The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India, an Epic Poem

by Luís de Camões

FICTION OF THE ISLAND OF VENUS.

From the earliest ages, and in the most distant nations, palaces, forests and gardens, have been the favourite themes of poets. And though, as in Homer's island of Rhadamanthus, the description is sometimes only cursory; at other times they have lavished all their powers, and have vied with each other in adorning their edifices and landscapes. The gardens of Alcinous in the Odyssey, and Elysium in the Æneid, have excited the ambition of many imitators. Many instances of these occur in the later writers. These subjects, however, it must be owned, are so natural to the genius of poetry, that it is scarcely fair to attribute to an imitation of the classics, the innumerable descriptions of this kind which abound in the old romances. In these, under different allegorical names, every passion, every virtue and vice, had its palace, its enchanted bower, or its dreary cave. Among the Italians, on the revival of letters, Pulci, Boiardo, and others, borrowed these fictions from the Gothic romancers; Ariosto borrowed from them, and Spenser has copied Ariosto and Tasso. In the sixth and seventh books of the Orlando Furioso, there is a fine description of the island and palace of Alcina, or Vice; and in the tenth book (but inferior to the other in poetical colouring), we have a view of the country of Logistilla, or Virtue. The passage, of this kind, however, where Ariosto has displayed the richest poetical painting, is in the xxxiv. book, in the description of Paradise, whither he sends Astolpho, the English duke, to ask the help of St. John to recover the wits of Orlando. The whole is most admirably fanciful. Astolpho mounts the clouds on the winged horse, sees Paradise, and, accompanied by the Evangelist, visits the moon; the adventures in which orb are almost literally translated in Milton's Limbo. But the passage which may be said to bear the nearest resemblance to the descriptive part of the island of Venus, is the landscape of Paradise, of which the ingenious Mr. Hoole, to whose many acts of friendship I am proud to acknowledge myself indebted, has obliged me with this translation, though only ten books of his Ariosto are yet published.

"O'er the glad earth the blissful season pours
The vernal beauties of a thousand flowers
In varied tints: there show'd the ruby's hue,
The yellow topaz, and the sapphire blue.[{293}]
The mead appears one intermingled blaze
Where pearls and diamonds dart their trembling rays.
Not emerald here so bright a verdure yields
As the fair turf of those celestial fields.
On ev'ry tree the leaves unfading grow,
The fruitage ripens and the flow'rets blow!
The frolic birds, gay-plum'd, of various wing
Amid the boughs their notes melodious sing:
Still lakes, and murm'ring streams, with waters clear,
Charm the fix'd eye, and lull the list'ning ear.
A soft'ning genial air, that ever seems
In even tenor, cools the solar beams
With fanning breeze; while from the enamell'd field,
Whate'er the fruits, the plants, the blossoms yield
Of grateful scent, the stealing gales dispense
The blended sweets to feed th' immortal sense.
"Amid the plain a palace dazzling bright,
Like living flame, emits a streamy light,
And, wrapp'd in splendour of refulgent day,
Outshines the strength of ev'ry mortal ray.
"Astolpho gently now directs his speed
To where the spacious pile enfolds the mead
In circuit wide, and views with eager eyes
Each nameless charm that happy soil supplies.
With this compar'd, he deems the world below
A dreary desert and a seat of woe!
By Heaven and Nature, in their wrath bestow'd,
In evil hour, for man's unblest abode.
"Near and more near the stately walls he drew,
In steadfast gaze transported at the view:
They seem'd one gem entire, of purer red
Than deep'ning gleams transparent rubies shed.
Stupendous work! by art Dædalian rais'd,
Transcending all by feeble mortals prais'd!
No more henceforth let boasting tongues proclaim
Those wonders of the world, so chronicled by fame!"

Camoëns read and admired Ariosto; but it by no means follows that he borrowed the hint of his island of Venus from that poet. The luxury of flowery description is as common in poetry as are the tales of love. The heroes of Ariosto meet beautiful women in the palace of Alcina:—

"Before the threshold wanton damsels wait,
Or, sport between the pillars of the gate:
But, beauty more had brighten'd in their face
Had modesty attemper'd ev'ry grace;[{294}]
In vestures green each damsel swept the ground,
Their temples fair, with leafy garlands crown'd.
These, with a courteous welcome, led the knight
To this sweet Paradise of soft delight....
Enamour'd youths and tender damsels seem
To chant their loves beside a purling stream.
Some by a branching tree, or mountain's shade,
In sports and dances press the downy glade,
While one discloses to his friend, apart,
The secret transport of his am'rous heart."—Book vi.

But these descriptions also, which bring the homes of knight-errantry into the way of beautiful wantons, are as common in the old romance as the use of the alphabet: and indeed the greatest part of these love-adventures are evidently borrowed from the fable of Circe. Astolpho, who was transformed into a myrtle by Alcina, thus informs Rogero:—

"Her former lovers she esteem'd no more,
For many lovers she possess'd before;
I was her joy——
Too late, alas, I found her wav'ring mind
In love inconstant as the changing wind!
Scarce had I held two months the fairy's grace,
When a new youth was taken to my place:
Rejected, then, I join'd the banish'd herd
That lost her love, as others were preferr'd ...
Some here, some there, her potent charms retain,
In diverse forms imprison'd to remain;
In beeches, olives, palms, or cedars clos'd,
Or, such as me, you here behold expos'd;
In fountains some, and some in beasts confin'd,
As suits the wayward fairy's cruel mind."
Hoole, Ar. bk. vi.

When incidents, character, and conduct confess the resemblance, we may, with certainty, pronounce from whence the copy is taken. Where only a similar stroke of passion or description occurs, it belongs alone to the arrogance of dulness, to tell us on what passage the poet had his eye. Every great poet has been persecuted in this manner: Milton in particular. His commentators have not left him a flower of his own growth. Yet, like the creed of the atheist, their system is involved in the deepest absurdity. It is easy to suppose that men of poetical feelings, in describing the same thing, should give us the same picture. But, that the Paradise Lost, which forms one animated whole of the noblest poetry, is a mere cento, compiled from innumerable authors, ancient and modern, is a supposition which gives Milton a cast of talents infinitely more extraordinary and inexplicable than the greatest poetical genius. When Gaspar Poussin painted clouds and trees in his landscapes, he did not borrow the green and the blue of[{295}] the leaf and the sky from Claude Lorraine. Neither did Camoëns, when he painted his island of Venus, spend the half of his life in collecting his colours from all his predecessors who had described the beauties of the vernal year, or the stages of passion. Camoëns knew how others had painted the flowery bowers of love; these formed his taste, and corrected his judgment. He viewed the beauties of nature with poetical eyes, from thence he drew his landscapes; he had felt all the allurements of love, and from thence he describes the agitations of that passion.

Nor is the description of fairy bowers and palaces, though most favourite topics, peculiar to the romances of chivalry. The poetry of the orientals also abounds with them, yet, with some characteristic differences. Like the constitutions and dress of the Asiatics, the landscapes of the eastern muse are warm and feeble, brilliant and slight, and, like the manners of the people, wear an eternal sameness. The western muse, on the contrary, is nervous as her heroes, sometimes flowery as her Italian or English fields, sometimes majestically great as her Runic forests of oak and pine; and always various, as the character of her inhabitants. Yet, with all those differences of feature, several oriental fictions greatly resemble the island of Circe, and the flowery dominions of Alcina. In particular, the adventures of Prince Agib, or the third Calender, in the Arabian Tales, afford a striking likeness of painting and catastrophe.

If Ariosto's, however, seem to resemble any eastern fiction, the island of Venus in Camoëns bears a more striking resemblance to a passage in Chaucer. The following beautiful piece of poetical painting occurs in the Assembly of the Fowles:—

"The bildir oak, and eke the hardie ashe,
The pillir elme, the coffir unto caraine,
The boxe pipetre, the holme to whippis lasshe,
The sailing firre, the cypres deth to plaine,
The shortir ewe, the aspe for shaftis plaine,
The olive of pece, and eke the dronkin vine,
The victor palme, the laurir to divine.
A gardein sawe I full of blossomed bowis,
Upon a river, in a grené mede
There as sweetness evirmore inough is,
With flouris white, and blewe, yelowe, and rede,
And colde and clere wellestremis, nothing dede,
That swommin full of smale fishis light,
With finnis rede, and scalis silver bright.
On every bough the birdis herd I syng
With voice of angell, in ther harmonie
That busied 'hem, ther birdis forthe to bryng,
And little pretie conies to ther plaie gan hie;
And furthir all about I gan espie
The dredful roe, the buck, the hart and hind,
Squirils, and bestis smal of gentle kind.[{296}]
Of instrumentes of stringis, in accorde
Herd I so plaie a ravishyng swetnesse,
That God, that makir is of all and Lorde,
Ne herd nevir a better, as I gesse,
There with a winde, unneth it might be lesse,
Made in the levis grene a noisé soft
Accordant to the foulis song en loft.
The aire of the place so attempre was,
That ner was there grevaunce of hot ne cold—
* * * * *
Under a tre beside a well I seye
Cupid our lorde his arrowes forge and file,
And at his fete his bowe all redie laye,
And well his doughtir temprid all the while
The heddis in the well, and with her wile
She couchid 'hem aftir as thei should serve,
Some for to flea, and some to wound and carve.
* * * * *
And upon pillirs grete of Jaspir long
I saw a temple of Brasse ifoundid strong.
And about the temple dauncid alwaie
Women inow, of which some there ywere
Faire of 'hemself, and some of 'hem were gaie,
In kirtils all disheveled went thei there,
That was ther office or from yere to yere,
And on the temple sawe I white and faire
Of dovis sittyng many a thousande paire."

