tic conception
were not completely conquered by the writer's genius, not then fully
matured; that lack of entire mastery over the material has frequently
caused the two interests of the poem, the psychological and the
historical, to clash; the background to intrude on and confuse the
middle distance, if not even the foreground itself. Every one of these
faults is the outcome of a merit: altogether they betray a growing
nature of extraordinary power, largeness and richness, not as yet to be
bound or contained within any limits or in any bonds.

_Sordello_ is a psychological epic. But to call it this only would be to
do it somewhat less than justice. There is in the poem a union of
breathless eagerness with brooding suspense, which has an almost
unaccountable fascination for those who once come under its charm, and
nowhere in Browning's work are there so many pictures, so vivid in
aspect, so sharp in outline, so rich in colour. At their best they are
sudden, a flash of revelation, as in this autumnal Goito:--

"'Twas the marsh
Gone of a sudden. Mincio, in its place,
Laughed, a broad water, in next morning's face,
And, where the mists broke up immense and white
I' the steady wind, burned like a spilth of light,
Out of the crashing of a myriad stars."

Verona, by torchfire, seen from a window, is shown with the same quick
flare out of darkness:--

"Then arose the two
And leaned into Verona's air, dead-still.
A balcony lay black beneath until
Out, 'mid a gush of torchfire, grey-haired men
Came on it and harangued the people: then
Sea-like that people surging to and fro
Shouted."

Only Carlyle, in the most vivid moments of his _French Revolution_, has
struck such flashes out of darkness. And there are other splendours and
rarities, not only in the evocation of actual scenes and things, but in
mere similes, like this, in which the quality of imagination is of a
curiously subtle and unusual kind:--

"As, shall I say, some Ethiop, past pursuit
Of all enslavers, dips a shackled foot
Burnt to the blood, into the drowsy black
Enormous watercourse which guides him back
To his own tribe again, where he is king:
And laughs because he guesses, numbering
The yellower poison-wattles on the pouch
Of the first lizard wrested from its couch
Under the slime (