The contrast offered an undeniable problem.

But Dante had himself hinted the solution by placing Sordello among those dilatory souls whose tardy repentance involved their sojourn in the Ante-purgatory.

To a mind preoccupied, like Browning's, with the failures of aspiring souls, this hint naturally appealed.

He imagined his Sordello, too, as a moral loiterer, who, with extraordinary gifts, failed by some inner enervating paralysis[11] to make his spiritual quality explicit; and who impressed contemporaries sufficiently to start a brilliant myth of what he did not do, but had to wait for recognition until he met the eye and lips of Dante.

It is difficult not to suspect the influence of another great poet.