p, and Browning has rather given the name of Sordello to an imagined
type of the poetic character than constructed a type of character to fit
the name. Still less are the dubious attributes with which the bare
facts of history or legend invest Cunizza (whom, none the less, Dante
spoke with in heaven) recognisable in the exquisite and all-golden
loveliness of Palma.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 14: "Mr. Browning prepared himself for writing _Sordello_,"
says Mrs. Orr, "by studying all the chronicles of that period of Italian
history which the British Museum contained; and we may be sure that
every event he alludes to as historical, is so in spirit, if not in the
letter; while such details as come under the head of historical
curiosities are absolutely true. He also supplemented his reading by a
visit to the places in which the scenes of the story are
laid."--_Handbook_, p. 31.]

[Footnote 15: Of all these matters, and of all else that is known of
Sordello, a good and sympathetic account will be found in Mr. Eugene
Benson's little book on _Sordello and Cunizza_ (Dent, 1903).]

5. PIPPA PASSES.

[Published in 1841 as No. I of _Bells and Pomegranates_
(_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. III., pp. 1-79).]

_Pippa Passes_ is Browning's most perfect work, and here, more perhaps
than in anything he ever wrote, he wrote to please himself. As a whole,
he has never written anything to equal it in artistic symmetry; while a
single scene, that between Ottima and Sebald, reaches the highest level
of tragic utterance which he has ever attained. The plan of the work, in
which there are elements of the play and elements of the masque, is a
wholly original one: a series of scenes, connected only by the passing
through them of a single person, who is outside their action, and whose
influence on that action is unconscious. "Mr Browning," says Mrs.
Sutherland Orr in the _Handbook_, "was walking alone in a wood near
Dulwich, when the image flashed upon him of some one walking thus alone
through life; one apparently too obscure to leave a trace of his or her
passage, yet exercising a lasting though unconscious influence at every
step of it; and the image shaped itself into the little silk-winder of
Asolo, Felippa or Pippa."[16] It is this motive that makes unity in
variety, linking together a sequence of otherwise independent scenes.
The poem is the story of Pippa's New Year's Day holiday, her one holiday
in the year. She resolves to fan