near Apollo's shrine, found a certain chest, from which, when the man whose prize it was opened it greedily, there curled a plague injurious to the world as Sordello's was to prove. Shut in the ugly thing till the proper time be come for its appearing. There! we have fastened down the lid and put the chest safely away beneath the really fair and precious gifts found at Apollo's shrine. Browning 570. 'with the new century.' The thirteenth. probably meant this to be taken broadly. The poem makes Sordello a child at the disturbance at Vicenza, the historical date of which is 1194, and makes him thirty years of age at the entrapment of Richard at Ferrara, the historical date of which is 1224. But if we accept 1194 as his birth date, the year of Frederick's excommunication (1227) will fall beyond his lifetime. 572. 'the abysm.' The Ottoman power was harassing the Byzantine Empire. 574. 'that Pisan pair.' The first of the pair is evidently (1. 575) Niccola Pisano (c. 1206-1278), sculptor and architect, whose baptistery at Pisa and pulpit in the Cathedral at Siena are still admired. The second can scarcely be Guidone, and is no doubt Giovanni Pisano, the son and apt pupil of Niccola. 576. 'is Guidone set.' In the church of S. Domenico at Siena there is a picture of the Virgin and Child enthroned. Some hold that the work, though it bears this painter's name (with some letters erased), is too good to have been done at so early a period (1221, which is also marked on the picture). 583. 'worth.' Befall: Ger. werden. 590. 'pyx.' (Lat. buxus, the box-tree.) Here simply 'box.' In the R.C. Church it is the box in which the consecrated host is kept. It is also the name given to the box which contains the sample coins at the Mint. 593. 'colleagues.' Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (161-180), the philosophic Roman Emperor, who has left us his Meditations, associated with himself as colleague Lucius Verus, a weak and vicious youth. 597. and out there curled.' The Romans stormed Seleucia, whence they carried off the image of the Cumaan Apollo, which they placed in their own city. "But it is said that, after this statue was carried off, and the city was burnt, the soldiers, searching the temple, found a narrow hole, and when this was opened in the hope of finding something of value in it, from some deep gulf, which the science of the Chaldæans had closed up, issued a pestilence, which, in the time of Verus and Marcus Antoninus, polluted the whole world, from the borders of Persia to the Rhine and Gaul, with contagion and death." (Ammianus Marcellinus, Bk. xxii. ch. vi.) 603. 'the Loxian.' The name was given to Apollo from his ambiguous (ogós) oracles, or from his interpreting (Aéyew) the mind of Zeus. The choicest gifts of gold' probably means Sordello's splendid natural endowments. 604-625. Sordello's little world of space. 626-671. His unbound ed realm of fancy. Ll. 604-671. Sordello's imagination performs extraordinary feats on external nature. We turn again, therefore, to the story of Sordello's early days. As far back as he could remember, he had lived at Goito (the secret residence of the Tuscan Adelaide), and there his youth glided quietly away-the castle, with its border of fir-forest and its surrounding range of low mountains, making up all the world he knew. Enjoying himself at will, he would wander everywhere except in the northern part of the building. This, for some mysterious reason, he was forbidden to visit, and he obeyed the injunction so far as not to go beyond the corridors, the vault where the maidens lingered in their penance, the maple chamber, a few odd corners, and the breezy parapet looking toward Mantua. From some very old foreign women-servants, who waited upon him, he learned all he knew of the busy troubled world that lay but a short distance off beyond the neighbouring hills. For a time life was one delight to Sordello in this drowsy Paradise. With its activities of imagination and its close in sleep, each day brought its tribute of fresh enchantments, and he was ready to welcome every morrow when it dawned. As the great palmer-worm, having eaten the life out of luscious plants, puts forth wings when autumn makes these wither, and goes after new delights, so Sordello never halted in the progress of his pleasures. The infantine fancies which his imagination flung in profusion on some discovery wreathed themselves luxuriously around it; and there was no monotony, for these fancies flitted quickly from one object to another. "A fickle king," the things his imagination ruled over must have thought him, since, after stocking one of them with intellect and feeling till he could hold communion with it as with a companion, he would suddenly abandon it for another, which he would endow, not only with new qualities created for itself, but with those of his latest favourite. Thus, as his imagination wrought upon them, the objects of his upland home gained or lost their glory, the fancies of a day entirely changing them, as the hoar-frost of