ly life, it is true, but not the dread disorder
of decay. Browning paints it with delight.

This unbridled curiosity working in men of unbridled individuality
produced a tumbling confusion in life. Men, full of eagerness, each
determined to fulfil his own will, tried every kind of life, attempted
every kind of pursuit, strove to experience all the passions, indulged
their passing impulses to the full, and when they were wearied of any
experiment in living passed on to the next, not with weariness but with
fresh excitement. Cities, small republics, did the same
collectively--Ferrara, Padua, Verona, Mantua, Milan, Parma, Florence,
Pisa, Siena, Perugia. Both cities and citizens lived in a nervous storm,
and at every impulse passed into furious activity. In five minutes a
whole town was up in the market-place, the bells rang, the town banner
was displayed, and in an hour the citizens were marching out of the
gates to attack the neighbouring city. A single gibe in the streets, or
at the church door, interchanged between one noble and another of
opposite factions, and the gutters of the streets ran red with the blood
of a hundred men. This then was the time of _Sordello_, and splendidly
has Browning represented it.

2. Sordello is the image of this curiosity and individuality, but only
inwardly. In the midst of this turbulent society Browning creates him
with the temperament of a poet, living in a solitary youth, apart from
arms and the wild movement of the world. His soul is full of the
curiosity of the time. The inquisition of his whole life is, "What is
the life most worth living? How shall I attain it, in what way make it
mine?" and then, "What sort of lives are lived by other men?" and,
finally, "What is the happiest life for the whole?" The curiosity does
not drive him, like the rest of the world, into action in the world. It
expands only in thought and dreaming. But however he may dream, however
wrapt in self he may be, his curiosity about these matters never lessens
for a moment. Even in death it is his ruling passion.

Along with this he shares fully in the impassioned individuality of the
time. Browning brings that forward continually. All the dreams of his
youth centre in himself; Nature becomes the reflection of himself; all
histories of great men he represents as in himself; finally, he becomes
to himself Apollo, the incarnation of poetry. But he does not seek to
realise his individuality, any more than his cur