regarding these Mantuans as much higher creatures than they were. He had been subjectively bestowing an excellence upon these curs, as he had once endowed the flowers at Goito with mind and feeling. In some common woman he had beheld Palma; another had figured before him the black-haired

Adelaide. His magic wand had been over them. few great characters had made all the crowd appear like them in his sight: they had thrown over it an imaginary dignity, and given a fictitious value to their applause. In short, he was as far as ever from displaying or revealing his essential being, which was the first and last object of his poetry. Nay, inasmuch as it was making his audiences behold other heroes, poetry kept them from seeing what he was, and therefore proved a hindrance to his purpose. What was the use, then, of making believe that he found in the praise of men the hoped for reflection of himself?

619. "Not to play the fool."' "Our pleasure is-not to be such fools as to take you as you wish."

638. 'the convention.' Does this refer to 1. 444? Or to 1. 479 ? Or does it mean the 'crowd he contrived' (Bk. I., l. 747 f.), who were understood to be ready to fall down before him?

642. 'the bright band.' Evidently the flowers.

653. 'what he hoped assistance.' What he had hoped would be a help to his self-display-that is, song.

Ll. 655-867.

Sordello's professional minstrelsy, with its attendant intercourse with the Mantuans, becomes a rock on which he splits into two parts.

He is conscious of himself as an ordinary man, trying to get on in the world by means of his art, and this-the Manpart-is hampered by the Idealist, or Poet, part, who must needs be everything or nothing in actual life, and

655-867. Sordello is conscious of himself as two distinct beings.

still hopes to reveal himself through poetry as possessed,

in conception, of every attribute.

On the other hand, the Poet-part is hampered by the Manpart, who, having an eye to business, regards the expression of the Poet-part's essential nature as a thing that will not pay.

After a time Sordello, through the influence of his manner of life at Mantua, split into two parts, each of which warred against the other. The Poet - part, full of ideal conceptions, hopelessly impeded the Manpart, who, no longer bound to the necessity of believing that he was Apollo, thought of himself as being set among men he in this or in that position, with such and such interests, by the idealist. in real life, and never, simply because the Poet-part

659-693.

As a man

is weakened

The

insisted on either enjoying the glory of making a full
revelation of his princely nature or not enjoying human
applause at all, refused to avail himself of any oppor-
tunity of winning ordinary admiration from men.
Man-part could not be withheld from attempts of some
kind by the bright dreams that the Poet-part was sure
would one day be fully realised to the people by means
of song.
The Man-part was conscious of himself as an
ordinary mortal, willing to appear among men as one
of themselves, and not arrayed in angelic beauties; and
he might some day appear a still sorrier specimen in
his own eyes for anything he actually accomplished,
because, when he sang, he was hampered by the Poet-
part, who was determined not to sing anything of the
common type, and not to sing at all unless his song
would express all the perfection of his regal nature.
Language, it may be said in this connection, though
at first it had been only a makeshift, whereby, in-
stead of through action, he would show men what he
essentially was, was now, according to the Poet-part,
to be the great thing: Apollo, it had been decided,
would not act at all, but would sing in such a way
as to make men see that he was the prince of each

nature-perfect in his conception of the qualities in which each nature excelled, or wished to excel. Yet the Poet-part, when not dreaming of this perfect vehicle of revelation, condescended to partial and conventional modes of expression, because the Man-part stepped in to say that it was foolish to sing if the song failed to hit the popular taste, as the full poetic verse, revealing Apollo, assuredly would: 'it would not pay,' said the Man-part.

These, then, were the two portions into which Sordello split. Sordello as one--the being of perfect attributes, who condescended not to express himself as of less than perfect nature-one in the idea of his nature's perfection and of exhibiting that nature to the world-was gone.

694-717.

diate demands

him from

Sordello might have settled once for all which 'part' he was to follow, and so have been delivered from the The immewearing struggles between the two, had it not been of the Manfor the real, live Mantuans, who always called him to tuans keep action while he was pondering which would be the consistently easier plan to persevere with poetry in the hope either nature. following that men would at length see that it revealed his own nature, or to give up the attempt altogether and mix, like other minstrels, in the common life of men, with its enjoyments. Before he could decide, in rushed the Mantuans, to whom, if indeed they knew anything about it, his perplexity was of no moment. His divided nature keeping him from heartily adopting either plan, he was glad to fall back upon the conventional rules which his time prescribed for minstrelsy. It was not worth the trouble to improve upon them-to change them in any way. That would be a superficial feat, like a fool's change in dress or in length of hair.