a night makes familiar things look grotesque. And, mad burlesque as the whole thing appears, it was serious to him. Just think! After 657-663. he had seen a party of archers ride along the vines, A specimen of his imaginaand their chief had left them in order to mount to those tion's work. solitary northern chambers to which Sordello never went, the orpine patch that had come to blossom that very day was turned into the chief, with the rest of the plant as his retinue! Thus one thing after another was laid hold of. His imagination reached the most unlikely objects; and as the spider, making light of distance, shoots her threads from barbican to battlement, so, in his life's invigorating morn, this spinner of daydreams, himself always the centre, flung far and wide his fresh and lovely fancies. 615. a mysterious interdict.' He was forbidden to enter the north part because in it, as we shall see, Adelaide occasionally received Taurello Salinguerra, from whom she wished to hide the youth. 657. the orpine patch.' Or livelong. It "has a stout perennial rootstock, from which a number of stout annual stems arise, about two feet high. The leaves are broad, egg-shaped or oblong, mostly concave, with large blunt teeth. The rosy or pale purple flowers have five petals," &c. The stonecrop, of the same genus (sedum), "presents a fine sight when in flower, the large spread ing patches being completely covered with the golden stars." No doubt this applies generally to the orpine also. (Step's Wayside and Woodland Blossoms, First Series.) 660. 'the Chief.' Taurello Salinguerra. 663. 'thrall.' This seems to mean an object enthralled by his imagination. 667. 'barbican.' A watch-tower over the gateway. 672-684. The world soon breaks day-dreams. Ll. 672-697. The world is powerless to break Sordello's day-dreams; for he is closely sheltered from its care and pain. This world has made a quiet compact with itself to sweep away, either gradually or at one blow, such a most youthful web of fancies as Sordello wove; but it failed to get its way with him, because at Goito he was carefully guarded from care and pain. These are what best nourish judgment that prosaic expedient which we, less protected from life's rules, are glad to adopt and force to help us when the wide promise of youthful imagination fails by the exercise of which we take two or three joys that lie within our reach, concentrate ourselves upon them, and, giving them a new relative value, render them, perhaps, worth most of those we must forego. But there was nothing whatever to administer a shock to Sordello's self-centred dreams. And suppose he was selfish enough, without the feeblest moral sense; what might he have been had others been near to claim a share in his joys? Or might he not have been different had a kindly chance torn his web of fancies into shreds? But what was the nearest approach to tragedy at his castle-home? A heron's nest blown down by a March wind-a fawn lying dead at the foot of a precipice-a newly shot bird in the brake,— such sights as these were the saddest he could behold, and were far too slight to break his trance. 684-692. But it failed to get at Sordello. 692-697. No, friend Naddo! Enter Naddo to support your theory. There's not a single point here mistake. Sordello closely, and report if, as the years went quietly with a 693. 'friend Naddo.' He will appear from time to time. He is the common-sense critic, with a devotion to men of genius and a great desire to 'run' them successfully. fairies. 'Eat fern-seed.' Which makes one invisible, like the 695. with throes and stings.' Of the man's soul, or of outward nature? Ll. 698-716. But the passing of time does for Sordello what the world has failed to do, and he learns that his fancies are not realities. 698-709. Sordello's What the world could not do in Sordello's case was accomplished by time. With long opportunity of study- Time destroys ing the things around him, he managed to get to the fancies, and he heart of their nature and to learn how it was related sees natural objects as they to his own. The result was that he found himself really are. companionless amid the wild-wood sights at Goito. As if the poppy felt with him!-though he had lived in its flaring, mocking red till the autumn rains spoiled it and left it a bare, brown, rattling skull. The idea that natural objects were conscious of his greatness. was gone. Yet why, because the enchantment thrown over them 709-716. by his imagination had passed away, should they cease May these objects not to interest him and be abandoned? They might not suffice to his be what they once were; but surely, though they could enjoyment? no longer yield him the communion that had thrown him into ecstasy, their presence might still afford some pleasure. Though he took away from the poppy those gifts of thought and feeling with which he had enriched it, there remained the poppy itself, a flower with colour for the eye: he could still receive a certain amount of joy from it through his bodily senses. |