III. SORDELLO.--In _Sordello_, the character of that name has a shadowy existence in history as one of the most famous of the Italian troubadours. He seems to have been confused with another Sordello who was a politician and man of action. Since such scant facts as can be gathered speak of scandals, and tavern brawls, Browning’s portrait of him is clearly an idealization, and he probably chose Sordello instead of some better known figure that the facts might not interfere with the imaginative picture with which he wished to surround him. The thirty books which Browning read on the history of the period were not read to add to his knowledge of the troubadour, but since even the idealized Sordello had to be represented as having lived at some time and place, to give the correct background for his life and actions. Browning shows that Sordello failed because he loved the applause he received rather than the poetry itself, because the aspirations of the man and the poet were at war within him, because he lacked feeling for humanity, and because he was not decisive enough to succeed when he attempted action. The moral victory at the close is for dramatic purposes, and the dominant theme of the poem as a whole is the failure of a poet. IV. THE IMAGINARY POETS.--Eglamor, a purely fictitious poet in _Sordello_, has made verse his only ambition. Lacking all perception of his life as a man, when he is vanquished in verse-making, he dies. Plara, in the same poem, stands for the poet without depth or genius, unable to write anything of thought value, polishing his poems until they were merely pretty words, lacking utterly in any interpretation of human life. Bocafoli, with his “stark-naked” psalms, represents the sensualist. While Nina and Alcamo belong to history, they have such shadowy existence so far as present knowledge is concerned, that they will be considered here. They stand respectively for strength and for grace, and Browning represents the low voice as saying to Sordello: “Nina’s strength, but Alcamo’s the grace, Each neutralises each then! Search your fill; You get no whole and perfect Poet--still New Ninas, Alcamos, till time’s midnight Shrouds all--or better say, the shutting light Of a forgotten yesterday.” Aprile, in the poem fashioned about Paracelsus, the wandering scholar, typifies love as the latter represents knowledge. Through Aprile, the foil to Paracelsus, the latter comes to see in part the mistakes in his attitude toward life, and declares “I too have sought to KNOW as thou to LOVE-- Excluding love as thou refusedst knowledge. * * * * * Are we not halves of one dissevered world, Whom this strange chance unites once more?” And Aprile exclaims: “Yes, I see now. God is the perfect poet, Who in his person acts his own creations.”