The inscription on the
plinth of this tragic statue is simply to Volumnia Victrix.
A loftier or a more perfect piece of man's work was never done in all the
world than this tragedy of _Coriolanus_: the one fit and crowning epithet
for its companion or successor is that bestowed by Coleridge--"the most
wonderful." It would seem a sign or birthmark of only the greatest among
poets that they should be sure to rise instantly for awhile above the
very highest of their native height at the touch of a thought of
Cleopatra. So was it, as we all know, with William Shakespeare: so is
it, as we all see, with Victor Hugo. As we feel in the marvellous and
matchless verses of _Zim-Zizimi_ all the splendour and fragrance and
miracle of her mere bodily presence, so from her first imperial dawn on
the stage of Shakespeare to the setting of that eastern star behind a
pall of undissolving cloud we feel the charm and the terror and the
mystery of her absolute and royal soul. Byron wrote once to Moore, with
how much truth or sincerity those may guess who would care to know, that
his friend's first "confounded book" of thin prurient jingle ("we call it
a mellisonant tingle-tangle," as Randolph's mock Oberon says of a stolen
sheep-bell) had been the first cause of all his erratic or erotic
frailties: it is not impossible that spirits of another sort may remember
that to their own innocent infantine perceptions the first obscure
electric revelation of what Blake calls "the Eternal Female" was given
through a blind wondering thrill of childish rapture by a lightning on
the baby dawn of their senses and their soul from the sunrise of
Shakespeare's Cleopatra.
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