Here we have Cupid forging his arrows, the woodland, the streams, the music of instruments and birds, the frolics of deer and other animals; and women enow. In a word, the island of Venus is here sketched out, yet Chaucer was never translated into Latin or any language of the continent, nor did Camoëns understand a line of English. The subject was common, and the same poetical feelings in Chaucer and Camoëns pointed out to each what were the beauties of landscapes and of bowers devoted to pleasure.

Yet, though the fiction of bowers, of islands, and palaces, was no novelty in poetry, much, however, remains to be attributed to the poetical powers and invention of Camoëns. The island of Venus contains, of all others, by much the completest gradation, and fullest assemblage of that species of luxuriant painting. Nothing in the older writers is equal to it in fulness. Nor can the island of Armida, in Tasso, be compared to it, in poetical embroidery or passionate expression; though Tasso as undoubtedly built upon the model of Camoëns, as Spenser appropriated the imagery of Tasso when he described the bower of Acrasia, part of which he has literally translated[{297}] from the Italian poet. The beautiful fictions of Armida and Acrasia, however, are much too long to be here inserted, and they are well known to every reader of taste.

But the chief praise of our poet is yet unmentioned. The introduction of so beautiful a fiction as an essential part of the conduct and machinery of an epic poem, does the greatest honour to the invention of Camoëns. The machinery of the former part of the poem not only acquires dignity, but is completed by it. And the conduct of Homer and Virgil has, in this, not only received a fine imitation, but a masterly contrast. In the finest allegory the heroes of the Lusiad receive their reward: and, by means of this allegory, our poet gives a noble imitation of the noblest part of the Æneid. In the tenth Lusiad, Gama and his heroes hear the nymphs in the divine palace of Thetis sing the triumphs of their countrymen in the conquest of India: after this the goddess shows Gama a view of the eastern world, from the Cape of Good Hope to the furthest islands of Japan. She poetically describes every region, and the principal islands, and concludes, "All these are given to the western world by you." It is impossible any poem can be summed up with greater sublimity. The Fall of Troy is nothing to this. Nor is this all: the most masterly fiction, finest compliment, and ultimate purpose of the Æneid is not only nobly imitated, but the conduct of Homer, in concluding the Iliad, as already observed, is paralleled, without one circumstance being borrowed. Poetical conduct cannot possibly bear a stronger resemblance, than the reward of the heroes of the Lusiad, the prophetic song, and the vision shown to Gama bear to the games at the funeral of Patroclus and the redemption of the body of Hector, considered as the completion of the anger of Achilles, the subject of the Iliad. Nor is it a greater honour to resemble a Homer and a Virgil, than it is to be resembled by a Milton. Milton certainly heard of Fanshaw's translation of the Lusiad, though he might never have seen the original, for it was published fourteen years before he gave his Paradise Lost to the world. But, whatever he knew of it, had the last book of the Lusiad been two thousand years known to the learned, every one would have owned that the two last boots of the Paradise Lost were evidently formed upon it. But whether Milton borrowed any hint from Camoëns is of little consequence. That the genius of the great Milton suggested the conclusion of his immortal poem in the manner and with the machinery of the Lusiad, is enough. It is enough that the part of Michael and Adam in the two last books of the Paradise Lost are, in point of conduct, exactly the same with the part of Thetis and Gama in the conclusion of the Lusiad. Yet, this difference must be observed; in the narrative of his last book, Milton has flagged, as Addison calls it, and fallen infinitely short of the untired spirit of the Portuguese poet.

END OF THE NINTH BOOK.[{298}]

BOOK X.

THE ARGUMENT.

In the opening of this, the last canto, the poet resumes the allegory of the Isle of Joy, or of Venus: the fair nymphs conduct their lovers to their radiant palaces, where delicious wines sparkle in every cup. Before the poet describes the song of a prophetic siren, who celebrates the praise of the heroes who are destined in ennoble the name of their country, he addresses himself to his muse in a tone of sorrow, which touches us the more deeply when we reflect upon the unhappy situation to which this great poet was at last reduced. In the song of the siren, which follows, is afforded a prophetic view from the period of Gama's expedition down to Camoëns' own times, in which Pacheco, and other heroes of Portugal, pass in review before the eye of the reader. When the siren has concluded her prophetic song, Thetis conducts Gama to the top of a mountain and addresses him in a set speech. The poem concludes with the poet's apostrophe to King Sebastian.

FAR o'er the western ocean's distant bed
Apollo now his fiery coursers sped;
Far o'er the silver lake of Mexic[589] roll'd
His rapid chariot wheels of burning gold:[{299}]
The eastern sky was left to dusky grey,
And o'er the last hot breath of parting day,
Cool o'er the sultry noon's remaining flame,
On gentle gales the grateful twilight came.
Dimpling the lucid pools, the fragrant breeze
Sighs o'er the lawns, and whispers thro' the trees;
Refresh'd, the lily rears the silver head,
And opening jasmines o'er the arbours spread.
Fair o'er the wave that gleam'd like distant snow,
Graceful arose the moon, serenely slow;
Not yet full orb'd, in clouded splendour dress'd,
Her married arms embrace her pregnant breast.
Sweet to his mate, recumbent o'er his young,
The nightingale his spousal anthem sung;
From ev'ry bower the holy chorus rose,
From ev'ry bower the rival anthem flows.
Translucent, twinkling through the upland grove,
In all her lustre shines the star of love;
Led by the sacred ray from ev'ry bower,
A joyful train, the wedded lovers pour:
Each with the youth above the rest approv'd,
Each with the nymph above the rest belov'd,
They seek the palace of the sov'reign dame;
High on a mountain glow'd the wondrous frame:
Of gold the towers, of gold the pillars shone,
The walls were crystal, starr'd with precious stone.
Amid the hall arose the festive board,
With nature's choicest gifts promiscuous stor'd:
So will'd the goddess to renew the smile
Of vital strength, long worn by days of toil.
On crystal chairs, that shin'd as lambent flame,
Each gallant youth attends his lovely dame;
Beneath a purple canopy of state
The beauteous goddess and the leader sat:
The banquet glows— Not such the feast, when all
The pride of luxury in Egypt's hall[{300}]
Before the love-sick Roman[590] spread the boast
Of ev'ry teeming sea and fertile coast.
Sacred to noblest worth and Virtue's ear,
Divine, as genial, was the banquet here;
The wine, the song, by sweet returns inspire,
Now wake the lover's, now the hero's fire.
On gold and silver from th' Atlantic main,
The sumptuous tribute of the sea's wide reign,
Of various savour, was the banquet pil'd;
Amid the fruitage mingling roses smil'd.
In cups of gold that shed a yellow light,
In silver, shining as the moon of night,
Amid the banquet flow'd the sparkling wine,
Nor gave Falernia's fields the parent vine:
Falernia's vintage, nor the fabled power
Of Jove's ambrosia in th' Olympian bower
To this compare not; wild, nor frantic fires,
Divinest transport this alone inspires.
The bev'rage, foaming o'er the goblet's breast,
The crystal fountain's cooling aid confess'd;[591]
The while, as circling flow'd the cheerful bowl,
Sapient discourse, the banquet of the soul,
Of richest argument and brightest glow,
Array'd in dimpling smiles, in easiest flow
Pour'd all its graces: nor in silence stood
The powers of music, such as erst subdued
The horrid frown of hell's profound domains,[592]
And sooth'd the tortur'd ghosts to slumber on their chains.[{301}]
To music's sweetest chords, in loftiest vein,
An angel siren joins the vocal strain;
The silver roofs resound the living song,
The harp and organ's lofty mood prolong
The hallow'd warblings; list'ning Silence rides
The sky, and o'er the bridled winds presides;
In softest murmurs flows the glassy deep,
And each, lull'd in his shade, the bestials sleep.
The lofty song ascends the thrilling skies,
The song of godlike heroes yet to rise;
Jove gave the dream, whose glow the siren fir'd,
And present Jove the prophecy inspir'd.
Not he, the bard of love-sick Dido's board,
Nor he, the minstrel of Phæacia's lord,
Though fam'd in song, could touch the warbling string,
Or, with a voice so sweet, melodious sing.
And thou, my muse, O fairest of the train,
Calliope, inspire my closing strain.
No more the summer of my life remains,[593]
My autumn's length'ning ev'nings chill my veins;
Down the black stream of years by woes on woes
Wing'd on, I hasten to the tomb's repose,[{302}]
The port whose deep, dark bottom shall detain
My anchor, never to be weigh'd again,
Never on other sea of life to steer
The human course.—Yet thou, O goddess, hear,
Yet let me live, though round my silver'd head
Misfortune's bitt'rest rage unpitying shed
Her coldest storms; yet, let me live to crown
The song that boasts my nation's proud renown.
Of godlike heroes sung the nymph divine,
Heroes whose deeds on Gama's crest shall shine;
Who through the seas, by Gama first explor'd,
Shall bear the Lusian standard and the sword,
Till ev'ry coast where roars the orient main,
Blest in its sway, shall own the Lusian reign;
Till ev'ry pagan king his neck shall yield,
Or vanquish'd, gnaw the dust on battle-field.
"High Priest of Malabar," the goddess sung,
"Thy faith repent not, nor lament thy wrong;[594]
Though, for thy faith to Lusus' gen'rous race,
The raging zamoreem thy fields deface:
From Tagus, lo, the great Pacheco sails
To India, wafted on auspicious gales.
Soon as his crooked prow the tide shall press,
A new Achilles shall the tide confess;
His ship's strong sides shall groan beneath his weight,
And deeper waves receive the sacred freight.[595][{303}]
Soon as on India's strand he shakes his spear,
The burning east shall tremble, chill'd with fear;
Reeking with noble blood, Cambalao's stream
Shall blaze impurpled on the ev'ning beam;
Urg'd on by raging shame, the monarch brings,
Banded with all their powers, his vassal kings:
Narsinga's rocks their cruel thousands pour,
Bipur's stern king attends, and thine, Tanore:
To guard proud Calicut's imperial pride
All the wide North sweeps down its peopled tide:
Join'd are the sects that never touch'd before,
By land the pagan, and by sea the Moor.
O'er land, o'er sea the great Pacheco strews
The prostrate spearmen, and the founder'd proas.[596]
Submiss and silent, palsied with amaze,
Proud Malabar th' unnumber'd slain surveys:
Yet burns the monarch; to his shrine he speeds;
Dire howl the priests, the groaning victim bleeds;
The ground they stamp, and, from the dark abodes,
With tears and vows, they call th' infernal gods.
Enrag'd with dog-like madness, to behold
His temples and his towns in flames enroll'd,[{304}]
Secure of promis'd victory, again
He fires the war, the lawns are heap'd with slain.
With stern reproach he brands his routed Nayres,
And for the dreadful field himself prepares;
His harness'd thousands to the fight he leads;
And rides exulting where the combat bleeds:
Amid his pomp his robes are sprinkled o'er,
And his proud face dash'd, with his menials' gore:[597]
From his high couch he leaps, and speeds to flight
On foot inglorious, in his army's sight.
Hell then he calls, and all the powers of hell,
The secret poison, and the chanted spell;
Vain as the spell the poison'd rage is shed,
For Heav'n defends the hero's sacred head.
Still fiercer from each wound the tyrant burns,
Still to the field with heavier force returns;
The seventh dread war he kindles; high in air
The hills dishonour'd lift their shoulders bare;
Their woods, roll'd down, now strew the river's side,
Now rise in mountain turrets o'er the tide;
Mountains of fire, and spires of bick'ring flame,
While either bank resounds the proud acclaim,
Come floating down, round Lusus' fleet to pour
Their sulph'rous entrails[598] in a burning shower.
Oh, vain the hope.—Let Rome her boast resign;
Her palms, Pacheco, never bloom'd like thine;

