666 'Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
clamation “Alack/ i * * * * * 7 with w T hich the passage begins, might well 
put us on our guard; but lest it should not be sufficient, the poet 
goes on to warn us against mistaking his hero for the villain of 
the story: 
What seems a fiend perchance may prove a saint. 
And he emphasizes the warning by the amusing anecdote of 
Xanthus, whose portrait of the beloved apostle was mistaken 
for a picture of the Devil. Sympathetically as the figure of 
Salinguerra is drawn in the later books, there is no excuse for 
misunderstanding the poet’s ultimate j udgment on him; he 
dwindles “down to a mere showy turbulent soldier/ 7 and comes 
at last to naught. Sordello dies spiritually triumphant, cast¬ 
ing under foot the imperial badge which would give him the 
joys of the present by the sacrifice of the People’s cause for the 
future. He does not yield, like Paracelsus to the tempter’s 
suggestion that 
’t were too absurd to slight 
For the hereafter the today’s delight. 
In what sense, then, does Sordello fail? Browning has 
poured so much into the poem that the issue seems confused, 
though a careful examination will, I think, make it clear. At 
the end of the last book, Browning states Sordeilo’s problem 
plainly enough 
Here is a soul whom, to affect 
Nature has plied with all her means, from trees 
And flowers e’en to the Multitude!—and these, 
Decides he save or no? 
How obviously, at the final test, Sordello decides rightly/ 
i This seems clear enough from the poem itself; but it is made still 
clearer by a letter written by Browning to Elizabeth Barrett on Decem¬ 
ber 22, 1845, in which the following passage occurs:— 
“When we are together one day—the days I believe in—I mean to set 
about that reconsidering ‘Sordello’—it has always been rather on my 
mind—but yesterday I was reading the ‘Purgatorio’ and the first speech 
of the group of which Sordello makes one struck me with a new sig¬ 
nificance, as well describing the man and his purpose and fate in my 
own poem—see; one of the burthened, contorted souls tells Virgil and 
Dante— 
Noi fummo gia tutti per forza morti, 
E peccatori infin’ all’ ultim’ ora; 
QUIVI—lume del ciel ne fece accorti; 
Si che, pentendo e perdonando, fora 
Di vita uscimmo a Dio pacificati 
Che del disio di se veder n’accora. 
