_BROWNING AND SORDELLO_ There are certain analogies between Browning as a poet and the Sordello of the poem; between his relation to the world of his time and that of Sordello to his time; and finally, between Browning's language in this poem and the change in the Italian language which he imputes to the work of Sordello.

This chapter will discuss these analogies, and close with an appreciation of Browning's position between the classic and romantic schools of poetry.
The analogies of which I write may be denied, but I do not think they can be disproved.

Browning is, no doubt, separate from Sordello in his own mind, but underneath the young poet he is creating, he is continually asking himself the same question which Sordello asks--What shall I do as an artist?
To what conclusion shall I come with regard to my life as a poet?
It is no small proof of this underlying personal element in the first three books of the poem that at the end of the third book Browning flings himself suddenly out of the mediaeval world and the men he has created, and waking into 1835-40 at Venice, asks himself--What am I writing, and why?
What is my aim in being a poet?
Is it worth my while to go on with Sordello's story, and why is it worth the telling?
In fact, he allows us to think that he has been describing in Sordello's story a transitory phase of his own career.

And then, having done this, he tells how he got out of confusion into clearer light.
The analogy between Browning's and Sordello's time is not a weak one.
The spirit of the world, between 1830 and 1840 in England, resembled in many ways the spirit abroad at the beginning of the thirteenth century.
The country had awakened out of a long sleep, and was extraordinarily curious not only with regard to life and the best way to live it, but also with regard to government, law, the condition of the people, the best kind of religion and how best to live it, the true aims of poetry and how it was to be written, what subjects it should work on, what was to be the mother-motive of it, that is, what was the mother-motive of all the arts.

And this curiosity deepened from year to year for fifty years.