Nor Tiber's bridge,[599] nor Marathon's red field, Nor thine, Thermopylæ, such deeds beheld; Nor Fabius' arts such rushing storms repell'd.[{305}]

}

Swift as, repuls'd, the famish'd wolf returns
Fierce to the fold, and, wounded, fiercer burns;
So swift, so fierce, seven times, all India's might
Returns unnumber'd to the dreadful fight;
One hundred spears, seven times in dreadful stower,
Strews in the dust all India's raging power."
The lofty song (for paleness o'er her spread)
The nymph suspends, and bows the languid head;
Her falt'ring words are breathed on plaintive sighs:
"Ah, Belisarius, injur'd chief," she cries,
"Ah, wipe thy tears; in war thy rival see,
Injur'd Pacheco falls despoil'd like thee;
In him, in thee dishonour'd Virtue bleeds,
And Valour weeps to view her fairest deeds,—
Weeps o'er Pacheco, where, forlorn he lies
Low on an alms-house bed, and friendless dies.
Yet shall the muses plume his humble bier,
And ever o'er him pour th' immortal tear;
Though by the king, alone to thee unjust,
Thy head, great chief, was humbled in the dust,
Loud shall the muse indignant sound thy praise—
'Thou gav'st thy monarch's throne its proudest blaze.'
While round the world the sun's bright car shall ride,
So bright shall shine thy name's illustrious pride;
Thy monarch's glory, as the moon's pale beam,
Eclips'd by thine, shall shed a sickly gleam.
Such meed attends when soothing flatt'ry sways,
And blinded State its sacred trust betrays!"
Again the nymph exalts her brow, again
Her swelling voice resounds the lofty strain:
"Almeyda comes, the kingly name he bears,
Deputed royalty his standard rears:
In all the gen'rous rage of youthful fire
The warlike son attends the warlike sire.
Quiloa's blood-stain'd tyrant now shall feel
The righteous vengeance of the Lusian steel.
Another prince, by Lisbon's throne belov'd,
Shall bless the land, for faithful deeds approv'd.[{306}]
Mombaz shall now her treason's meed behold,
When curling flames her proudest domes enfold:
Involv'd in smoke, loud crashing, low shall fall
The mounded temple and the castled wall.
O'er India's seas the young Almeyda pours,
Scorching the wither'd air, his iron show'rs;
Torn masts and rudders, hulks and canvas riv'n,
Month after month before his prows are driv'n;
But Heav'n's dread will, where clouds of darkness rest,
That awful will, which knows alone the best,
Now blunts his spear: Cambaya's squadrons join'd
With Egypt's fleets, in pagan rage combin'd,
Engrasp him round; red boils the stagg'ring flood,
Purpled with volleying flames and hot with blood:
Whirl'd by the cannon's rage, in shivers torn,
His thigh, far scattered, o'er the wave is borne.
Bound to the mast the godlike hero stands,[600]
Waves his proud sword, and cheers his woful bands.
Though winds and seas their wonted aid deny,
To yield he knows not, but he knows to die:
Another thunder tears his manly breast:
Oh fly, blest spirit, to thy heav'nly rest!
Hark! rolling on the groaning storm I hear,
Resistless vengeance thund'ring on the rear.
I see the transports of the furious sire,
As o'er the mangled corse his eyes flash fire.
Swift to the fight, with stern though weeping eyes,
Fix'd rage fierce burning in his breast, he flies;
Fierce as the bull that sees his rival rove
Free with the heifers through the mounded grove,
On oak or beech his madd'ning fury pours;
So pours Almeyda's rage on Dabul's towers.[{307}]
His vanes wide waving o'er the Indian sky,
Before his prows the fleets of India fly;[601]
On Egypt's chief his mortars' dreadful tire
Shall vomit all the rage of prison'd fire:
Heads, limbs, and trunks shall choke the struggling tide,
Till, ev'ry surge with reeking crimson dy'd,
Around the young Almeyda's hapless urn
His conqueror's naked ghosts shall howl and mourn.
As meteors flashing through the darken'd air
I see the victors' whirling falchions glare;
Dark rolls the sulph'rous smoke o'er Dio's skies,
And shrieks of death, and shouts of conquest rise,
In one wide tumult blended. The rough roar
Shakes the brown tents on Ganges' trembling shore;
The waves of Indus from the banks recoil;
And matrons, howling on the strand of Nile,
By the pale moon, their absent sons deplore:
Long shall they wail; their sons return no more.
"Ah, strike the notes of woe!" the siren cries;
"A dreary vision swims before my eyes.
To Tagus' shore triumphant as he bends,
Low in the dust the hero's glory ends:
Though bended bow, nor thund'ring engine's hail,
Nor Egypt's sword, nor India's spear prevail,[{308}]
Fall shall the chief before a naked foe,
Rough clubs and rude-hurl'ed stones shall strike the blow;
The Cape of Tempests shall his tomb supply,
And in the desert sands his bones shall lie,
No boastful trophy o'er his ashes rear'd:
Such Heav'n's dread will, and be that will rever'd!
"But lo, resplendent shines another star,"
Loud she resounds, "in all the blaze of war!
Great Cunia[602] guards Melinda's friendly shore,
And dyes her seas with Oja's hostile gore;
Lamo and Brava's tow'rs his vengeance tell:
Green Madagascar's flow'ry dales shall swell
His echo'd fame, till ocean's southmost bound
On isles and shores unknown his name resound.
"Another blaze, behold, of fire and arms!
Great Albuquerque awakes the dread alarms:
O'er Ormuz' walls his thund'ring flames he pours,
While Heav'n, the hero's guide, indignant show'rs
Their arrows backwards[603] on the Persian foe,
Tearing the breasts and arms that twang'd the bow.
Mountains of salt and fragrant gums in vain
Were spent untainted to embalm the slain.
Such heaps shall strew the seas and faithless strand
Of Gerum, Mazcate,[604] and Calayat's land,
Till faithless Ormuz own the Lusian sway,
And Barem's[605] pearls her yearly safety pay.
"What glorious palms on Goa's isle I see,[606]
Their blossoms spread, great Albuquerque, for thee![{309}]
Through castled walls the hero breaks his way,
And opens with his sword the dread array
Of Moors and pagans; through their depth he rides,
Through spears and show'ring fire the battle guides.
As bulls enrag'd, or lions smear'd with gore,
His bands sweep wide o'er Goa's purpled shore.
Nor eastward far though fair Malacca[607] lie,
Her groves embosom'd in the morning sky;
Though with her am'rous sons the valiant line
Of Java's isle in battle rank combine,
Though poison'd shafts their pond'rous quivers store;
Malacca's spicy groves and golden ore,
Great Albuquerque, thy dauntless toils shall crown!
Yet art thou stain'd."[608] Here, with a sighful frown,[{310}]
The goddess paus'd, for much remain'd unsung,
But blotted with a humble soldier's wrong.[{311}]
"Alas," she cries, "when war's dread horrors reign,
And thund'ring batteries rock the fiery plain,
When ghastly famine on a hostile soil,
When pale disease attends on weary toil,
When patient under all the soldier stands,
Detested be the rage which then demands
The humble soldier's blood, his only crime
The am'rous frailty of the youthful prime!
Incest's cold horror here no glow restrain'd,
Nor sacred nuptial bed was here profan'd,
Nor here unwelcome force the virgin seiz'd;
A slave, lascivious, in his fondling pleas'd,
Resigns her breast. Ah, stain to Lusian fame!
('Twas lust of blood, perhaps 'twas jealous flame;)
The leader's rage, unworthy of the brave,
Consigns the youthful soldier to the grave.
Not Ammon[609] thus Apelles' love repaid,
Great Ammon's bed resign'd the lovely maid;
Nor Cyrus thus reprov'd Araspas' fire;
Nor haughtier Carlo thus assum'd the sire,
Though iron Baldwin to his daughter's bower,
An ill-match'd lover, stole in secret hour:
With nobler rage the lofty monarch glow'd,
And Flandria's earldom on the knight bestow'd."[610][{312}]
Again the nymph the song of fame resounds:
"Lo, sweeping wide o'er Ethiopia's bounds,
Wide o'er Arabia's purple shore, on high
The Lusian ensigns blaze along the sky:
Mecca, aghast, beholds the standards shine,
And midnight horror shakes Medina's shrine;[611]
Th' unhallow'd altar bodes th' approaching foe,
Foredoom'd in dust its prophet's tomb to strew.
Nor Ceylon's isle, brave Soarez, shall withhold
Its incense, precious as the burnish'd gold,
What time o'er proud Columbo's loftiest spire
Thy flag shall blaze: Nor shall th' immortal lyre
Forget thy praise, Sequeyra! To the shore
Where Sheba's sapient queen the sceptre bore,[612][{313}]
Braving the Red Sea's dangers shalt thou force
To Abyssinia's realm thy novel course;
And isles, by jealous Nature long conceal'd,
Shall to the wond'ring world be now reveal'd.
Great Menez next the Lusian sword shall bear;
Menez, the dread of Afric, high shall rear
His victor lance, till deep shall Ormuz groan,
And tribute doubled her revolt atone.
"Now shines thy glory in meridian height"—
And loud her voice she rais'd—"O matchless knight!
Thou, thou, illustrious Gama, thou shalt bring
The olive bough of peace, deputed king!
The lands by thee discover'd shall obey
Thy sceptred power, and bless thy regal sway.
But India's crimes, outrageous to the skies,
A length of these Saturnian days denies:
Snatch'd from thy golden throne,[613] the heav'ns shall claim
Thy deathless soul, the world thy deathless name.
"Now o'er the coast of faithless Malabar
Victorious Henry[614] pours the rage of war;
Nor less the youth a nobler strife shall wage,
Great victor of himself though green in age;
No restless slave of wanton am'rous fire,
No lust of gold shall taint his gen'rous ire.
While youth's bold pulse beats high, how brave the boy
Whom harlot-smiles nor pride of power decoy![{314}]
Immortal be his name! Nor less thy praise,
Great Mascarene,[615] shall future ages raise:
Though power, unjust, withhold the splendid ray
That dignifies the crest of sov'reign sway,
Thy deeds, great chief, on Bintam's humbled shore
(Deeds such as Asia never view'd before)
Shall give thy honest fame a brighter blaze
Than tyrant pomp in golden robes displays.
Though bold in war the fierce usurper shine,
Though Cutial's potent navy o'er the brine
Drive vanquish'd: though the Lusian Hector's sword
For him reap conquest, and confirm him lord;
Thy deeds, great peer, the wonder of thy foes,
Thy glorious chains unjust, and gen'rous woes,
Shall dim the fierce Sampayo's fairest fame,
And o'er his honours thine aloud proclaim.
Thy gen'rous woes! Ah gallant injur'd chief,
Not thy own sorrows give the sharpest grief.
Thou seest the Lusian name her honours stain,
And lust of gold her heroes' breasts profane;
Thou seest ambition lift the impious head,
Nor God's red arm, nor ling'ring justice dread;
O'er India's bounds thou seest these vultures prowl,
Full gorged with blood, and dreadless of control;
Thou seest and weepst thy country's blotted name,
The gen'rous sorrow thine, but not the shame.
Nor long the Lusian ensigns stain'd remain:
Great Nunio[616] comes, and razes every stain.
Though lofty Calè's warlike towers he rear;
Though haughty Melic groan beneath his spear;
All these, and Diu yielded to his name,
Are but th' embroid'ry of his nobler fame.
Far haughtier foes of Lusian race he braves;
The awful sword of justice high he waves:
Before his bar the injur'd Indian stands,
And justice boldly on his foe demands,[{315}]
The Lusian foe; in wonder lost, the Moor
Beholds proud rapine's vulture grip restore;
Beholds the Lusian hands in fetters bound
By Lusian hands, and wound repaid for wound.
Oh, more shall thus by Nunio's worth be won,
Than conquest reaps from high-plum'd hosts o'erthrown.
Long shall the gen'rous Nunio's blissful sway
Command supreme. In Dio's hopeless day

