by Virgil.

"Surse ver lui del luogo ove pria stava,
Dicendo, O Mantovan, Io son Sordello
Della tua terra: e l' un l' altro abbracciava."[12]

And also in his treatise "De vulgare Eloquentiâ," where he speaks of him
as having created the Italian language. These facts are related by
Sismondi in his "Italian Republics," vol. ii., page 202; and the writer
refers us for more particulars to his work on the "Literature of
Southern Europe." He seems, however, to exhaust the subject when he
tells us that the nobility of Sordello's birth, and his intrigue or
marriage with Cunizza are attested by contemporaries; that a "mysterious
obscurity" shrouds his life; and that his violent death is obscurely
indicated by Dante, whose mention of him is now his only title to
immortality. According to one tradition he was the son of an archer
named Elcorte. Another seems to point to him when it imputes a son to
Salinguerra as the only offspring of his first marriage, and having died
before himself. Mr. Browning accepts the latter hypothesis, whilst he
employs both.

The birth of his Sordello, as probably of the real one, coincides with
the close of the twelfth century; and with an active condition of the
family feuds which were just merging in the conflict of Guelphs and
Ghibellines. The "Biographie Universelle" says:

"The first encounter between the two parties took place at Vicenza
towards 1194. Eccelino the Second, who allied himself with the republics
of Verona and Padua, was exiled from Vicenza himself his whole family
and his faction, by a Podesta, his enemy. Before submitting to this