Owing to the host of new thoughts which in this early summer of genius came pouring into his soul--all of which he tried to express, rejecting none, choosing none out of the rest, expressing only half of a great number of them; so delighted with them all that he could leave none out--he became obscure in _Sordello_.

Owing also to the great complexity of the historical _mise-en-scene_ in which he placed his characters in that poem, he also became obscure.

Had he been an experienced artist he would have left out at least a third of the thoughts and scenes he inserted.

As it was, he threw all his thoughts and all the matters he had learnt about the politics, cities, architecture, customs, war, gardens, religion and poetry of North Italy in the thirteenth century, pell-mell into this poem, and left them, as it were, to find their own places.

This was very characteristic of a young man when the pot of his genius was boiling over.