The sov'reign toil the brave Noronha takes; Awed by his fame [617] the fierce-soul'd Rumien shakes, And Dio's open'd walls in sudden flight forsakes.

}

A son of thine, O Gama,[618] now shall hold
The helm of empire, prudent, wise, and bold:
Malacca sav'd and strengthen'd by his arms,
The banks of Tor shall echo his alarms;
His worth shall bless the kingdoms of the morn,
For all thy virtues shall his soul adorn.
When fate resigns thy hero to the skies,
A vet'ran, fam'd on Brazil's shore[619] shall rise:
The wide Atlantic and the Indian main,
By turns, shall own the terrors of his reign.
His aid the proud Cambayan king implores,
His potent aid Cambaya's king restores.
The dread Mogul with all his thousands flies,
And Dio's towers are Souza's well-earn'd prize.
Nor less the zamorim o'er blood-stain'd ground[620]
Shall speed his legions, torn with many a wound,[{316}]
In headlong rout. Nor shall the boastful pride
Of India's navy, though the shaded tide
Around the squadron'd masts appear the down
Of some wide forest, other fate renown.
Loud rattling through the hills of Cape Camore[621]
I hear the tempest of the battle roar!
Clung to the splinter'd masts I see the dead
Badala's shore with horrid wreck bespread;
Baticala inflam'd by treach'rous hate,
Provokes the horrors of Badala's fate:
Her seas in blood, her skies enwrapt in fire,
Confess the sweeping storm of Souza's ire.
No hostile spear now rear'd on sea or strand,
The awful sceptre graces Souza's hand;
Peaceful he reigns, in counsel just and wise;
And glorious Castro now his throne supplies:
Castro, the boast of gen'rous fame, afar
From Dio's strand shall sway the glorious war.
Madd'ning with rage to view the Lusian band,
A troop so few, proud Dio's towers command,
The cruel Ethiop Moor to heav'n complains,
And the proud Persian's languid zeal arraigns.
The Rumien fierce, who boasts the name of Rome,[622]
With these conspires, and vows the Lusians' doom.[{317}]
A thousand barb'rous nations join their powers
To bathe with Lusian blood the Dion towers.
Dark rolling sheets, forth belch'd from brazen wombs,
And bor'd, like show'ring clouds, with hailing bombs,
O'er Dio's sky spread the black shades of death;
The mine's dread earthquakes shake the ground beneath.
No hope, bold Mascarene,[623] mayst thou respire,
A glorious fall alone, thy just desire.
When lo, his gallant son brave Castro sends—
Ah heav'n, what fate the hapless youth attends!
In vain the terrors of his falchion glare:
The cavern'd mine bursts, high in pitchy air
Rampire and squadron whirl'd convulsive, borne
To heav'n, the hero dies in fragments torn.
His loftiest bough though fall'n, the gen'rous sire
His living hope devotes with Roman ire.
On wings of fury flies the brave Alvar
Through oceans howling with the wintry war,
Through skies of snow his brother's vengeance bears;
And, soon in arms, the valiant sire appears:
Before him vict'ry spreads her eagle wing
Wide sweeping o'er Cambaya's haughty king.
In vain his thund'ring coursers shake the ground,
Cambaya bleeding of his might's last wound
Sinks pale in dust: fierce Hydal-Kan[624] in vain
Wakes war on war; he bites his iron chain.[{318}]
O'er Indus' banks, o'er Ganges' smiling vales,
No more the hind his plunder'd field bewails:
O'er ev'ry field, O Peace, thy blossoms glow,
The golden blossoms of thy olive bough;
Firm bas'd on wisest laws great Castro crowns,
And the wide East the Lusian empire owns.
"These warlike chiefs, the sons of thy renown,
And thousands more, O Vasco, doom'd to crown
Thy glorious toils, shall through these seas unfold
Their victor-standards blaz'd with Indian gold;
And in the bosom of our flow'ry isle,
Embath'd in joy shall o'er their labours smile.
Their nymphs like yours, their feast divine the same,
The raptur'd foretaste of immortal fame."
So sang the goddess, while the sister train
With joyful anthem close the sacred strain:
"Though Fortune from her whirling sphere bestow
Her gifts capricious in unconstant flow,
Yet laurell'd honour and immortal fame
Shall ever constant grace the Lusian name."
So sung the joyful chorus, while around
The silver roofs the lofty notes resound.
The song prophetic, and the sacred feast,
Now shed the glow of strength through ev'ry breast.
When with the grace and majesty divine,
Which round immortals when enamour'd shine,
To crown the banquet of their deathless fame,
To happy Gama thus the sov'reign dame:
"O lov'd of Heav'n, what never man before,
What wand'ring science never might explore,
By Heav'n's high will, with mortal eyes to see
Great nature's face unveil'd, is given to thee.[{319}]
Thou and thy warriors follow where I lead:
Firm be your steps, for arduous to the tread,
Through matted brakes of thorn and brier, bestrew'd
With splinter'd flint, winds the steep slipp'ry road."
She spake, and smiling caught the hero's hand,
And on the mountain's summit soon they stand;
A beauteous lawn with pearl enamell'd o'er,
Emerald and ruby, as the gods of yore
Had sported here. Here in the fragrant air
A wondrous globe appear'd, divinely fair!
Through ev'ry part the light transparent flow'd,
And in the centre, as the surface, glow'd.
The frame ethereal various orbs compose,
In whirling circles now they fell, now rose;
Yet never rose nor fell,[625] for still the same
Was ev'ry movement of the wondrous frame;
Each movement still beginning, still complete,
Its author's type, self-pois'd, perfection's seat.
Great Vasco, thrill'd with reverential awe,
And rapt with keen desire, the wonder saw.
The goddess mark'd the language of his eyes,
"And here," she cried, "thy largest wish suffice."[{320}]
Great nature's fabric thou dost here behold,
Th' ethereal, pure, and elemental mould
In pattern shown complete, as nature's God
Ordain'd the world's great frame, His dread abode;
For ev'ry part the Power Divine pervades,
The sun's bright radiance, and the central shades;
Yet, let not haughty reason's bounded line
Explore the boundless God, or where define,
Where in Himself, in uncreated light
(While all His worlds around seem wrapp'd in night),
He holds His loftiest state.[626] By primal laws
Impos'd on Nature's birth (Himself the cause),
By her own ministry, through ev'ry maze,
Nature in all her walks, unseen, He sways.
These spheres behold;[627] the first in wide embrace
Surrounds the lesser orbs of various face;
The Empyrean this, the holiest heav'n
To the pure spirits of the bless'd is giv'n:
No mortal eye its splendid rays may bear,
No mortal bosom feel the raptures there.
The earth, in all her summer pride array'd,
To this might seem a drear sepulchral shade.
Unmov'd it stands; within its shining frame,
In motion swifter than the lightning's flame,
Swifter than sight the moving parts may spy,
Another sphere whirls round its rapid sky.
Hence motion darts its force,[628] impulsive draws,
And on the other orbs impresses laws;[{321}]
The sun's bright car attentive to its force
Gives night and day, and shapes his yearly course;
Its force stupendous asks a pond'rous sphere
To poise its fury, and its weight to bear:
Slow moves that pond'rous orb; the stiff, slow pace
One step scarce gains, while wide his annual race
Two hundred times the sun triumphant rides;
The crystal heav'n is this, whose rigour guides
And binds the starry sphere:[629] That sphere behold,
With diamonds spangled, and emblaz'd with gold!
What radiant orbs that azure sky adorn,
Fair o'er the night in rapid motion borne!
Swift as they trace the heav'n's wide circling line,
Whirl'd on their proper axles, bright they shine.
Wide o'er this heav'n a golden belt displays
Twelve various forms; behold the glitt'ring blaze![{322}]
Through these the sun in annual journey towers,
And o'er each clime their various tempers pours;
In gold and silver of celestial mine
How rich far round the constellations shine!
Lo, bright emerging o'er the polar tides,
In shining frost the Northern Chariot rides;[630]
Mid treasur'd snows here gleams the grisly Bear,
And icy flakes incrust his shaggy hair.
Here fair Andromeda, of heav'n belov'd;
Her vengeful sire, and, by the gods reprov'd,

Beauteous Cassiope. Here, fierce and red, Portending storms, Orion lifts his head; And here the Dogs their raging fury shed.

