It is no carping criticism to say this of Browning’s work in Sordello, because it is the very criticism his after-practice as an artist makes.  He gave up these efforts to force, like Procrustes, language to stretch itself or to cut itself down into forms it could not naturally take; and there is no more difficulty in most of his earlier poems than there is in Paracelsus.  Only a little of the Sordellian agonies remains in them, only that which was natural to Browning’s genius.  The interwoven parentheses remain, the rushes of invention into double and triple illustrations, the multiplication of thought on thought; but for these we may even be grateful.  Opulence and plenitude of this kind are not common; we are not often granted a man who flings imaginations, fancies and thoughts from him as thick and bright as sparks from a grinder’s wheel.  It is not every poet who is unwilling to leave off, who finds himself too full to stop.  “These bountiful wits,” as Lamb said, “always give full measure, pressed down, and running over.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[8] Browning spells this name Ecelin, probably for easier use in verse.

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CHAPTER VII

BROWNING AND SORDELLO

There are certain analogies between Browning as a poet and the Sordello of the poem; between his relation to the world of his time and that of Sordello to his time; and finally, between Browning’s language in this poem and the change in the Italian language which he imputes to the work of Sordello.  This chapter will discuss these analogies, and close with an appreciation of Browning’s position between the classic and romantic schools of poetry.

The analogies of which I write may be denied, but I do not think they can be disproved.  Browning is, no doubt, separate from Sordello in his own mind, but underneath the young poet he is creating, he is continually asking himself the same question which Sordello asks—­What shall I do as an artist?  To what conclusion shall I come with regard to my life as a poet?  It is no small proof of this underlying personal element in the first three books of the poem that at the end of the third book Browning flings himself suddenly out of the mediaeval world and the men he has created, and waking into 1835-40 at Venice, asks himself—­What am I writing, and why?  What is my aim in being a poet?  Is it worth my while to go on with Sordello’s story, and why is it worth the telling?  In fact, he allows us to think that he has been describing in Sordello’s story a transitory phase of his own career.  And then, having done this, he tells how he got out of confusion into clearer light.