[In the following essay, Dunne contrasts three views of the character of Sordello—as revealed by a Provençal chronicler, by Dante in his Purgatorio, and by Browning in his poem Sordello—proposing that "the real Sordello lives in no one of the three."]

I. THE SORDEL OF THE CHRONICLERS.

Sordel—a soft, uncertain, two syllabled cadence—we find the name on the illuminated pages of the Provença chroniclers; Sordello, stronger for the added vowel, we spell it out through the soft starlight of Dante's middle realm, and Sordello it remains through all the six cantos of Browning's marvelous unscrolling of the incidents in the development of a human soul. It was in the high suntide of the mediæval period that the historic Sordello first came into prominence. When he died it was sundown of the ages of faith. He was contemporary at birth with Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas and Innocent III., and at death with Duns Scotus, Roger Bacon and the founders of the English House of Commons. The jongleurs have told his tale after their fashion, intermingling fact and fancy, presenting first-hand and second-hand information with the impartiality of a delightfully naïve credulity. The sadeyed exile of Florence has taken up the theme and sketched it in his strong, simple way, illuminating the lines of truth and beauty and shrouding in merciful shadows the years of weakness, the hours of cowardice, the moments of shame. And finally Browning comes with his insistent "and you shall hear Sordello's story told," unfolding the development of the soul of the poet, inventing a brilliant episode, startling us by the boldness of an unforeseen conclusion. But the real Sordello lives in no one of the three. The chroniclers were simple and obvious; they failed. Dante was balanced perfectly between crass obviousness and the eerie-suggestiveness of the ultra-esoteric. He did not succeed. Browning wrote for the attentive reader in a style full of elisions and abrupt transitions. But Sordello's story remains untold. The mediæval gossips give us their legends; they are the hearsays of the period. Dante abridges these accounts for us, emphasizing the good and eliminating the evil. This is the idealization of a kindred spirit. Browning generalizes the incidents, so that what was the story of one man becomes the history of all mankind, the key to the tragedy of all idealism and the comedy of all realism.

There are three accounts concerning the birth of Sordello. According to an old Proven, al manuscript in the Vatican he was the son of a poor knight named El Corte. Another version, based upon a line in Rolandino's chronicle, makes him a member of the family of Salinguerra. The third, Aliprando, in his rhyming history of Milan, avers that he was of noble birth, belonging to the house of the Visconti. All three agree that he was born in Goito, near Mantua, at the close of the twelfth century, probably between 1189 and 1194. On the highway between Brescia and Mantua one passes the little village of Goito, "tidy, white and quiet." A heap of ancient ruins, a wall of impressive thickness and a narrow door are all that remain of the famous castle, "the lodge of the Lady Adelaide." There is nothing of romantic charm, no leafy paths nor pebbly brooks nor wild ravines with unexpected heights and depths as described by Browning. Six hundred years ago it was much as it is to-day. Then, as now, swampy flats and shallow marshes stretched away on every side to meet monotonous sweeps of meadow broken at regular intervals by long rows of mulberry bushes. From the early days of sudden onslaught by fierce Gothic hordes to the latest encounters between Austrians and Piedmontese in 1848, Goito's fortunes have been linked with those of its important neighbor, Mantua. But after all the throb and tumult of its stirring history, it boasts but one claim to immortality, one association that insures perpetuation to its name—on its reedy plain was born Sordello, the mysterious, the most celebrated of the early Italian minstrels, one who wrote in the style of the earlier French troubadours and in their Provencal tongue.

It is to Aliprando's rhyming chronicle we must turn if we would find the source of the Sordellan legends recounted by the earlier biographers. Aliprando tells us of the boy Sordel, and how as a youth he astounded the world of letters by a wonderful poem, "Le Trésor;" how when he grew to manhood, arms proved more seductive than letters and challenge after challenge was accepted from overconfident knights; how the King of France, hearing of these deeds of valor, invited the brave bard to cross the Alps—of Sordello's preparations for the journey and how at the last moment he changed his mind at the earnest entreaty of Ezzelino da Romano, who urged him to come to reside with the Romano family at Verona; of his sojourn at Verona, and how when he found that Ezzelino's sister Beatrice was losing her heart to him, he fled to Mantua; how Beatrice followed him disguised as a page; of his marriage with Beatrice; of his visit to France, where his valor, gallantry and poetic talents were greatly admired; of the presents bestowed upon him by the King, three thousand francs and a golden falcon; how he returned to Italy, where he was received with great pomp as the first warrior of his time; how the Mantuans came out to greet him, but he refused to tarry until he reached Verona, where he was reunited with his bride; of his return with her to Mantua, where they were welcomed by eight days of public rejoicing. Then comes the story of Ezzelino's anger because of the marriage and of his attempt to take the city; of Sordello's defense of the walls and of Ezzelino's ignominious defeat. The narrative concludes with an account of the onset of the poet at the head of a band of Milanese against his crafty enemy. For the second time Sordello was the victor, slaying his opponent with his own hands.

