3.  The next thing to be said of Sordello is its vivid realisation of certain aspects of mediaeval life.  Behind this image of the curious dreamer lost in abstractions, and vividly contrasted with it, is the fierce activity of mediaeval cities and men in incessant war; each city, each man eager to make his own individuality supreme; and this is painted by Browning at the very moment when the two great parties were formed, and added to personal war the intensifying power of two ideals.  This was a field for imagination in which Browning was sure to revel, like a wild creature of the woods on a summer day.  He had the genius of places, of portraiture, and of sudden flashes of action and passion; and the time of which he wrote supplied him with full matter for these several capacities of genius.

When we read in Sordello of the fierce outbursts of war in the cities of North Italy, we know that Browning saw them with his eyes and shared their fury and delight.  Verona is painted in the first book just as the news arrives that her prince is captive in Ferrara.  It is evening, a still and flaming sunset, and soft sky.  In dreadful contrast to this burning silence of Nature is the wrath and hate which are seething in the market-place.  Group talked with restless group, and not a face

    But wrath made livid, for among them were
    Death’s staunch purveyors, such as have in care
    To feast him.  Fear had long since taken root
    In every breast, and now these crushed its fruit,
    The ripe hate, like a wine; to note the way
    It worked while each grew drunk!  Men grave and grey
    Stood, with shut eyelids, rocking to and fro,
    Letting the silent luxury trickle slow
    About the hollows where a heart should be;
    But the young gulped with a delirious glee
    Some foretaste of their first debauch in blood
    At the fierce news.

Step by step the varying passions, varying with the men of the varied cities of the League assembled at Verona, are smitten out on the anvil of Browning’s imagination.  Better still is the continuation of the same scene in the third book, when the night has come, and the raging of the people, reaching its height, declares war.  Palma and Sordello, who are in the palace looking on the square, lean out to see and hear.  On the black balcony beneath them, in the still air, amid a gush of torch-fire, the grey-haired counsellors harangue the people;

                then
    Sea-like that people surging to and fro
    Shouted, “Hale forth the carroch—­trumpets, ho,
    A flourish!  Run it in the ancient grooves! 
    Back from the bell!  Hammer—­that whom behoves
    May hear the League is up!”