}

The Swan, sweet melodist, in death he sings,
The milder Swan here spreads his silver wings.
Here Orpheus' Lyre, the melancholy Hare,
And here the watchful Dragon's eye-balls glare;
And Theseus' ship, oh, less renown'd than thine,
Shall ever o'er these skies illustrious shine.
Beneath this radiant firmament behold
The various planets in their orbits roll'd:[{323}]
Here, in cold twilight, hoary Saturn rides;
Here Jove shines mild, here fiery Mars presides;
Apollo here, enthron'd in light, appears
The eye of heav'n, emblazer of the spheres;
Beneath him beauteous glows the Queen of Love—
The proudest hearts her sacred influence prove;
Here Hermes, fam'd for eloquence divine,
And here Diana's various faces shine;
Lowest she rides, and, through the shadowy night,
Pours on the glist'ning earth her silver light.
These various orbs, behold, in various speed
Pursue the journeys at their birth decreed.
Now, from the centre far impell'd they fly,
Now, nearer earth they sail a lower sky,
A shorten'd course: Such are their laws impress'd
By God's dread will,[631] that will for ever best.[{324}]
"The yellow earth, the centre of the whole,
There lordly rests sustain'd on either pole.
The limpid air enfolds in soft embrace
The pond'rous orb, and brightens o'er her face.
Here, softly floating o'er th' aërial blue,
Fringed with the purple and the golden hue,
The fleecy clouds their swelling sides display;
From whence, fermented by the sulph'rous ray,
The lightnings blaze, and heat spreads wide and rare;
And now, in fierce embrace with frozen air,[{325}]
Their wombs, compress'd, soon feel parturient throws,
And white wing'd gales bear wide the teeming snows.
Thus, cold and heat their warring empires hold,
Averse yet mingling, each by each controll'd,
The highest air and ocean's bed they pierce,
And earth's dark centre feels their struggles fierce.
"The seat of man, the earth's fair breast, behold;
Here wood-crown'd islands wave their locks of gold.
Here spread wide continents their bosoms green,
And hoary Ocean heaves his breast between.
Yet, not th' inconstant ocean's furious tide
May fix the dreadful bounds of human pride.
What madd'ning seas between these nations roar!
Yet Lusus' hero-race shall visit ev'ry shore.
What thousand tribes, whom various customs sway,
And various rites, these countless shores display!
Queen of the world, supreme in shining arms,
Hers ev'ry art, and hers all wisdom's charms,
Each nation's tribute round her foot-stool spread,
Here Christian Europe[632] lifts the regal head.
Afric behold,[633] alas, what alter'd view!
Her lands uncultur'd, and her son's untrue;
Ungraced with all that sweetens human life,
Savage and fierce they roam in brutal strife;
Eager they grasp the gifts which culture yields,
Yet, naked roam their own neglected fields.
Lo, here enrich'd with hills of golden ore,
Monomotapa's empire hems the shore.
There round the Cape, great Afric's dreadful bound,
Array'd in storms (by you first compass'd round),
Unnumber'd tribes as bestial grazers stray,
By laws unform'd, unform'd by reason's sway:[{326}]
Far inward stretch the mournful sterile dales,
Where, on the parch'd hill-side, pale Famine wails.
On gold in vain the naked savage treads;
Low, clay-built huts, behold, and reedy sheds,
Their dreary towns. Gonzalo's zeal shall glow[634]
To these dark minds the path of light to show:
His toils to humanize the barb'rous mind
Shall, with the martyr's palms, his holy temples bind.
Great Naya,[635] too, shall glorious here display
His God's dread might: behold, in black array,
Num'rous and thick as when in evil hour
The feather'd race whole harvest fields devour,
So thick, so num'rous round Sofála's towers
Her barb'rous hordes remotest Africa pours:
In vain; Heav'n's vengeance on their souls impress'd,
They fly, wide scatter'd as the driving mist.
Lo, Quama there, and there the fertile Nile
Curs'd with that gorging fiend, the crocodile,
Wind their long way: the parent lake behold,
Great Nilus' fount, unseen, unknown of old,
From whence, diffusing plenty as he glides,
Wide Abyssinia's realm the stream divides.
In Abyssinia Heav'n's own altars blaze,[636]
And hallow'd anthems chant Messiah's praise.[{327}]
In Nile's wide breast the isle of Měrŏē see!
Near these rude shores a hero sprung from thee,
Thy son, brave Gama,[637] shall his lineage show
In glorious triumphs o'er the paynim[638] foe.
There by the rapid Ob her friendly breast
Melinda spreads, thy place of grateful rest.
Cape Aromata there the gulf defends,
Where by the Red Sea wave great Afric ends.
Illustrious Suez, seat of heroes old,
Fam'd Hierapolis, high-tower'd, behold.
Here Egypt's shelter'd fleets at anchor ride,
And hence, in squadrons, sweep the eastern tide.
And lo, the waves that aw'd by Moses' rod,
While the dry bottom Israel's armies trod,
On either hand roll'd back their frothy might,
And stood, like hoary rocks, in cloudy height.
Here Asia, rich in ev'ry precious mine,
In realms immense, begins her western line.[{328}]
Sinai behold, whose trembling cliffs of yore
In fire and darkness, deep pavilion'd, bore
The Hebrews' God, while day, with awful brow,
Gleam'd pale on Israel's wand'ring tents below.
The pilgrim now the lonely hill ascends,
And, when the ev'ning raven homeward bends,
Before the virgin-martyr's tomb[639] he pays
His mournful vespers, and his vows of praise.
Jidda behold, and Aden's parch'd domain
Girt by Arzira's rock, where never rain
Yet fell from heav'n; where never from the dale
The crystal riv'let murmur'd to the vale.
The three Arabias here their breasts unfold,
Here breathing incense, here a rocky wold;
O'er Dofar's plain the richest incense breathes,
That round the sacred shrine its vapour wreathes;
Here the proud war-steed glories in his force,
As, fleeter than the gale, he holds the course.
Here, with his spouse and household lodg'd in wains,
The Arab's camp shifts, wand'ring o'er the plains,
The merchant's dread, what time from eastern soil
His burthen'd camels seek the land of Nile.
Here Rosalgate and Farthac stretch their arms,
And point to Ormuz, fam'd for war's alarms;
Ormuz, decreed full oft to quake with dread
Beneath the Lusian heroes' hostile tread,
Shall see the Turkish moons,[640] with slaughter gor'd,
Shrink from the lightning of De Branco's sword.[641][{329}]
There on the gulf that laves the Persian shore,
Far through the surges bends Cape Asabore.
There Barem's isle;[642] her rocks with diamonds blaze,
And emulate Aurora's glitt'ring rays.
From Barem's shore Euphrates' flood is seen,
And Tigris' waters, through the waves of green
In yellowy currents many a league extend,
As with the darker waves averse they blend.
Lo, Persia there her empire wide unfolds!
In tented camp his state the monarch holds:
Her warrior sons disdain the arms of fire,[643]
And, with the pointed steel, to fame aspire;
Their springy shoulders stretching to the blow,
Their sweepy sabres hew the shrieking foe.
There Gerum's isle the hoary ruin wears
Where Time has trod:[644] there shall the dreadful spears
Of Sousa and Menezes strew the shore
With Persian sabres, and embathe with gore.
Carpella's cape, and sad Carmania's strand,
There, parch'd and bare, their dreary wastes expand.
A fairer landscape here delights the view;
From these green hills beneath the clouds of blue,
The Indus and the Ganges roll the wave,
And many a smiling field propitious lave.[{330}]
Luxurious here, Ulcinda's harvests smile,
And here, disdainful of the seaman's toil,
The whirling tides of Jaquet furious roar;
Alike their rage when swelling to the shore,
Or, tumbling backward to the deep, they force
The boiling fury of their gulfy course:
Against their headlong rage nor oars nor sails,
The stemming prow alone, hard toil'd, prevails.
Cambaya here begins her wide domain;
A thousand cities here shall own the reign
Of Lisboa's monarchs. He who first shall crown
Thy labours, Gama,[645] here shall boast his own.
The length'ning sea that washes India's strand
And laves the cape that points to Ceylon's land
(The Taprobanian isle,[646] renown'd of yore),
Shall see his ensigns blaze from shore to shore.
Behold how many a realm, array'd in green,
The Ganges' shore and Indus' bank between!
Here tribes unnumber'd, and of various lore,
With woful penance fiend-like shapes adore;
Some Macon's orgies;[647] all confess the sway
Of rites that shun, like trembling ghosts, the day.
Narsinga's fair domain behold; of yore
Here shone the gilded towers of Meliapore.
Here India's angels, weeping o'er the tomb
Where Thomas sleeps,[648] implore the day to come,
The day foretold, when India's utmost shore
Again shall hear Messiah's blissful lore.[{331}]
By Indus' banks the holy prophet trod,
And Ganges heard him preach the Saviour-God;[{332}]
Where pale disease erewhile the cheek consum'd,
Health, at his word, in ruddy fragrance bloom'd;
The grave's dark womb his awful voice obey'd,
And to the cheerful day restor'd the dead;
By heavenly power he rear'd the sacred shrine,
And gain'd the nations by his life divine.
The priests of Brahma's hidden rites beheld,
And envy's bitt'rest gall their bosom's swell'd.
A thousand deathful snares in vain they spread;
When now the chief who wore the triple thread,[649][{333}]
Fir'd by the rage that gnaws the conscious breast
Of holy fraud, when worth shines forth confess'd,
Hell he invokes, nor hell in vain he sues;
His son's life-gore his wither'd hands imbrues;[{334}]
Then, bold assuming the vindictive ire,
And all the passions of the woful sire,
Weeping, he bends before the Indian throne,
Arraigns the holy man, and wails his son:
A band of hoary priests attest the deed,
And India's king condemns the seer to bleed.
Inspir'd by Heav'n the holy victim stands,
And o'er the murder'd corse extends his hands:
'In God's dread power, thou slaughter'd youth, arise,
And name,thy murderer,' aloud he cries.
When, dread to view, the deep wounds instant close,
And, fresh in life, the slaughter'd youth arose,
And nam'd his treach'rous sire. The conscious air
Quiver'd, and awful horror raised the hair
On ev'ry head. From Thomas India's king
The holy sprinkling of the living spring
Receives, and wide o'er all his regal bounds
The God of Thomas ev'ry tongue resounds.
Long taught the holy seer the words of life;
The priests of Brahma still to deeds of strife
(So boil'd their ire) the blinded herd impell'd,
And high, to deathful rage, their rancour swell'd.
'Twas on a day, when melting on his tongue
Heav'n's offer'd mercies glow'd, the impious throng,
Rising in madd'ning tempest, round him shower'd
The splinter'd flint; in vain the flint was pour'd:
But Heav'n had now his finish'd labours seal'd;
His angel guards withdraw the etherial shield;
A Brahmin's javelin tears his holy breast——
Ah Heav'n, what woes the widow'd land express'd!
Thee, Thomas, thee, the plaintive Ganges mourn'd,[650]
And Indus' banks the murm'ring moan return'd;[{335}]
O'er ev'ry valley where thy footsteps stray'd,
The hollow winds the gliding sighs convey'd.
What woes the mournful face of India wore,
These woes in living pangs his people bore.
His sons, to whose illumin'd minds he gave
To view the ray that shines beyond the grave,
His pastoral sons bedew'd his corse with tears,
While high triumphant through the heav'nly spheres,
With songs of joy, the smiling angels wing
His raptur'd spirit to the eternal King.
O you, the followers of the holy seer,
Foredoom'd the shrines of Heav'n's own lore to rear,
You, sent by Heav'n his labours to renew,
Like him, ye Lusians, simplest Truth pursue.[651][{336}]
Vain is the impious toil, with borrow'd grace,
To deck one feature of her angel face;[{337}]
Behind the veil's broad glare she glides away,
And leaves a rotten form, of lifeless, painted clay.
"Much have you view'd of future Lusian reign;
Broad empires yet, and kingdoms wide, remain,
Scenes of your future toils and glorious sway—
And lo, how wide expands the Gangic bay!
Narsinga here in num'rous legions bold,
And here Oryxa boasts her cloth of gold.

The Ganges here in many a stream divides, Diffusing plenty from his fatt'ning tides, As through Bengala's rip'ning vales he glides;