The whole narrative is a sorry mixture of blind anachronism and blundering romance. Tiraboschi rejects most of it. And yet this chronicle is the storehouse from which the historical writers of the next century drew their stories of the Goitan troubadour and of the Lady Beatrice, who never existed. Tiraboschi had access to a large number of early manuscripts which he studied faithfully and transcribed with an almost Teutonic accuracy and patience. He says that Sordello was born near Mantua towards the close of the twelfth century; that he went to Provence when a boy; that he eloped with the wife of Count Richard, of Saint Boniface; that he was of noble birth and a famous warrior; that he died a violent death in the middle of the thirteenth century. Rolandino inserts in his version an ambiguous line, upon which Browning founds the relationship of Sordello and Salinguerra. "Cunizza, wife of Richard of Saint Boniface," Rolandino writes, "and sister of Ezzelino da Romano, was stolen from her husband by one Sordello, who was of the same family." Benvenuto d'Imola's note to Canto VI. of the Purgatorio is not without interest. "Sordello was a native of Mantua," Benvenuto tells us, "an illustrious and skillful warrior and an accomplished courtier. This chevalier lived in the time of Ecelin da Romano, whose sister conceived for him a violent affection. Informed of this intrigue, Ecelin disguised himself as a servant and surprised the unfortunate pair. The poet promised on his knees not to repeat the offense. But the cursed Cunizza dragged him anew to perdition. He was naturally grave, virtuous and prudent. To withdraw himself from Ecelin he fled, but was pursued and assassinated."

Modern students of Provençal literature have spared no pains in their quest of the truth underlying this tissue of biographical fact and legendary fancy. The result has been an endless controversy, in which one faction loudly condemns, while the other heaps up superlative praises. De Lollis can see in Sordello only a time-serving adventurer, Guelph or Ghibelline as occasion demanded, a mediocre poet, a faithless lover and a betrayer of the confidence of his friend and patron, Richard of Saint Boniface. Torraca can see only the most celebrated of the Provençals, a poet of unusual vigor and fecundity, a noble patriot, a dauntless warrior. This diversity of opinion, based upon divergent historical accounts, has led to the theory that there were two Sordellos, contemporaries—the one a poet, student and philosopher; the other a vagabond soldier, a tramp—jongleur, a tavern-brawler, the hero of the many graceless episodes that have been erroneously associated with the name of the great Lombardy troubadour. Through the painstaking researches of Gitterman several documents have been brought to light that seem to point to the existence not only of two, but of three Sordellos, all living in Northern Italy in the early decades of the thirteenth century. To the third Sordello Gitterman attributes the adventure with Cunizza. There is much to be said in favor of the triumvirate. But it would seem that since all three are connected in the Provençal accounts with Ezzelino, and since all three are synchronal and synspatial, it is possible that they were also identical in personality. The high praise of Dante and the gossip of the Provençal tale-bearers, in all likelihood, refer to the same man. Perhaps Sordello, like his successor, Dante, found himself with life half spent, "all in a gloomy wood astray, gone from the path direct." Perhaps his youth was desecrated by leaps of overvaulting ambition, an inordinate love of self-aggrandizement and lawless pleasure-guests. But if he came at last to see the error of his ways; if in the end he followed the Light and abjured Darkness; if his later years were consecrated to truth-seeking and beauty-loving and the doing of good, we must judge him by his final choice, not by his early errors. It is the Master's way to be merciful. Our age, however, is too apt to speak of repentant sinners as if their sinning and repenting were something to their credit. The true penitent never sees sin in that light. By every deliberate choice of evil something is forever lost—lost for eternity. The Master pardoned Peter, but John was the disciple that He loved.

Besides, we must not forget that De Lollis and his school of critics find plenty of evidence to support their censures. Early in his twenties Sordello appears as a disturber of the peace in a tavern at Florence. A fight ensues and a wine flask is broken over the poet's head. Then there is the story of his cowardly refusal to accompany Saint Louis on a crusade because of his fear of rough waters. His apologists insist that this refusal was a mere pleasantry, one that would never have been indulged in except by a man whose reputation for bravery was too well established to be in any danger of question or suspicion. From all accounts he was a great traveler. He left Italy in 1229 and made a tour of the south of France, visiting the courts of Provence, Toulouse, Rousillon, Castile, Leon and Portugal. About ten years later we find him at the castle of the Countess Beatrice, daughter of Raymond Berenger, Count of Provence, and wife of Charles I. of Anjou. Charles took the wandering minstrel under his protection, and time and again proved himself a friend in need. The poet repaid him by complaints and ingratitude. "How can a man be cheerful," Sordello asks, "when he is poor, sick all the time and unfortunate in lord, love and lady?" To which Charles replied: "I have always cherished and honored him. I have given him substantial property and a wife of his own choosing. But he is a fool and a nuisance and would not be grateful if one gave him a county." For all this, some years later we find Charles bestowing five castles in the Abruzzi upon "his intimate and faithful friend Sordello," as a reward for services rendered in an expedition against Manfred. During this expedition the poet was taken prisoner at Novara by the Ghibellines. At first Charles received the news with indifference. But Pope Clement IV. interceded in behalf of the troubadour, asking that he be ransomed and recompensed for his sufferings. Charles' indifference was at once transformed into active interest, and the gift of the Abruzzi castles followed. And so Sordello returned to continue his programme of finding friends and losing them, of falling in love and promptly falling out again. Love, except of self, and friendship, except with a view to some personal advantage, he could not understand. And yet he wrote much of love and friendship. Such baseless vaporings coarsen the soul; they even leave an impression upon the body. And, in fact, our poet was not imposing in presence. His well-cut lips smiled too easily; his bold black eyes suggested recklessness and daring rather than courage. Such lips might say harsh words upon slight provocation; such eyes could never brighten save in selfish cunning or through some sordid joy or gain. For him duty consisted in getting what he wanted. In one of his poems he tells us:

And whoso lacks the thing his heart desires
Is worse than dead. He lives in woe and need.

