but, in spite of the mediæval environment, the modern way of seeing Nature enters into all his descriptions. They are none the worse for it, and do not jar too much with the mediæval _mise-en-scène_. We expect our modern sentiment, and Sordello himself, being in many ways a modern, seems to license these descriptions. Most of them also occur when he is on the canvas, and are a background to his thought. Moreover, they are not set descriptions; they are flashed out, as it were, in a few lines, as if they came by chance, and are not pursued into detail. Indeed, they are not done so much for the love of Nature herself, as for passing illustrations of Sordello's ways of thought and feeling upon matters which are not Nature. As such, even in a mediæval poem, they are excusable. And vivid they are in colour, in light, in reality. Some I have already isolated. Here are a few more, just to show his hand. This is the castle and its scenery, described in Book i.: In Mantua territory half is slough, Half pine-tree forest: maples, scarlet oaks Breed o'er the river-beds; even Mincio chokes With sand the summer through: but 'tis morass In winter up to Mantua's walls. There was, Some thirty years before this evening's coil, One spot reclaimed from the surrounding spoil, Goito; just a castle built amid A few low mountains; firs and larches hid Their main defiles, and rings of vineyard bound The rest. Some captured creature in a pound, Whose artless wonder quite precludes distress, Secure beside in its own loveliness, So peered, with airy head, below, above The castle at its toils, the lapwings love To glean among at grape time. And this is the same place from the second book: And thus he wandered, dumb Till evening, when he paused, thoroughly spent On a blind hill-top: down the gorge he went, Yielding himself up as to an embrace. The moon came out; like features of a face, A querulous fraternity of pines, Sad blackthorn clumps, leafless and grovelling vines Also came out, made gradually up The picture; 'twas Goito's mountain-cup And castle. And here, from Book iii., is Spring when Palma, dreaming of the man she can love, cries that the waking earth is in a thrill to welcome him-- "Waits he not the waking year? His almond-blossoms must be honey-ripe By this; to welcome him fresh runnels stripe The thawed ravines; because of him the wind Walks like a herald." This is May from Book ii.; and afterwards, in the third book, the months from Spring to Summer-- My own month came; 'Twas a sunrise of blossoming and May. Beneath a flowering laurel thicket lay Sordello; each new sprinkle of white stars That smell fainter of wine than Massic jars Dug up at Baiæ, when the south wind shed The ripest, made him happier.