_Sordello_, bk.iii., end.] [Footnote 10: Ib., p.

99.] Thus when, in 1840, _Sordello_ was at length complete, it bore the traces of many influences and many moods.

It reflected the expanding ideals and the critical turning-points of four years of his life.

In the earlier books the brilliant yet self-centred poet of _Paracelsus_ is still paramount, and even the "oddish boy" who had shyly evolved _Pauline_ is not entirely effaced.

But in the later books we recognise without difficulty the man who has mixed with the larger world, has won some fame in letters, has immersed himself in the stirring atmosphere of a supreme national conflict, has seen Italy, and has, in the solitude and detachment from his _milieu_ which foreign travel brings, girded up his loins anew for a larger and more exacting poetic task.