How the subject of _Sordello_ was suggested to Browning we do not know;
the study of Dante may have led him to a re-creation of the story of
Dante's predecessor; after having occupied in imagination the old towns
of Germany and Switzerland--Würzburg and Basil, Colmar and Salzburg--he
may have longed for the warmth and colour of Italy; after the
Renaissance with its revolutionary speculations, he may have wished to
trace his way back to the Middle Age, when men lived and moved under the
shadow of one or the other of two dominant powers, apparently fixed in
everlasting rivalry--the Emperor and the Pope.

"The historical decoration," wrote Browning, in the dedicatory letter of
1863, to his friend Milsand, "was purposely of no more importance than a
background requires; and my stress lay on the incidents in the
development of a soul: little else is worth study." Undoubtedly the
history of a soul is central in the poem; but the drawings of Italian
landscape, so sure in outline, so vivid in colour; the views of old
Italian city life, rich in the tumult of townsfolk, military chieftains,
men-at-arms; the pictures of sombre interiors, and southern gardens,
the hillside castle amid its vines, the court of love with its
contending minstrels, the midnight camp lit by its fires; and, added to
these, the Titianesque portraits of portly magnifico and gold-haired
maiden, and thought-worn statist make up an environment which has no
inconsiderable poetic value of its own, feeding, as it does, the inner
eye with various forms and dyes, and leaving the "spirit in sense" more
wealthy. With a theme so remote from the common consciousness of his own
day, Browning conceived that there would be an advantage in being his
own commentator and interpreter, and hence he chose the narrative in
preference to the dramatic form; thus, he supposed he could act the
showman and stand aside at times, to expound his own intentions.
Unhappily, in endeavouring to strengthen and concentrate his style, he