In another he advocates the dual service of God and Mammon:

Whoe'er considers life with care
Will always find, so I declare,
One thing enjoined by wisdom's rod,
To please at once the world and God.

Shortly after Sordello received his castle-grant he disappeared. From the fact that Dante places him among those who died before they could repent, it is conjectured that he met a violent end. It ma be that he fell at the hand of Ezzelino, as Benvenuto d'Imola testifies. Ezzelino is held responsible for so many crimes that one more laid at his door can hardly make much difference. Villani says that "Ezzelino was the cruelest and most redoubtable tyrant that ever existed among Christians." And Symonds in "The Renaissance in Italy" portrays him thus: "Ezzelino, a small, pale, wiry man, with terror in his face and enthusiasm for evil in his heart, lived a foe to luxury, cold to the pathos of children, dead to every higher emotion. His one passion was the love of power. When he captured Friola he deprived all the citizens of their eyes, noses and legs, and then ordered the unfortunates to be exposed to the mercy of the elements. He expired in agony, wrenching from his wounds the dressings placed there by his enemies to keep him from dying." According to a sixteenth century legend, Sordello lies at San Pietro, in Mantua, near his beloved Mincio. Virgil celebrates "Mincius crowned with sea-green reeds;" Milton sings of "smooth-sliding Mincius circled with vocal reeds." There our poet sleeps. He is done with the mad rivalries and bitter animosities of the Italy of the thirteenth century; with the perpetual struggle between Pope and Emperor and the ever-recurring battles between commune and nobles. And yet these centuries were in no sense dark. Through all the clamor and confusion two ideals were growing steadily clearer and brighter—one was the chivalric ideal of love with all that it enjoins of sympathy with the weak and suffering and reverence for womanhood; the other was the glorification of utter selflessness by the triple vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. The knights and their various allied orders were the propagators of the first; the gentle saint of Assisi and his brothers were the champions of the second. Sordello in his youth had chosen, not the monk's, but the knight's part.

II. THE SORDELLO OF DANTE.

Three of the principal characters in the Sordellan cycle appear in the Divine Comedy—Sordello himself, Cunizza and Ezzolino. Ezzolino is confined with the violent in the Seventh Circle of the Inferno. There, guarded by the Minotaur, runs a river of blood, wherein are tormented such as have committed acts of violence against their neighbors. Some are immersed to their eyebrows, others to their throats, according to the degree of their guilt. From the crimson flood loud shrieks arise as the unhappy sufferers forever renew their futile attempts to escape. The banks are patrolled by Centaurs armed with keen arrows. One of these monsters explains:

These are the souls of tyrants who were given
To dealing woe and death. They wail aloud
Their merciless wrongs. Here Alexander dwells,
And Dionysius fell, who many a year
Of woe wrought for fair Sicily. That brow
Whereon the hair so jetty clustering hangs
Is Ezzolino; that with flaxen locks,
Obizzo of Este, in the world destroyed
By his foul stepson.

Cunizza circles in the Third Heaven of the Paradiso in the planet Venus. She describes to Dante the site of Romano, where she and her brother Ezzolino were born. She comments upon the fair fame won by the troubadour Folco, and regrets that no such fame is now sought by her countrymen of Venetia. Then, seeming no longer to heed Dante, she resumes her place on the wheel of light and continues her dance in the heavenly cosmos. Cunizza, like Sordello, must have found "the path direct" in her later years. Although placed in Paradise by the sternest of moralizers and the most uncompromising of all lovers of justice, she has not escaped veiled censures and even open reproach. The commentators heap up footnotes. They remind us that while William of Lucerne was declaring Cunizza beyond all other women in worth and beauty and threatening those who made war upon her reputation with a sword which would surely cut before it bent, Ugo de Saint Cyr was replying with a smile that an infinite number of wounds would not suffice to vindicate the honor of the Lady of Romano; that all the doctors in Salterno could not medicine her good name. Dante's exaltation of her has led to endless controversy and speculation. It may be that the Florentine's fervid Ghibelline faith scorned the slanderous stories circulated by Guelph chroniclers concerning the daughter of a champion of the Emperor. Or he may have been influenced by the so-called "document of emancipation" executed in 1265. This was a deed of manumission granting freedom to all the slaves and bondsmen of the house of Romano. It was signed by Cunizza in her extreme old age. Transfigured by her sorrow and delivered from the tumult of her youthful emotions, her declining years seem to have been serenely calm and even solemn. If in those later days she ever met Sordello, we have no record of the meeting. And yet their mutual tenderness and the bond of a common repentance may have brought them together for a brief moment at the end, perhaps to ask forgiveness and to say a last farewell. For years the aged penitent dwelt with the Cavalcanti, the family of Guido Cavalcanti, the poet-friend of Dante. There Dante must have known her in his childhood days. There he must have heard the whole sad story of her life. And after her death he must have heard of the penitential spirit of her closing years, of her edifying death and of the grateful prayers of the emancipated dependents who never wearied of rehearsing the virtues of the good Cunizza, the last Lady of Romano.

