Dicendo, O Mantovan, Io son Sordello
Della tua terra: e l' un l' altro abbracciava."[12]

And also in his treatise "De vulgare Eloquentia," where he speaks of him
as having created the Italian language. These facts are related by
Sismondi in his "Italian Republics," vol. ii., page 202; and the writer
refers us for more particulars to his work on the "Literature of
Southern Europe." He seems, however, to exhaust the subject when he
tells us that the nobility of Sordello's birth, and his intrigue or
marriage with Cunizza are attested by contemporaries; that a "mysterious
obscurity" shrouds his life; and that his violent death is obscurely
indicated by Dante, whose mention of him is now his only title to
immortality. According to one tradition he was the son of an archer
named Elcorte. Another seems to point to him when it imputes a son to
Salinguerra as the only offspring of his first marriage, and having died
before himself. Mr. Browning accepts the latter hypothesis, whilst he
employs both.

The birth of his Sordello, as probably of the real one, coincides with
the close of the twelfth century; and with an active condition of the
family feuds which were just merging in the conflict of Guelphs and
Ghibellines. The "Biographie Universelle" says:

"The first encounter between the two parties took place at Vicenza
towards 1194. Eccelino the Second, who allied himself with the republics
of Verona and Padua, was exiled from Vicenza himself his whole family
and his faction, by a Podesta, his enemy. Before submitting to this
sentence, he undertook to defend himself by setting fire to the
neighbouring houses; a great part of the town was burned during the
conflict, in which Eccelino was beaten. These were the first scenes of
confusion and massacre, which met the eyes of the son of the Lord of
Romano, the ferocious Eccelino the Third, born 4th of April, 1194."

In Mr. Browning's version, Adelaide, wife of Eccelino II., is saved with
her infant son--this Eccelino the Third--by the devotion of an archer,
Elcorte, who perishes in the act. Retrude, wife of Salinguerra, and also
present on this occasion, only lives to be conveyed to Adelaide's castle
at Goito; but her new-born child survives; and Adelaide, dreading his
future rivalry with her own, allows his father to think him dead, and
brings him up, under the name of Sordello, as her page, declaring him to
be Elcorte's son adopted out of gratitude. The "intrigue" betw