}

Nor may the fleetest hawk, untir'd, explore
Where end the ricy groves that crown the shore.
There view what woes demand your pious aid!
On beds and litters, o'er the margin laid,
The dying[652] lift their hollow eyes, and crave
Some pitying hand to hurl them in the wave.
Thus Heav'n (they deem), though vilest guilt they bore
Unwept, unchanged, will view that guilt no more.
There, eastward, Arracan her line extends;
And Pegu's mighty empire southward bends:
Pegu, whose sons (so held old faith) confess'd
A dog their sire;[653] their deeds the tale attest.
A pious queen their horrid rage restrain'd;[654]
Yet, still their fury Nature's God arraign'd.[{338}]
Ah, mark the thunders rolling o'er the sky;
Yes, bath'd in gore, shall rank pollution lie.
"Where to the morn the towers of Tava shine,
Begins great Siam's empire's far-stretch'd line.
On Queda's fields the genial rays inspire
The richest gust of spicery's fragrant fire.
Malacca's castled harbour here survey,
The wealthful seat foredoom'd of Lusian sway.
Here to their port the Lusian fleets shall steer,
From ev'ry shore far round assembling here
The fragrant treasures of the eastern world:
Here from the shore by rolling earthquakes hurl'd,
Through waves all foam, Sumatra's isle was riv'n,
And, mid white whirlpools, down the ocean driv'n.[655]
To this fair isle, the golden Chersonese,
Some deem the sapient monarch plough'd the seas;
Ophir its Tyrian name.[656] In whirling roars
How fierce the tide boils down these clasping shores!
High from the strait the length'ning coast afar
Its moonlike curve points to the northern star,
Opening its bosom to the silver ray
When fair Aurora pours the infant day.
Patane and Pam, and nameless nations more,
Who rear their tents on Menam's winding shore,
Their vassal tribute yield to Siam's throne;
And thousands more,[657] of laws, of names unknown,[{339}]
That vast of land inhabit. Proud and bold,
Proud of their numbers, here the Laos hold
The far-spread lawns; the skirting hills obey
The barb'rous Avas', and the Brahma's sway.
Lo, distant far, another mountain chain
Rears its rude cliffs, the Guio's dread domain;
Here brutaliz'd the human form is seen,
The manners fiend-like as the brutal mien:
With frothing jaws they suck the human blood,
And gnaw the reeking limbs,[658] their sweetest food;[{340}]
Horrid, with figur'd seams of burning steel,
Their wolf-like frowns their ruthless lust reveal.
Cambaya there the blue-tinged Mecon laves,
Mecon the eastern Nile, whose swelling waves,
'Captain of rivers' nam'd, o'er many a clime,
In annual period, pour their fatt'ning slime.
The simple natives of these lawns believe
That other worlds the souls of beasts receive;[659][{341}]
Where the fierce murd'rer-wolf, to pains decreed,
Sees the mild lamb enjoy the heav'nly mead.
Oh gentle Mecon,[660] on thy friendly shore
Long shall the muse her sweetest off'rings pour!
When tyrant ire, chaf'd by the blended lust
Of pride outrageous, and revenge unjust,
Shall on the guiltless exile burst their rage,
And madd'ning tempests on their side engage,
Preserv'd by Heav'n the song of Lusian fame,
The song, O Vasco, sacred to thy name,
Wet from the whelming surge, shall triumph o'er
The fate of shipwreck on the Mecon's shore,
Here rest secure as on the muse's breast!
Happy the deathless song, the bard, alas, unblest!
"Chiampa there her fragrant coast extends,
There Cochin-China's cultur'd land ascends:
From Anam Bay begins the ancient reign
Of China's beauteous art-adorn'd domain;[{342}]
Wide from the burning to the frozen skies,
O'erflow'd with wealth, the potent empire lies.
Here, ere the cannon's rage in Europe roar'd,[661]
The cannon's thunder on the foe was pour'd:[{343}]
And here the trembling needle sought the north,
Ere Time in Europe brought the wonder forth.[{344}]
No more let Egypt boast her mountain pyres;
To prouder fame yon bounding wall aspires,[{345}]
A prouder boast of regal power displays
Than all the world beheld in ancient days.[{346}]

Not built, created seems the frowning mound; O'er loftiest mountain tops, and vales profound Extends the wondrous length, with warlike castles crown'd.

}

Immense the northern wastes their horrors spread;[662]
In frost and snow the seas and shores are clad.[{347}]
These shores forsake, to future ages due:
A world of islands claims thy happier view,
Where lavish Nature all her bounty pours,
And flowers and fruits of ev'ry fragrance showers.
Japan behold; beneath the globe's broad face
Northward she sinks, the nether seas embrace
Her eastern bounds; what glorious fruitage there,
Illustrious Gama, shall thy labours bear!
How bright a silver mine![663] when Heav'n's own lore
From pagan dross shall purify her ore.
"Beneath the spreading wings of purple morn,
Behold what isles these glist'ning seas adorn!
'Mid hundreds yet unnam'd, Ternate behold!
By day, her hills in pitchy clouds inroll'd,
By night, like rolling waves, the sheets of fire
Blaze o'er the seas, and high to heav'n aspire.
For Lusian hands here blooms the fragrant clove,
But Lusian blood shall sprinkle ev'ry grove.
The golden birds that ever sail the skies
Here to the sun display their shining dyes,
Each want supplied, on air they ever soar;
The ground they touch not[664] till they breathe no more.[{348}]
Here Banda's isles their fair embroid'ry spread
Of various fruitage, azure, white, and red;
And birds of ev'ry beauteous plume display
Their glitt'ring radiance, as, from spray to spray,
From bower to bower, on busy wings they rove,
To seize the tribute of the spicy grove.
Borneo here expands her ample breast,
By Nature's hand in woods of camphor dress'd;
The precious liquid, weeping from the trees,
Glows warm with health, the balsam of disease.
Fair are Timora's dales with groves array'd,
Each riv'let murmurs in the fragrant shade,
And, in its crystal breast, displays the bowers
Of Sanders, blest with health-restoring powers.
Where to the south the world's broad surface bends,
Lo, Sunda's realm her spreading arms extends.
From hence the pilgrim brings the wondrous tale,[665]
A river groaning through a dreary dale
(For all is stone around) converts to stone
Whate'er of verdure in its breast is thrown.
Lo, gleaming blue, o'er fair Sumatra's skies,
Another mountain's trembling flames arise;
Here from the trees the gum[666] all fragrance swells,
And softest oil a wondrous fountain wells.
Nor these alone the happy isle bestows,
Fine is her gold, her silk resplendent glows.
Wide forests there beneath Maldivia's tide[667]
From with'ring air their wondrous fruitage hide.[{349}]
The green-hair'd Nereids, tend the bow'ry dells,