717-762.

tion becomes

Then, what a sad business his conversation was! When the Mantuans asked him about things that in- His conversaterested them, he scarcely understood what they were an echo of talking about, and answered them straightway at random. other men's. If he asked himself the essential truth about some matter, he replied quickly in his own mind; but his

763-867.

reply was of a far-reaching nature and not easily put
into words. He would have had to pare it down before
it could take rank with the rare specimens of intellec-
tual effort given forth by the Mantuans, who could
always make their deliverances fit the occasion, and
had a stock-in-trade of opinions to suit all kinds of
tastes opinions mature, pungent, sweet, sour, and
sour - sweet, like figs in all stages of ripeness. Now,
Sordello might have attained the practice of giving at
once answers full of his own meaning and suited to the
occasion had he only been able to be either the Poet-
part or the Man-part; but, while he was wondering
what words would convey to others, who were toying
with conventional ideas, and not with vital inward
ones like his, and who were concerned about 'scoring'
in Mantuan circles-a thing he despised at heart-the
occasion demanding an answer slipped clean away. Had
his nature not been so divided, he would have made a
powerful effort to express his profound ideas; but, as
it was, their excellency and the excellency of his speech
never came together, and therefore went for nothing.
The end was that, on the spur of the moment, he
retailed any old quip or maxim, and even copied
express at once and fully

gestures. If he could not
his far-reaching idea, why should he trouble to ex-
press a fraction of it? As for men-whoever could
might take an interest in them and love the good
and hate the bad among them: they were of no use for
reflecting the glory of his nature. With convention-
ality as his refuge, he extolled this one and denounced
that one, as public opinion required.

He

Let us now take up more particularly the Poet-part. As poet, Sor- Verse, instead of becoming the means of expressing his dello, not able to show men whole imagination, came almost to a stand-still. his ideal had little impulse to cultivate it, the aim of his daily work being merely not to be beaten by his rivals, who, without any division in their nature, went at it heartily enough, showing great varieties of work, from Bocafoli's

nature, does poor work.

exceedingly plain songs to Plara's sonnets, spoiled with
too much ornamentation, and resembling "an almug-tree
that has been punctured to the pith for gum, and is on
that account all twisted, and wrinkled worse than the
pursed-up eyelids of the hippopotamus sunning himself
in the mud when the gad-fly whirrs about him." Sordello
could easily compete with bards like these, but he had
aimed at something infinitely higher than that.
"Ob-
serve," he said by way of illustrating his poetic nature,

Naddo lec

tures on the

a pumpkin floating on a pond. I might pluck one of its cups if my hand were not so strong that it would pull up the whole plant, root and all; and so I might pluck for you, as it were, one simple bit of song, dealing with a single sight, were my imagination not so powerful that I cannot deal with the simplest external matter without penetrating to the essence of its being and its relation to the universe. How could external things, such as common bards celebrate, satisfy my soul?" "Why, 783-811. that," Naddo ventured to tell his master, "is precisely the error Squarcialupe finds in you; 'the man,' he says, function of 'cannot sing us a simple romance, but must deal with poetry. his subject like a philosopher.' Now, there is no doubt that you are a great poet, but you're not a philosopher, and these problems are wholly out of place in poetry, which must appeal to men on the ground of their common nature, with its broad interests. Your first poetry, now, was of the right kind. There was no affectation about it; you sang about what we all know exists. 'The man,' we said when we heard you, 'tells his own joys and woes.' If you would have your songs last, you must build on the human heart-not your own, which is decidedly peculiar, but the common healthy heart of humanity at large. A man cannot act unless he be at peace within himself-undistracted by questions as to the ultimate ground of existence. It may be true that fire rankles at the heart of every globe, but in the world's life we cannot concern ourselves with such hidden things. Such inquiries do not belong to poetry.

E