Of this princely trinity of
boys the "bud of Britain" is as yet the most famous flower; yet even in
the broken words of childish heroism that falter on his dying lips there
is nothing of more poignant pathos, more "dearly sweet and bitter," than
Giovanni's talk of his dead mother and all her sleepless nights now ended
for ever in a sleep beyond tears or dreams. Perhaps the most nearly
faultless in finish and proportion of perfect nature among all the noble
three is Landor's portrait of the imperial and right Roman child of Caesar
and Cleopatra. I know not but this may be found in the judgment of men
to come wellnigh the most pathetic and heroic figure bequeathed us after
more than eighty years of a glorious life by the indomitable genius of
our own last Roman and republican poet.
We have come now to that point at the opening of the second stage in his
work where the supreme genius of all time begins first to meddle with the
mysteries and varieties of human character, to handle its finer and more
subtle qualities, to harmonise its more untuned and jarring discords;
giving here and thus the first proof of a power never shared in like
measure by the mightiest among the sons of men, a sovereign and serene
capacity to fathom the else unfathomable depths of spiritual nature, to
solve its else insoluble riddles, to reconcile its else irreconcilable
discrepancies.
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