He had his more objectionable side, like other men, but it had nothing to do with literary egotism.

He was not vain of being an extraordinary man.

He was only somewhat excessively vain of being an ordinary one.
The Browning then who published _Sordello_ we have to conceive, not as a young pedant anxious to exaggerate his superiority to the public, but as a hot-headed, strong-minded, inexperienced, and essentially humble man, who had more ideas than he knew how to disentangle from each other.

If we compare, for example, the complexity of Browning with the clarity of Matthew Arnold, we shall realise that the cause lies in the fact that Matthew Arnold was an intellectual aristocrat, and Browning an intellectual democrat.

The particular peculiarities of _Sordello_ illustrate the matter very significantly.