Sordello is consigned to the purifying flames of the Purgatorio. There, at the foot of the mount, in company with those who have come to sudden and untimely ends, he meets Dante and Virgil. The spirits press about the living poet and his guide, chanting:

We all by violence died, and to our latest
Were sinners, but then warmed by light from
 heaven;
So that, repenting and forgiving, we
Did issue out of life at peace with God,
Who with desire to see Him fills our hearts.

After some converse with Giacopo del Cassero, a Ghibelline of note; Buonconte da Montefeltro, Dante's comrade-in-arms at the battle of Campaldino, and Pia, a lady of Sienna, who was murdered in secret by her husband, the two poets observe a solitary spirit that has not joined in the general press, standing apart from the crowd. Virgil speaks:

But lo! a spirit there
Stands solitary, and toward us looks:
It will instruct us in the speediest way.

Dante continues:

We soon approach'd it. Oh, thou Lombard spirit!
How didst thou stand in high abstracted mood,
Scarce moving with slow dignity thine eyes!
It spoke not aught, but let us onward pass,
Eyeing us as a lion on his watch.
But Virgil with entreaty mild advanced,
Requesting it to show the best ascent;
It answer to his question none returned,
But of our country and our kind of life
Demanded. When my courteous guide began,
"Mantua," the shadow in itself absorb'd,
Rose towards us from the place in which it
 stood
And cried: "Mantuan, I am thy countryman,
Sordello." Each the other then embraced.

At the first mention of his native city Sordello is aroused. He becomes all alertness and attention. So it should be, Dante muses bitterly. Italy is worthy of such love, but her sons are recreant. He opens his heart in a long wail of mingled pity and scorn:

Ah, slavish Italy! Thou inn of grief!
Vessel without a pilot in loud storm!
Lady no longer of fair provinces,
But weedy wastes o'ergrown. This gentle spirit
Even from the pleasant sound of his dear land
Was prompt to greet a fellow-citizen
With such glad cheer: while now thy living ones
In thee abide not without war; and one
Malicious gnaws another, ay, of those
Whom the same wall and the same moat
  contains.
Seek, wretched one, around thy sea-coast wide;
Then homeward to thy bosom turn and mark,
If any part of thee sweet peace enjoy.

Then follows a scathing arraignment of the factions in the various cities of Italy and of the callousness of the rulers who leave them to their fate. Florence is at first sarcastically omitted from the censorship; but the sarcasm soon dies away in a groan of despair when he recalls the depths to which the fair city by the Arno has fallen:

My Florence.…
How many times within my memory
Customs and laws and coins and offices
Have been by thee renewed and people changed.
If thou remember'st well and canst see clear,
Thou wilt perceive thyself like a sick wretch,
Who finds no rest upon her down, but oft
Shifting her side, short respite seeks from pain.

Sordello was overjoyed when he found that this shade from the dim corridors of the under-world was a Mantuan; but when, upon further questioning, he found that his guest was none other than Master Virgil, he fell upon his knees in loving reverence, exclaiming:

Glory of Latium,
In whom our tongue its utmost power displayed;
Boast of my honored birthplace! What desert
Of mine, what favor rather, undeserved,
Shows thee to me? If I to hear that voice
Am worthy, say if from below thou comest,
And from what cloister's pale?

Virgil replies that he belongs in that part of the Inferno where "mourning's voice sounds not of anguish sharp, but breathes in sighs;" where souls abide who "the three holy virtues put not on, but understood the rest and without blame followed them all." Then he asks to be directed up the mountain-side. Sordello answers:

Thou beholdest now how day declines;
And upward to proceed by night, our power
Excels. Therefore, it may be well to choose
A place of pleasant sojourn. To the right
Some spirits sit apart retired. If thou
Consentest, I to these will lead thy steps,
And thou wilt know them, not without delight.

In accordance with this plan the three poets ascend an eminence whence they behold a pleasant recess in the form of a flowery vale. Within the enclosure on the grass are the spirits of dead Kings and rulers chanting the Salve Regina. Sordello names and describes them as he points them out: The Emperor Rudolph, "who might have healed the wounds whereof fair Italy died;" Ottocar of Bohemia, "with kindly visage;" Philip III. of France, "that one with nose deprest;" Henry of Navarre, "him of gentle look, who flying expired, withering the lily's flower;" Charles I. of Anjou, "him of feature prominent;" Henry III., "the King of simple life and plain, Harry of England," and last, but not least, William, Marquis of Montferrat, "who sits lowest, yet his gaze directs aloft." The night descends, and with it two green-robed angels with emerald wings. "From Mary's bosom both are come," explains Sordello, "as a guard for the vale against him who hither tends, the Serpent." The poets enter the valley and Dante is speaking with Nino, the judge of Gallura, when the Serpent glides noiselessly in between the grass and flowers. But the "celestial falcons," the verdant-vested sentinels, swoop down and the ancient enemy of the human race disappears from view. The night advances; the eastern cliffs begin to glow. Dante, still burdened by his earthly frame, is forced to rest. He sinks upon the ground overcome by sleep. And while he sleeps Lucia comes and carries him up the mountain-side, where, awaking two hours later, he finds himself with Virgil at the gate of Purgatory. Sordello and the spirits of the vale of flowers have been left behind.

