, Italian as he was, did not illustrate nor express the new spirit, though it is claimed he shows a glimmering of it—of the dolce stil nuovo—of Dante and Cavalcante, which was developed after his work was done. Italian poetry of the Vita Nuova, the new life, the new love, was far more mystical than Sordello's, whose wit and charm and passion sought a more direct expression, more vigorous, and at once satiric and fervid. His satire is terse, vital, conclusive. His expression of sentiment has a certain passionate grace which confirms the report that he was the most irresistible troubadour of his time. He even boasts that no one could resist his advances; and, like D'Annunzio to-day, regarded himself in his youth as an "uomo fatale." This part of his story no doubt belongs to his reckless days. He reached a graver mind, a nobler fame.

Canello thought Sordello's lament for Blacas Pindaric in its force and fire. Perticare devoted himself to prove that it was so admired by Dante that he even adopted the primary image or conception of it, an image which seems barbarous and revolting to our taste, in the nineteenth century, and it is startling enough to arrest attention even now. A heart of flame, a heart pierced with seven swords, symbol of the seven sins, visible, represented in its proper form, carved or painted upon the breast of a Madonna, or of an image of Christ, either in Spain, Italy, or France, often shocks our Northern taste in these countries, and we quite forget the bloody and lurid rhetoric of our own hymns—

"There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Emmanuel's veins."

All of which is kindred to the symbolism of fact—the image of a heart to be eaten—which I find in Sordello's famous poem, and also in Dante's Vita Nuova—

                     e d'este core ardendoLei paventosa umilmento pascea.

Sordello by a bold and sudden expression of his imagination recommends that a piece of the great heart of Blacas be given to each of the cowardly princes he names, that they may get courage by feeding upon it. With this strong metaphor he expresses his high sense of his friend's virtues and his scorn for the princes who lacked the courage for which Blacas was renowned. No funeral lament ever served better to express at the same time a sense of the worth of the dead and contempt for the living. The irony of it is unsurpassed. This celebrated poem, of which there have been several translations in Italian, stirred the troubadours of the day. It gave them a new suggestion, a new idea, and they tried to equal it, if not to surpass it, imitating Sordello's "Lament." It has been remarked that up to the time of its appearance the Provençal poets had produced funeral elegies which were "as monotonous as they were cold." Sordello distinguished himself by his originality, and there is something both new and felicitous in the motif and expression of this little piece; it would be difficult to say which is the most poignant, the terms of praise or of satire, that with so much energy and frankness are contrasted with each other. I am but quoting the language of Fauriel, commenting on Sordello's famous verse. I may add that it is plainly the expression of a living and indomitable mind, as remarkable for its proud and derisive spirit as for its freshness. Bertrand d'Allamanon and Peire Bremon both adopted Sordello's idea, one suggesting that Blacas' heart should be given to noble ladies as heavenly food; the other dividing his body between nations as a miracle-working substance.

I should leave the reader with an inadequate idea of Sordello's poetry by referring only to this often cited poem. It is said that there is more originality and talent shown in his satirical than in his love poems; and yet, several of these last are admitted to be both charming and graceful. Very interesting is Sordello's own admission that he affects two styles, one simple and easy to understand, the other a thing of great art. He says: "It gives me pleasure to compose a pleasant song to a gay air. The dearest lady of my choice to whom I give myself, does not enjoy verses written with studied art. Since it does not please her, henceforth I will only write songs easy to sing, pleasant to hear, plain in meaning; songs for her who likes what is artless."

In one of his most bitter serventes he replies to an attack by Peire Bremon, and says he will unmask the idiot who has accused him of imposture. It is in this piece that Sordello resents being called a jongleur—

Ben a gran tort car m'apella joglar
(Vatican codice).

and in a few lines the difference of social condition of a troubadour and a jongleur, is stated. Speaking of himself Sordello says he does not follow others, but others follow him; that he takes nothing which can be made a reproach to him; that he is just and loyal, and lives upon his own revenues. After drawing the portrait of his slanderer, he declares that if he meets the gallant who libels him, he will assuredly give his wife occasion to wear mourning; vows to justify his threats if he catches him, and adds that all the gold of Montpellier will not save him from his blows. Another of his poems turns upon a question of chivalry and love. It is a debate with his friend Bertrand d'Allamanon. Sordello makes himself the exponent of the lover, Bertrand is the advocate of the knight. Sordello says it is a poor business to exchange the lover's delights for blows, and hunger, and cold, and heat. He expresses his aversion to the soldier's ideal. After boasting of his own preference for "the sovereign joys of love," he says, that he goes to the embrace of his lady while his friend Bertrand goes to battle, and if Bertrand has the esteem of the great French lords, he has the sweet kisses of his love, which are worth the finest stroke of lance in all the world. It is obvious that if we take this debate seriously Sordello represents himself as a "lâche Lombard." But doubtless only a man who had given well-known proofs of valour, and whose courage was beyond question would have ventured this kind of pleasantry. Very likely it was his extravagant way of playing a higher compliment to his mistress; for by declaring he holds glory less than her love, he for the moment shows himself the more extravagant in his love; the super-subtle Italian outdoes the Provençal in a contest at the Castle Court, to win the favour of his lady. He seems to have loved a noble lady who gave him by word no encouragement, but whose look bid him to hope. She is that lady of whose tender glance he tells us in one of his poems. He says that since the eyes have no power to deceive he will believe what they tell him. This lady is "full of honour and virtue," the object of his most delicate and passionate homage. The ideal is present in his love poems, and there is also grace and mockery in them; in others we find an exultant and boastful libertinage. In a spirit of Italian bravado he says that the whole world has made war upon him because of his amours, and that he is advised to change his ways; that everybody tells him of his dangers from jealous husbands. He says that they have indeed good cause to be jealous, but that he neither cares for their displeasure or hatred. He says no woman has ever resisted his "sweet solicitations." All this no doubt expresses an average Italian morality of the time, and it is now hardly amusing. He is redeemed by a better mood, one of true devotion and refined taste. His dispute with Bertrand shows his purely Italian spirit, at bottom practical, keen, calculating.