Whose wondrous fruitage poison's rage expels.
In Ceylon, lo, how high yon mountain's brows!
The sailing clouds its middle height enclose.
Holy the hill is deem'd, the hallow'd tread
Of sainted footstep[668] marks its rocky head.
Lav'd by the Red Sea gulf, Socotra's bowers
There boast the tardy aloe's beauteous flowers.
On Afric's strand, foredoom'd to Lusian sway,
Behold these isles, and rocks of dusky gray;
From cells unknown here bounteous ocean pours
The fragrant amber on the sandy shores.
And lo, the Island of the Moon[669] displays
Her vernal lawns, and num'rous peaceful bays:
The halcyons[670] hov'ring o'er the bays are seen,
And lowing herds adorn the vales of green.
"Thus, from the cape where sail was ne'er unfurl'd,
Till thine, auspicious, sought the eastern world,
To utmost wave, where first the morning star
Sheds the pale lustre of her silver car,
Thine eyes have view'd the empires and the isles,
The world immense, that crowns thy glorious toils—
That world where ev'ry boon is shower'd from Heav'n,
Now to the West, by thee, great chief, is giv'n.[671][{350}]
"And still, O blest, thy peerless honours grow,
New op'ning views the smiling fates bestow.
With alter'd face the moving globe behold;
There ruddy ev'ning sheds her beams of gold.
While now, on Afric's bosom faintly die
The last pale glimpses of the twilight sky,
Bright o'er the wide Atlantic rides the morn,
And dawning rays another world adorn:
To farthest north that world enormous bends,
And cold, beneath the southern pole-star ends.
Near either pole[672] the barb'rous hunter, dress'd
In skins of bears, explores the frozen waste:
Where smiles the genial sun with kinder rays,
Proud cities tower, and gold-roof'd temples blaze.
This golden empire, by the heav'n's decree,
Is due, Castile, O favour'd power, to thee!
Even now, Columbus o'er the hoary tide
Pursues the ev'ning sun, his navy's guide.
Yet, shall the kindred Lusian share the reign,
What time this world shall own the yoke of Spain.
The first bold hero[673] who to India's shores
Through vanquish'd waves thy open'd path explores,
Driv'n by the winds of heav'n from Afric's strand,
Shall fix the holy cross on yon fair land.
That mighty realm, for purple wood renown'd,
Shall stretch the Lusian empire's western bound.
Fir'd by thy fame, and with his king in ire,
To match thy deeds shall Magalhaens aspire.[674][{351}]
In all but loyalty, of Lusian soul,
No fear, no danger shall his toils control.[{352}]
Along these regions, from the burning zone
To deepest south, he dares the course unknown.
While, to the kingdoms of the rising day,
To rival thee he holds the western way,
A land of giants[675] shall his eyes behold,
Of camel strength, surpassing human mould:[{353}]
And, onward still, thy fame his proud heart's guide
Haunting him unappeas'd, the dreary tide
Beneath the southern star's cold gleam he braves,
And stems the whirls of land-surrounded waves.
For ever sacred to the hero's fame,
These foaming straits shall bear his deathless name.
Through these dread jaws of rock he presses on,
Another ocean's breast, immense, unknown,
Beneath the south's cold wings, unmeasur'd, wide,
Receives his vessels; through the dreary tide
In darkling shades, where never man before
Heard the waves howl, he dares the nameless shore.
"Thus far, O favour'd Lusians, bounteous Heav'n
Your nation's glories to your view has giv'n.
What ensigns, blazing to the morn, pursue
The path of heroes, open'd first by you!
Still be it yours the first in fame to shine:
Thus shall your brides new chaplets still entwine,
With laurels ever new your brows enfold,
And braid your wavy locks with radiant gold.
"How calm the waves, how mild the balmy gale!
The halcyons call; ye Lusians, spread the sail;
Old ocean, now appeas'd, shall rage no more.
Haste, point the bowsprit to your native shore:
Soon shall the transports of the natal soil
O'erwhelm, in bounding joy, the thoughts of ev'ry toil."
The goddess spake[676]; and Vasco wav'd his hand,
And soon the joyful heroes crowd the strand.[{354}]
The lofty ships with deepen'd burthens prove
The various bounties of the Isle of Love.[{355}]
Nor leave the youths their lovely brides behind,
In wedded bands, while time glides on, conjoin'd;
Fair as immortal fame in smiles array'd,
In bridal smiles, attends each lovely maid.[{356}]
O'er India's sea, wing'd on by balmy gales
That whisper'd peace, soft swell'd the steady sails:
Smooth as on wing unmov'd the eagle flies,
When to his eyrie cliff he sails the skies,
Swift o'er the gentle billows of the tide,
So smooth, so soft, the prows of Gama glide;
And now their native fields, for ever dear,
In all their wild transporting charms appear;
And Tago's bosom, while his banks repeat
The sounding peals of joy, receives the fleet.
With orient titles and immortal fame
The hero band adorn their monarch's name;
Sceptres and crowns beneath his feet they lay,
And the wide East is doom'd to Lusian sway.[677]
Enough, my muse, thy wearied wing no more
Must to the seat of Jove triumphant soar.
Chill'd by my nation's cold neglect, thy fires
Glow bold no more, and all thy rage expires.
Yet thou, Sebastian, thou, my king, attend;
Behold what glories on thy throne descend!
Shall haughty Gaul or sterner Albion boast
That all the Lusian fame in thee is lost!
Oh, be it thine these glories to renew,
And John's bold path and Pedro's course pursue:[678]
Snatch from the tyrant-noble's hand the sword,
And be the rights of humankind restor'd.
The statesman prelate to his vows confine,
Alone auspicious at the holy shrine;
The priest, in whose meek heart Heav'n pours its fires,
Alone to Heav'n, not earth's vain pomp, aspires.
Nor let the muse, great king, on Tago's shore,
In dying notes the barb'rous age deplore.[{357}]
The king or hero to the muse unjust
Sinks as the nameless slave, extinct in dust.
But such the deeds thy radiant morn portends,
Aw'd by thy frown ev'n now old Atlas bends
His hoary head, and Ampeluza's fields
Expect thy sounding steeds and rattling shields.
And shall these deeds unsung, unknown, expire!
Oh, would thy smiles relume my fainting ire!
I, then inspir'd, the wond'ring world should see
Great Ammon's warlike son reviv'd in thee;
Reviv'd, unenvied[679] of the muse's flame
That o'er the world resounds Pelides'[680] name.[{358}]
"O let th' Iambic Muse revenge that wrong
Which cannot slumber in thy sheets of lead;
Let thy abused honour crie as long
As there be quills to write, or eyes to reade:
On his rank name let thine own votes be turn'd,
Oh may that man that hath the Muses scorn'd
Alive, nor dead, be ever of a Muse adorn'd."