It is the general opinion of critics and commentators that this entire episode, with its famous Italian Jeremiad, was suggested to Dante by the Goitan bard's "Lament for Blacas." This elegy, written upon the death of Blacas, a Spanish troubadour of extra-ordinary personal courage, urges the craven-hearted rulers of the age to eat of the great heart of the dead Blacas, in the hope that they, too, may become brave and generous and honor-loving. "Why," asks Tommaseo in his "Nuovi Studi du Dante," "does Dante place Sordello as a guide through the flowery valley where Kings and rulers are found? Because in this place he meant to call together to himself as judge many of the most powerful princes of Italy and of Europe, and Sordello in a Provençal song did similar work and judged with lofty severity many great princes of his time."

The "Lament" is noteworthy and in the original may well have made a deep impression on Dante. The first stanza eulogizes the brave troubadour:

I fain would mourn Blacas—let all the world
  attend!
For sorrow, grief and pain my bosom justly
  rend;
In him am I despoiled of master and of friend,
And every noble trait hath met in him its end.
So mortal is the blow, such fatal ills impend,
We can but vainly hope the generous loss to
  mend,
Unless his heart we take and through the nations
  send
That cowardly lords may eat, for that will
  courage lend.

The succeeding stanzas arraign the Roman Emperor, Frederick II., against whom Milan had rebelled; Louis IX. of France, who, influenced by his mother, allowed his right to the throne of Castile to lapse; the English King, Henry III., who had lost territory to the French, and the Spanish King, Ferdinand III. of Castile, for allowing his mother to interfere in affairs of state. They are all invited to partake of the heart of the brave Blacas. No funeral dirge ever served better to express at the same time deep love and reverence for the dead and supreme contempt for the living. The irony is unsurpassed:

The first of all to eat, since greatest is his need,
Shall be the Roman Emperor, if he would
  succeed
Against the Milanese, who count themselves
  freed;
For he, despite his Germans, hath the worst
  indeed.
The witless King of France shall next upon it
  feed,
And then regain Castile, lost ere he gave it heed;
But he will never taste it if his mother plead,
For he would grieve her not—he well deserves
  his meed.

Then let the King of England, timid as a hart,
Eat bountifully thereof, and quickly will he start
To win back the lands which France with lance
  and dart—
Because she knows him well—hath taken for her
  part.
But let the Spanish King eat doubly of the heart,
Too weak for one good realm, while two are on
  his chart;
But should he wish to eat it, let him go apart,
For should his mother know, her stick would
  make him start.

Dante tells us in his De Volgari Eloquia that Sordello excelled in all kinds of composition and that he helped to form the Tuscan tongue by some happy attempts which he made in the dialects of Cremona, Brescia and Verona. Dante also speaks of a "Goito Mantuan" who was the author of many good songs and who left in every stanza an unmatched line which he called "the key." This singer, according to Tiraboschi, was our Lombardy minstrel. None of the Italian poems has come down to us; the Goito Lay, whatever may have been its theme or merit, is lost forever. Gone, too, are his "History of the House of Aragon" and his "Defense of Walled Towns." His extant poems, thirty-four in number, have been collected by Sainte-Pelaye, Fauriel, Raynouard, Diez, Mahn and de Lollis. They are all in Provençal and for the most part gallant songs. They are remarkable, Gismondi tells us, for "the harmony and sensibility of their verses" and for "the purity and delicacy of their sentiments."

But the poet-patriot of Dante is not the restless traveler and polished courtesan of the early biographers, nor the gay chanter in novel metre and faultless phrase of loves that wax and wane, as portrayed by some of the later critics, nor yet the severe ruler and judge, who, repenting of his youthful follies, has lost all that is human and engaging, degenerating into a mere bundle of sententiousness and self-complacency, as others would have us believe. The Sordello of Dante is an exalted nature, a man of his age, and yet a true contemplative with a turn for speculation and an ironical contempt for mere worldliness and its concomitants. Dante calls him "the good Sordello" and "the courteous Sordello." He must have left a noble record—a record lost in part to us—thus to have impressed so penetrating a student of human nature, so impartial a lover of righteousness. Like a recluse, we discern the shadowy form of the famous Goitan, moving majestically among the spirits of the mighty ones of former days. He is with them, but not of them.

But lo! a spirit there
Stands solitary, and towards us looks.

