wledge supersedes Strength. It is Knowledge which
must prevail now. May it not be he who at this moment resumes its whole
inheritance--its accumulated opportunities, in himself? He could stand
still and dream while he fancied he stood alone; but he knows now that
he is part of humanity, and it of him. Goito is left behind; Ferrara is
reached; he must do the one thing that is within his grasp.

He must influence Salinguerra. He must interest him in the cause of
knowledge; which is the people's cause. With this determination, he
proceeds once more to the appointed presence. His minstrelsy is at first
a failure. He is, as usual, outside his song. He is trying to guide it;
it is not carrying him away. He is paralysed by the very consciousness
that he is urging the head of the Ghibellines to become a Guelph.
Salinguerra's habitual tact and good-nature cannot conceal his own sense
of the absurdity of the proposal. Sordello sees in

"a flash of bitter truth:
So fantasies could break and fritter youth
That he had long ago lost earnestness,
Lost will to work, lost power to even express
The need of working!" (vol. i. p. 228.)

But he will not be beaten. He tries once more. We see the blood leap to
his brain, the heart into his purpose, as he challenges Salinguerra to
bow before the royalty of song. He owns himself its unworthy
representative: for he has frittered away his powers. He has identified
himself with existing forms of being, instead of proving his kingship by
a new spiritual birth--by a supreme, as yet unknown revelation of the
power of human will. He has resigned his function. He is a self-deposed
king. He acknowledges the man before him as fitter to help the world
than he is. But this is shame enough. He will not see its now elected
champion scorn the post he renounces on his behalf. And his art is still
royal though he is not. It is the utterance of the spiritual life: of
the informing thought--which was in the world before deeds began--which
brought order out of chaos--which guided deeds in their due gradation
till itself emerged as SONG: to react in deed; but to need no help of
it; to be (so we complete the meaning) as the knowledge which controls
strength, which supersedes strength.[20]

The walls of the presence-chamber have fallen away. Imaginary faces are
crowding around him. He turns to these. He shows them human life as