ho can tell what they have seen, or the greatest who can make
others see it." Corresponding instances follow.[17]

Mr. Browning is aware that one is a poet at his own risk; and that the
poetic chaplet may also prove a sacrificial one. He will still wear it,
however, because in his case it means the suffrage of a "patron
friend"[18]

"Whose great verse blares unintermittent on
Like your own trumpeter at Marathon,--" (vol. i. p. 169.)

He recalls his readers to the "business" of the poem:

"the fate of such
As find our common nature--overmuch
Despised because restricted and unfit
To bear the burthen they impose on it--
Cling when they would discard it; craving strength
To leap from the allotted world, at length
They do leap,--flounder on without a term,
Each a god's germ, doomed to remain a germ
In unexpanded infancy, unless...." (pp. 170, 171.)

admits that the story sounds dull; but suggests the possibility of its
containing an agreeable surprise. An amusing anecdote to this effect
concludes the chapter.[19]

BOOK THE FOURTH.

We are now introduced to Taurello Salinguerra: a fine soldier-like
figure; the type of elastic strength in both body and mind. We are told
that he possesses the courage of the fighter, the astuteness of the
politician, the knowledge and graces of the man of leisure. He has
shown himself capable of controlling an Emperor, and of giving
precedence to a woman. He is young at sixty, while the son who is half
his age, is "lean, outworn and really old." And the crowning difference
between him and Sordello is this: that while Sordello only draws out
other men as a means of displaying himself, he only displays himself
sufficiently to draw out other men. "His choicest instruments" have
"surmised him shallow."

He is in his palace at Ferrara, musing over the past--that past which
held the turning-point of his career; which began the feud between
himself and the now Guelph princes, and which naturally merged him in
the Ghibelline cause. He remembers how the fathers of the present Este
and San Bonifacio combined to cheat him out of the Modenese heiress who
was to be his bride--how he retired to Sicily, to return with a wife of
the Emperor's own house--how his enemies surprised him at Vicenza. He
sees his old comrade Eccelino, so passive now, so brave and vigorous
then. He sees the town as they fi