III. THE POET-PHILOSOPHER OF BROWNING.

The Sordello of Browning is a poet, a troubadour, with a poet's sensitiveness to beauty and a troubadour's faith in the springtime of things, in fresh green leaves and the aspirations of youth and the love that lasts forever and forever. But he is more than a lover of the beautiful. "The poet, when he leans on truth, is a philosopher," Plato tells us. If not in the beginning, at least in the end, the Sordello of Browning loves truth as passionately as he loves beauty. And so we have Sordello, the poet-philosopher, as the hero of a poem which is a study of the proper service of the poet. Browning ascribes to the mediæval minstrel the thoughts, emotions and ideals of a Dante, makes him a modern who chooses unhesitatingly the side of the people, transforms Cunizza into Palma as the romantic factor in the story, and concludes with the dramatic incident in which Palma reveals the fact that Sordello is, in reality, Salinguerra's son. Of course, we know that the Lombardy minstrel was intensely Ghibelline in his sympathies, and therefore a partisan of the Emperor as against the people's party, which was championed by the Pope; we know that he loved Cunizza and not Palma, her elder sister, and we know that there is no historical basis for Palma's revelation, unless the ambiguous line in Rolandino's Chronicle can be conformed to some such supposition. Browning's version is founded upon the ancient Provençal record of Sordello's youth in the north of Italy; but in the long years of his tempestuous life our troubadour traveled over the greater part of Southern Europe. His youth in Northern Italy was not the third part of his life. He was over eighty when Charles of Anjou, King of Naples, gave him five castles in the Abruzzi. After that he disappeared—died, I suppose, as we all do in the end.

Browning intentionally ignores the mere facts. "The historical decoration," he writes, "was purposely of no more importance than a background requires; my stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul. Little else is worth study." And so he attempts to body forth for us the soul of Sordello—the soul of a poet who would feign be a philosopher, too. Now there is an ancient feud between poetry and philosophy. Plato tells us so in the Republic when he decides that the verse-makers are to be forever banished from his ideal state. "For if we allow the honeyed muse to enter either in epic or lyric strains, not law and the reason of mankind, which by common consent have ever been deemed best, but pleasure and pain will be the rulers in our state," he explains. And truly the feud is an ancient one; there is none older. Feeling and thought have ever been at outs in the soul of man; there has never been a truce in the perpetual warfare waged between heart and head. And compromises are unendurable; we demand complete surrender from one side or the other and absolute perfection in the final adjustment. Browning is not so exacting. Perhaps, he argues, perfection is for eternity and approximations to perfection for time; perhaps ideal standards are not adapted to measuring the half-flights of our earth-life. But, he continues, if we must choose between the heart and the head, let it be the heart.

  Forget
Vain ordinances. I have one appeal—
I feel, am what I feel, know what I feel:
So much is truth to me.

This is a sort of pragmatic emotionalism which accepts our feelings as deeper and truer than our thoughts. A profounder analysis reveals the synthesis of thought and feeling in action, the unity of truth and beauty in goodness. There is no conflict, no need of choosing between the two.

"Who will may hear Sordello's story told," the poet assures us at the opening of the poem; "who would has heard Sordello's story told" are his concluding words, the last line of the last book. The first two books describe Sordello's failure as a poet; the last four tell how near he came to failing as a man. And the story is easy to follow if one is familiar with the history of the period. The opening scene is set in Verona. The curtain rises with Palma, Sordello, Ezzelino, Salinguerra and all the various adherents of Pope and Emperor upon the stage. Guelphs and Ghibellines are locked in a death-struggle. But this is just a device to arouse interest and to focus attention upon the principal characters. The poet soon decides that it is best after all to begin at the beginning. The scene shifts from Verona to Goito. Sordello is a boy upon the hillsides there. The seasons come and go in a mist of white or green or russet. The child lives in a dream-world, because the real one is as yet inaccessible. But he is a poet and gives his heart unreservedly to all that is fair and lovely and of good report. And at first he is wholly absorbed in the exquisite beauty of the material universe—the simmering quiet of long summer afternoons sacred to the noiseless flight of azure damsel-flies or broken by the swift onset of palpitating lightning flashes alternating with rumbling thunder-rolls; the cold white calm of wintry nights with snow-shrouded forests gleaming under the moon's ensilvering pall. But externals cannot satisfy his soul for long. His sympathies widen. He becomes interested in man and man's work in the world; he comes to understand something of the beauty of the human soul, of the sweetness of its love and friendship, the austere heights of its sacrifices and renunciations, its capacity for illimitable happiness and immeasurable pain. He weaves all these experiences into his songs and sings because he cannot help singing. The love of nature leads him to the love of man. Perhaps his love for mankind will lead him to a love higher still. If he seeks unweariedly, he will find at last; if he knocks unceasingly, the golden door will be opened unto him. Browning outlines the process for us in advance:

Fresh births of beauty wake
Fresh homage; every grade of love is past,
With every mode of loveliness. Then cast
Inferior idols off their borrowed crown
Before a coming glory. Up and down
Runs arrowy fire, while earthly forms combine
To throb the secret forth, a touch divine—
And the scaled eyeball owns the mystic rod;
Visibly through his garden walketh GOD.

