At the same time that Browning was writing "Strafford," he was also engaged upon "Sordello." In that he has given expression to his democratic philosophy through his construction and interpretation of Sordello's character as a champion of the people as well as a poet who ushered in the dawn of the Italian literary Renaissance. As he made Paracelsus develop from a dependence upon knowledge as his sole guide in his philosophy of life into a perception of the place emotion must hold in any satisfactory theory of life, and put into his mouth a modern conception of evolution illuminated by his own artistic emotion, so he makes Sordello develop from the individualistic type to the socialist type of man, who is bent upon raising the masses of the people to higher conditions. The ideal of liberal forms of government was even in Sordello's time a growing one, sifting into Italy from Greek precedents, but Browning's Sordello sees something beyond either political or ecclesiastical espousal of the people's cause--namely, the espousal of the people's cause by the people themselves, the arrival of the self-governing democracy, an ideal much nearer attainment now than when Browning was writing: "Two parties take the world up, and allow No third, yet have one principle, subsist By the same injustice; whoso shall enlist With either, ranks with man's inveterate foes. So there is one less quarrel to compose The Guelf, the Ghibelline may be to curse-- I have done nothing, but both sides do worse Than nothing. Nay, to me, forgotten, reft Of insight, lapped by trees and flowers, was left The notion of a service--ha? What lured Me here, what mighty aim was I assured Must move Taurello? What if there remained A cause, intact, distinct from these, ordained For me its true discoverer?" The mood here portrayed was one which might have been fostered in Browning in relation to his own time. He doubtless felt that neither the progressive movements in the state nor those in religion really touched upon the true principles of freedom for the individual. He might not have defined these principles to himself any more definitely than as a desire for the greatest happiness of the whole number. And even of such an ideal as that he had his doubts because of the necessity of his mind to find a logical use for evil in the world. This he could only do by supposing it a divine means for the development of the human soul in its sojourn in this life. Speaking in his own person in "Sordello," he gives expression to this doubt in the following passage in the third book: "I ask youth and strength And health for each of you, not more--at length Grown wise, who asked at home that the whole race Might add the spirit's to the body's grace, And all be dizened out as chiefs and bards. * * * * *