composite. All nature is a blending
of good and evil, in which the one is often but a different form of the
other. Evil is in fact indispensable; for it is not only the ground of
sympathy, but the active principle of life. Joy means the triumph over
obstruction. The suspended effort is death, so far as it goes.
Obstruction and effort must begin again and again. The sphere grows
larger. It can never be more complete (more satisfying to those who are
imprisoned within it). The only gain of existence is to be extracted
from its hindrances, by each individual and for himself." The last plea
for self-sacrifice is thus removed.

These arguments are often just, even profound; they might also have been
sincere in this special case; for there was something to be said in
favour of accepting the opportunities which offered themselves, and of
guiding the course of events, instead of engaging in a probably
fruitless opposition to it. But they are not sincere. Sordello is at
best deceiving himself, and Mr. Browning intends us to to see this. He
is struggling, if unconsciously, to evade the very trials which he
thinks so good for other men. His true object soon stands revealed in a
first and last effort at compromise. "The people's good is in the
future. His is in the present. Can he not speed the one, and yet enjoy
the other?" ... The present rises up, in its new-found richness, in its
undisguised temptation. The joys which lure him become gigantic; the
price of renunciation shrinks to nothing; and at last, the pent up
passion breaks forth--that passion for life, for sheer life, which
inspired his imagination as a boy, which nerved his ambition as a man;
to which his late-found humanities have given voice and shape; which now
gathers itself to a supreme utterance in the grasp of death. "The
earthly existence now: the transcendent hereafter, if Fate will. A man's
opportunities--a man's powers--a man's self-consciousness of joy and
conflict--these things he craves while he may yet possess them."

Then a sudden revulsion. "He would drink the very dregs of life! How
many have sacrificed it whilst its cup was full, because a better still
seemed behind it."

"... the death I fly, revealed
So oft a better life this life concealed,
And which sage, champion, martyr, through each path
Have hunted fearlessly--...."
(vol. i. p. 272.)