First nature, then man, and finally God: these are the successive objects of Sordello's love as his awakening soul grows out of the dream-life of his childhood into the verities of manhood. His love of nature is deep and genuine. There are the oaks and scarlet maples and ladybirches to shelter him from the hot sun; there are the shining depths of the Nuncio and its sandy banks overrun with slimy water-life; there are rings of vineyards circling the southern hillsides and pleasant pasture lands on the northern slopes; there are the wild creatures that creep timidly up out of the swampy defiles and morasses Mantuawards, and the tams, domestic ones that live about the lodge. And in the midst of all this natural beauty, shut in amongst the mountains, stands the castle of the Lady Adelaide. Without, it is a stately pile; within, it is a "maze of corridors contrived for sin," a labyrinth of dusk winding-stairs leading to inner chambers, and dim galleries girdling forbidden passageways. This is Sordello's home— all the home he has ever known. For his parents are dead, so they tell him, and the Lady Adelaide has been good enough to take him as her page. He is left quite to himself; he has no playmates. Sometimes he sits for hours in the evening in the maple-paneled room with the slim palm pillars; sometimes he visits the cumbrous font in the central vault and wonders at the patience of the Caryatides that stand, year after year, shoulder to shoulder, at the fountain's edge. Sometimes the statues seem to smile at him, or their look of weariness lessens as he assures them of his sympathy.

                                Calmly, then
About this secret lodge of Adelaide's
Glided his youth away; beyond the glades
Of the fir-forest border, and the rim
Of the low range of mountains, was for him
No other world: but this appeared his own
To wander through at pleasure and alone.

Thus he lives and dreams and plans a wondrous future. He will be satisfied with nothing short of perfection; he will be a poet. And Palma of the golden hair, the fair daughter of Agnes Ese and Ecelin. Palma will be his bride. The gossips about the castle say that she is betrothed to Count Richard of Saint Boniface; but there are also rumors to the effect that she has rejected his suit. As an adventurous spider that spins its web and flings it out from barbican to battlement, so our young architect of fate erects his visionary dome in the first white glory of the morning and sees it gleaming with rainbow-edged raindrops in the gold and purple majesty of the advancing day. And yet there is danger ahead. The world brushes cobwebs and dream-webs impatiently aside. But there can be no turning back now; nature can never again be all sufficient. He longs for real life in a real world of real men and women.

His opportunity comes sooner than he expects. A troubadour, Eglamor by name, a protegé of Count Richard, is to sing at a court of love. These courts are supposed to have been assemblies of ladies that met to hear the cases of recreant lovers. Chaucer refers to these courts, but they are never mentioned in the tensos of the troubadours. Raynouard, however, the compiler of the great collection of Proven, al poetry, maintains that these courts actually existed and that their decisions were held as binding as those of any other court. The day comes and Sordello is present. Eglamor, smiling in conscious power, sings, to the accompaniment of his jongleur, Naddo, his song to the Lady Elys—el lys, the lily. The crowd applauds. But Sordello is disappointed. He steps forward on the impulse of the moment and takes up the same theme:

The true lay with the true end,
Taking the other's names and time and place
For his. On flew the song, a giddy race,
After the flying story; word made leap
Out word, rhyme, rhyme; the lay could barely
  keep
Pace with the action visibly rushing past.

The people fall back aghast. Then the air is rent with shouts of approval. And Palma is there. She has heard the song and has noted the matchless lines, the immortal part of the impromptu Goito lay:

  Take Elys there,Her head that's sharp and perfect like a pear,So close and smooth are laid the few fine locks,Colored like honey, oozed from topmost rocks,Sun-blanched the livelong summer.

Sordello grows faint when he sees her. She unbinds a scarf from her neck and decorates him with it as a token of her favor. It is too much. He stammers something, anything, and the jongleurs bear him away. Eglamor accepts his defeat with touching gentleness—Eglamor, who had loved art better than life, who had not understood that to be a man is greater than to be a poet. He places his crown beneath that of his successful rival and lies down to die. Sordello recovers in time to go out to meet the funeral procession. They lay the vanquished minstrel to rest under a canopy of primeval pines in a covert of tender ferns and wild-wood flowers, while his successor speaks words of eulogy and prays that his fame may be everlasting. And the prayer is not fruitless. A tiny white flower is named for the dead bard. On its frail petals his name will be borne to succeeding generations.

A plant they have, yielding a three-leaved bell,
Which whitens at the heart ere noon, and ails
Till evening; evening gives it to her gales
To clear away with such forgotten things
As are an eyesore to the morn: this brings
Him to their mind and bears his name.
So much for Eglamor.

And so Sordello comes into his own. He is accepted of men, even of Palma. And at first he strives earnestly to perfect his work, for he is too true an artist not to be aware of his limitations. He is forever melting, welding, hammering out words in the hope of fashioning an armor worthy of his thoughts. He succeeds a little, but fails more, partly because of the distractions growing out of the plaudits of the mob. He begins to lose faith in art and to weary of a life devoted to pleasuring the populace. And so when Naddo comes requesting that he sing at a festival to be held in honor of Tanrello Salinguerra, he refuses flatly. He steals away to Goito to the home of his boyhood, and leaves the world to sing and feast and celebrate as best it can without him. He realizes that he has failed as a poet, or rather that poetry has failed in proving itself inadequate as an embodiment of the emotions and aspirations of life. His sojourn at Goito is in the nature of a spiritual retreat. The day of trial is coming. He will need all the strength he can gather from the sacred silence of the woody solitudes. A year passes and then a message from Palma. Eccelin's two sons have taken Guelph brides, Palma is once more betrothed to Saint Boniface. Palma desires that Sordello shall compose the marriage hymn. To Naddo's surprise Sordello consents to depart at once for Verona.