Sordello requests Charles of Anjou not to take him to the Crusades. He says he is in no hurry to go to Paradise; that the sea makes him sick, though it may be good for the health of other men. He recommends it to his old friend Bertrand. All this, with its mixture of license and good sense, and its very modern temper, is but the playfulness of a lively spirit, nor should it be taken so seriously as to discredit his courage and fidelity. And yet it has so far put him in question, that Emeric David refused to accept him as the same Sordello whom Dante admired. Even Fauriel could not reconcile the Sordello of the verse with the Sordello of Dante, and thought Dante must have ignored not only his poetry, but his real character,—using him wilfully as a type of his own patriotism.

Perticare, who is supported by Bartoli, is of the opinion that, on the contrary, Dante was so truly informed of, and filled with sympathy for the historic Sordello, and that he so well understood his mind, that his own famous expression of sorrow over Italy in the Seventh Canto of the Purgatorio, is wholly in the temper of Sordello himself, and that Dante absorbs, as it were, the genius of the Mantuan troubadour. The spirit is Sordello's, but the great monologue is Dante's.

Twice thus, by two poets, Sordello's spirit has been evoked, and his name has been used as the fit and noblest expression, the personal embodiment of their own sentiment of life. What Dante did, Browning has done in his own way, following Dante's example, giving to his thoughts the prestige of Sordello's name.

Like Dante, Sordello's intellect was first awakened by love. The years transformed an earthly passion, and he appears in a graver character. "A ceaseless round of study" led him, like our own Milton, "to the shady places of philosophy"; for it is as a writer of learned treatises that he is first mentioned after Dante. Nostredamus, citing the record of the monk of the island of Lerins, refers to his treatises on the gravest subjects in the library of the convent, and says that love is not the theme of his verse.

Sainte-Pelaye and Crescimbeni—the one in France, the other in Italy—were the first to correct this statement by mentioning that fifteen of his poems are devoted to love. But it was as the writer of the "Thesaurus Thesaurum," of "Summa Juris," and of "Los progres e avansaments dei Res d'Aragon" that he was held in esteem by his immediate successors. His satire on "the Great Barons" in the form of a funeral lament for his own great-hearted friend Blacas, is oftener mentioned and cited than his love poems. But he is the author of a remarkable expression concerning the sweet tyranny of a woman over the life of her lover. He calls her dolza enemia—sweet enemy, an expression which both Petrarch and Bramante have appropriated; and it appears again in the French verse of Du Bellay. Perhaps the most original of Sordello's terms of endearment is when he calls his lady Belh Restaur— beautiful restorer.

We have no data to determine Sordello's precise relations to the later political tragedies of his time. De Lollis thinks that he was at the battle of Benevento. He is but able to cite documents of 1269—after the victory of Charles of Anjou—wherein Sordello is endowed with feudal rights over five castles and adjacent land in the Abruzzi. These documents show that Sordello was honoured and trusted, and, in fact, his grandia grato et accepta servitia is recorded: Sordellus de Godio delectus miles familiaris et fidelis. And, citing the deed, Prof. de Lollis says that the two titles had a real and definite value; for that of miles was conferred only upon one who had been knighted by the king, with the usual ceremony; and the term familiaris implied rights and duties highly honourable at Court.

It was a sixteenth century legend that Sordello was buried at San Pietro, in Mantua—that city set by the Mincio, which there spreads its shining waters into twin lakes. The old town has a bridal look in spring-time, with its blossoming orchards and green meadows. So beautiful and broad a vision of fresh and limpid water gives to the lily city an enchanting aspect, and it could hardly ever have been obliterated from the mind of a poet. It is, perhaps, with a lasting sense of the hold of first impressions, and the dearness of one's native place, that Dante represented Sordello's watchful spirit suddenly surging out of silence at the mention of "Mother City." The brilliant figure of the splendid cavalier of the Marca Treviziana, the unrivalled poet of Provence in Italy, is supplanted by the graver personage of later life, the "good" Sordello with something majestic, something of what Aristotle called magnificence in his nature, alone, yet free to companion the greatest spirits—

                        un animaSola soletta, verso noi riguarda.