Tennyson's "glorious devil" (by a curious irony intended for no other than Faust's creator) sets up his lordly pleasure-house apart from the ways of men, until at last, confuted by experience, he renounces his folly.

_Sordello_ cannot claim the mature and classical brilliance of the one, nor the limpid melodious beauty of the other; but it approaches _Faust_ itself in its subtle soundings of the mysteries of the intellectual life.

It is a young poet's attempt to cope with the problem of the poet's task and the poet's function, the relation of art to life, and of life to art.

Neither Goethe nor Tennyson thought more loftily of the possibilities of poetic art.

And neither insisted more peremptorily--or rather assumed more unquestioningly--that it only fulfils these possibilities when the poet labours in the service of man.
He is "earth's essential king," but his kingship rests upon his carrying out the kingliest of mottoes--"Ich dien." Browning all his life had a hearty contempt for the foppery of "Art for Art," and he never conveyed it with more incisive brilliance than in the sketch of Bordello's "opposite," the Troubadour Eglamor.
"How he loved that art! The calling marking him a man apart From men--one not to care, take counsel for Cold hearts, comfortless faces, ...