And now comes the rest. Palma and Sordello are alone together in a room of the palace at Verona. All is confusion and excitement outside. The promised peace that was to crown the Guelph-Ghibelline alliances seems farther off than ever. It is time some strong hand seize the reins.

Palma looks to Sordello. He can control the situation if he will only stand with the Ghibellines—make the Kaiser's cause his own. She speaks deliberately and with feeling. She tells him how she has loved him ever since the day when she first saw him; how she has planned for him, and how, at last, the time has come when her dreams may be realized. Sordello listens in silence. He is a man of thought rather than a man of action. He sets out for Ferrara, where the strife is at its height, to make a calm study of the merits of the two parties, so that he may choose his side in the contest. But the rival claims are bewildering; good and bad are mingled in both camps. Guelph or Ghibelline matters not, he concludes after much meditating. Man's welfare depends on neither. A new Rome, free from the bitterness of party strife, a great free commonwealth with justice and righteousness as its watchwords—this is his dream. But before sunset his dream dissolves. He sees that the race progresses slowly; that out of the good and evil of to-day are evolved the perfection of to-morrow. He sees that the Guelphs, led by the Pope, represent the popular cause—the people's party. Therefore, he decides to stand with the Guelphs, to persuade Salinguerra to stand with them. He goes to him and makes his plea in the presence of Palma. Salinguerra in turn tries to convert Sordello to the Ghibelline side, and ends by solemnly investing the poet with his own badge—the symbol of supreme leadership among the followers of the Emperor. All three are aware of the significance of the act. If Sordello will he may be chief of the more powerful of the two parties, and with Palma as his bride, rule all Northern Italy. But the price is oppression of the people, the sacrifice of his most sacred convictions. How often our modern statesmen have been tested by a similar temptation and have weakly chosen the badge of Cæsar and trampled in the dust the banner of the Cross. The moment is a dramatic one, and a dramatic revelation crowns it. Palma has long known certain facts concerning the birth and parentage of Sordello, facts concealed by the dead Adelaide for reasons of her own. Sordello is Salinguerra's son, who did not perish in the fire at Vicenza, as had always been supposed. Surely now he will accept his mission, will stand with his father, with the Emperor. Sordello is aroused at last; Salinguerra is overcome. The girl leads the old warrior from the room. Sordello remains with the Emperor's badge upon his breast torn between conflicting emotions.

It is evening, and the moon is rising over the city. The badge gleams in the white light, burns into his very soul. He cannot think clearly; his head is hot. Palma had said something about his need of a determining outside influence to give coherence to his life, "some moon to control his spiritual sea-depths."

But years and years the sky above
Held none, and so, untasked of any love,
His sensitiveness ideal, now amort,
Alive now, and to sullenness or sport
Given wholly up, disposed itself anew
At every passing instigation, grew
And dwindled at caprice, in foam-showers spilt,
Wedge-like insisting, quivered now a gilt

Shield in the sunshine, now a blinding race
Of whitest ripples o'er the reef; found place
For much display, not gathered up and hurled
Right from the heart, encompassing the world.

Others with half his strength accomplish more, just because of the concrete definiteness of their working ideals. They are swayed by one, not many motives. He is strong and yet he needs external strength. Long ago he had discovered that he could not find that strength in nature; now he sees that he cannot find it in man. Even Palma's love is insufficient, for Palma's plans are for this world, and "there is a life beyond life." There is need of a power "utterly incomprehensible" and "out of all rivalry," a being at once human and divine, one who can love infinitely and be satisfied with a finite love in return. But this infinite being is none other than the Christ of the Christian Revelation. And those who would follow Him must love the Cross and wear the thorn-crown. The struggle is to the death, but Sordello is equal to it. He tears the badge from his breast and tramples it underfoot. Thus is his spiritual triumph complete. He has not failed as a man. But the physical strain is greater than he can bear. When Palma and Salinguerra return to receive his answer to their proposal, they find him dead. Palma kneels down to kiss his cold lips, and for a moment his heart beats audibly. But it is only for a moment. He is dead. Taurello and the Emperor must seek some other representative. Guelphs and Ghibellines must work out their salvation unaided by the dream-builder of a new Rome. As for the poet, his songs, as well as his life, are soon forgotten, all except the matchless description in the inspired Goito lay:

So, on a heathy brown and nameless hill
By sparkling Asolo, in mist and chill,
Morning just up, higher and higher runs
A child barefoot and rosy.…
Up and up goes he, singing all the while
Some unintelligible words to beat
The lark, God's poet, swooning at his feet,
So worsted is he at "the few fine locks,
Stained like pale honey, oozed from topmost
  rocks,
Sun-blanched the livelong summer"—all that's
  left
Of the Goito lay.

It is morning; the child sings and Sordello sleeps.