but producing a wonderful activity of life, out of which, by command as it were of the gods, a new-created world might rise into order.  It was as if chaos were stirred, like a cauldron with a stick, that suns and planets, moving by living law, might emerge in beauty.  Sordello lived in the first whirling of these undigested elements, and could only dream of what might be; but it was life in which he moved, disorderly life, it is true, but not the dread disorder of decay.  Browning paints it with delight.

This unbridled curiosity working in men of unbridled individuality produced a tumbling confusion in life.  Men, full of eagerness, each determined to fulfil his own will, tried every kind of life, attempted every kind of pursuit, strove to experience all the passions, indulged their passing impulses to the full, and when they were wearied of any experiment in living passed on to the next, not with weariness but with fresh excitement.  Cities, small republics, did the same collectively—­Ferrara, Padua, Verona, Mantua, Milan, Parma, Florence, Pisa, Siena, Perugia.  Both cities and citizens lived in a nervous storm, and at every impulse passed into furious activity.  In five minutes a whole town was up in the market-place, the bells rang, the town banner was displayed, and in an hour the citizens were marching out of the gates to attack the neighbouring city.  A single gibe in the streets, or at the church door, interchanged between one noble and another of opposite factions, and the gutters of the streets ran red with the blood of a hundred men.  This then was the time of Sordello, and splendidly has Browning represented it.

2.  Sordello is the image of this curiosity and individuality, but only inwardly.  In the midst of this turbulent society Browning creates him with the temperament of a poet, living in a solitary youth, apart from arms and the wild movement of the world.  His soul is full of the curiosity of the time.  The inquisition of his whole life is, “What is the life most worth living?  How shall I attain it, in what way make it mine?” and then, “What sort of lives are lived by other men?” and, finally, “What is the happiest life for the whole?” The curiosity does not drive him, like the rest of the world, into action in the world.  It expands only in thought and dreaming.  But however he may dream, however wrapt in self he may be, his curiosity about these matters never lessens for a moment.  Even in death it is his ruling passion.

Along with this he shares fully in the impassioned individuality of the time.  Browning brings that forward continually.  All the dreams of his youth centre in himself; Nature becomes the reflection of himself; all histories of great men he represents as in himself; finally, he becomes to himself Apollo, the incarnation of poetry.  But he does not seek to realise his individuality, any more than his curiosity, in action.  When he is drawn out of himself at Mantua and sings for a time to please men, he finds