[In the following excerpt, Farnell attests to the significance of Sordello, citing the high esteem in which Dante held the poet as well as the energy and vitality of the poet's major works. Of these, the critic contends that "Lament for Lord Blacatz" demonstrates "originality and force."]

The name of Sordel, or Sordello, is a household word among us, and the noble lines in Dante's Purgatorio, with the profound and complex character in Browning's poem, cannot but inspire one with a wish to know something of the Sordello of actual life. Yet, on turning to the scanty records, and to the poems left us of him, we are at first somewhat disconcerted. One of the biographies represents him as a false-hearted traitor, false both to the husband who gave him shelter, and to the wife whom he seduced. Some of his canzones are those of a skilful, but somewhat ironic and cynical rhymer, whose chief merit, as has been remarked, is that of saying agreeably what everyone already knows, and whose chief source of pride is the exceeding number of ladies whom he has won and betrayed. Nor should we greatly esteem his valour if we are to regard as a true expression of his sentiments—a poem, in which he begs his lord, the Count of Provence, to excuse him from accompanying him on the Crusade (of 1248), and confesses his fear of the perils to which the expedition would expose him.

Yet this same Sordello is the noble poet, whom Virgil and Dante find sitting in majestic solitude, and the recognition of whom causes them such joy. That his nobility of soul was a mere conception of Dante's we can in no way suppose, and one is therefore brought to the conclusion, that the sins and follies recorded of him were in after years atoned for, and also that the poems of his preserved to us were only a portion, perhaps the least worthy portion, of the work he accomplished. This latter conclusion is, indeed, borne out by Dante's declaring in his De Vulgari Eloquio, that Sordello was of great eloquence, in poetry as well as in speech.

There are three poems, however, that even without Dante's praise of Sordello, would sufficiently testify to his power. The first, which Dante obviously refers to in the Purgatorio, where he makes Sordello the guide to the Dale of Kings is a 'complaint.' The second is a long didactic poem, the Ensegnamen d'Onor, or Lesson of Honour, a work of considerable interest, some learning, and at times much pithy vigour. It is full of the sentiment of noble pride and reason that inspired Dante in the Convito, and especially in the canzone that treats of true nobility. A third poem is on the death of his friend and rival Blacatz, and its originality and force are in the most striking contrast to the elegant insipidity of some of the canzones, while the splendid audacity of its attack upon the great sovereigns of the age, is without parallel even among the troubadours. Sordello has also left us various very bitter sirventes against individual contemporaries, amongst others, a series of poems against a rival troubadour, who, in his turn, speaks of Sordello as a man who "for his misdeeds had needs flee from Lombardy … a false, wanton jongleur, living on his jongleur tricks." We know Sordello on unimpeachable evidence as the friend and counsellor of Charles of Anjou, as a person of sufficient consequence for the Pope to insist upon his being promptly released from captivity. Of his death by violence tradition speaks; and Dante seems to confirm the report by the position he allots him in Purgatory. The Lady Cunizza (sister of Eccelin da Romano, the Ghibelline tyrant), whom Sordello carried off, is also noticed by Dante, and given a place in the Heaven of Venus (Paradiso, IX. 13).

                          "O anima lombarda,
     Come ti stavi altera e disdegnosa,
     E nel muover degli occhi onesta e tarda!
Ella non ci diceva alcuna cosa;
     Ma lasciavane gir, solo guardando
     A guisa di leon, quando si posa.
Pur Virgilio si trasse a lei pregando
    Che ne mostrasse la miglior salita:
    E quella non rispose al suo dimando;
Ma di nostro paese, e della vita
   Ci chiese. E'l dolce Duca incominciava:
   Mantova. E l'ombra, tutta in sé romita,
Surse vêr lui del luogo ove pria stava,
    Dicendo: O mantovano, io son Sordello
    Della tua terra. E l'un l'altro abbracciava."
Purgatorio, VI. 61-75.

                              (—"O Lombard
 soul,
   How lofty and disdainful thou didst bear
 thee,
   And grand and slow in moving of thine
 eyes,
Nothing whatever did it say to us,
    But let us go our way, eyeing us only
    After the manner of a couchant lion;
Still near to it Virgilius drew, entreating
    That it would point us out the best ascent;
    And it replied not unto his demand,
But of our native land and of our life
    It questioned us; and the sweet guide
  began:
    'Mantua,'—and the shade all in itself
  recluse,
Rose tow'rds him from the place where first it
  was,
   Saying, 'O Mantuan, I am Sordello
   Of thine own land,' and one embraced the
other.")
Longfellow's translation.