THE END.

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Poems of Luis de Camoëns, with Remarks on his Life and Writings. By Lord Viscount Strangford. Fifth edition. London, 1808.

[2] The Camaõ. Formerly every well-regulated family in Spain retained one of these terrible attendants. The infidelity of its mistress was the only circumstance which could deprive it of life. This odious distrust of female honour is ever characteristic of a barbarous age.

[3] The laws of Portugal were peculiarly severe against those who carried on a love-intrigue within the palace: they punished the offence with death. Joam I. suffered one of his favourites to be burnt alive for it.—Ed.

[4] The Maekhaun, or Camboja.—Ed.

[5] Thomas Moore Musgrave's translation of The Lusiad is in blank verse, and is dedicated to the Earl of Chichester. I vol. 8vo. Murray; 1826.

[6] A document in the archives of the Portuguese India House, on which Lord Strangford relies, places it in 1524, or the following year.—Ed.

[7] The French translator gives us so fine a description of the person of Camoëns, that it seems borrowed from the Fairy Tales. It is universally agreed, however, that he was handsome, and had a most engaging mien and address. He is thus described by Nicolas Antonio "Mediocri statura fuit, et carne plena, capillis usque ad croci colorem flavescentibus, maxime in juventute. Eminebat ei frons, et medius nasus, cætera longus, et in fine crassiusculus."

[8] Castera tells us, "that posterity by no means enters into the resentment of our poet, and that the Portuguese historians make glorious mention of Barreto, who was a man of true merit." The Portuguese historians, however, knew not what true merit was. The brutal, uncommercial wars of Sampayo are by them mentioned as much more glorious than the less bloody campaigns of a Nunio, which established commerce and empire.

[9] Having named the Mecon, or Meekhaun, a river of Cochin China, he says—

Este recebera placido, e brando,
No seu regaço o Canto, que molhado, etc.

Literally thus: "On his gentle hospitable bosom (sic brando poeticé) shall he receive the song, wet from woful unhappy shipwreck, escaped from destroying tempests, from ravenous dangers, the effect of the unjust sentence upon him, whose lyre shall be more renowned than enriched." When Camoëns was commissary, he visited the islands of Ternate, Timor, etc., described in the Lusiad.

[10] According to the Portuguese Life of Camoëns, prefixed to Gedron's the best edition of his works, Diogo de Couto, the historian, one of the company in this homeward voyage, wrote annotations upon the Lusiad, under the eye of its author. But these, unhappily, have never appeared in public.

[11] Cardinal Henry's patronage of learning and learned men is mentioned with cordial esteem by the Portuguese writers. Happily they also tell us what that learning was. It was to him the Romish Friars of the East transmitted their childish forgeries of inscriptions and miracles. He corresponded with them, directed their labours, and received the first accounts of their success. Under his patronage it was discovered, that St. Thomas ordered the Indians to worship the cross; and that the Moorish tradition of Perimal (who, having embraced Mohammedanism, divided his kingdom among his officers, whom he rendered tributary to the Zamorim) was a malicious misrepresentation, for that Perimal, having turned Christian, resigned his kingdom and became a monk. Such was the learning patronized by Henry, under whose auspices that horrid tribunal, the Inquisition, was erected at Lisbon, where he himself long presided as Inquisitor-General. Nor was he content with this: he established an Inquisition, also, at Goa, and sent a whole apparatus of holy fathers to form a court of inquisitors, to suppress the Jews and reduce the native Christians to the see of Rome. Nor must the treatment experienced by Buchanan at Lisbon be here omitted. John III., earnest to promote the cultivation of polite literature among his subjects, engaged Buchanan, the most elegant Latinist, perhaps, of modern times, to teach philosophy and the belles lettres at Lisbon. But the design of the monarch was soon frustrated by the clergy, at the head of whom was Henry, afterwards king. Buchanan was committed to prison, because it was alleged that he had eaten flesh in Lent, and because in his early youth, at St. Andrew's in Scotland, he had written a satire against the Franciscans; for which, however, ere he would venture to Lisbon, John had promised absolute indemnity. John, with much difficulty, procured his release from a loathsome jail, but could not effect his restoration as a teacher. No, he only changed his prison, for Buchanan was sent to a monastery "to be instructed by the monks," of the men of letters patronized by Henry. These are thus characterized by their pupil Buchanan,—nec inhumanis, nec malis, sed omnis religionis ignaris: "Not uncivilized, not flagitious, but ignorant of every religion."

[12] According to Gedron, a second edition of the Lusiad appeared in the same year with the first. There are two Italian and four Spanish translations of it. A hundred years before Castera's version it appeared in French. Thomas de Faria, Bp. of Targa in Africa, translated it into Latin. Le P. Niceron says there were two other Latin translations. It is translated, also, into Hebrew, with great elegance and spirit, by one Luzzatto, a learned and ingenious Jew, author of several poems in that language, who died in the Holy Land.

[13] This passage in inverted commas is cited, with the alteration of the name only, from Langhorne's account of the life of William Collins.

[14] The drama and the epopœia are in nothing so different as in this—the subjects of the drama are inexhaustible, those of the epopœia are perhaps exhausted. He who chooses war, and warlike characters, cannot appear as an original. It was well for the memory of Pope that he did not write the epic poem he intended. It would have been only a copy of Virgil. Camoëns and Milton have been happy in the novelty of their subjects, and these they have exhausted. There cannot possibly be so important a voyage as that which gave the eastern world to the western. And, did even the story of Columbus afford materials equal to that of Gama, the adventures of the hero, and the view of the extent of his discoveries must now appear as servile copies of the Lusiad.

[15] See his Satyricon.—Ed.

[16] See letters on Chivalry and Romance.

[17] The Lusiad is also rendered poetical by other fictions. The elegant satire on King Sebastian, under the name of Acteon; and the prosopopœia of the populace of Portugal venting their murmurs upon the beach when Gama sets sail, display the richness of our author's poetical genius, and are not inferior to anything of the kind in the classics.

[18] Hence the great interest which we as Britons either do, or ought to, feel in this noble epic. We are the successors of the Portuguese in the possession and government of India; and therefore what interested them must have for us, as the actual possessors, a double interest.—Ed.

[19] Castera was every way unequal to his task. He did not perceive his author's beauties. He either suppresses or lowers the most poetical passages, and substitutes French tinsel and impertinence in their place.

[20] Pope, Odyss. XX.

[21] Richard Fanshaw, Esq., afterwards Sir Richard, was English Ambassador both at Madrid and Lisbon. He had a taste for literature, and translated from the Italian several pieces which were of service in the refinement of our poetry. Though his Lusiad, by the dedication of it to William, Earl of Strafford, dated May 1, 1655, seems as if published by himself, we are told by the editor of his Letters, that "during the unsettled times of our anarchy, some of his MSS., falling by misfortune into unskilful hands, were printed and published without his knowledge or consent, and before he could give them his last finishing strokes: such was his translation of the Lusiad." He can never have enough of conceits, low allusions, and expressions. When gathering of flowers is simply mentioned (C. 9, st. 24) he gives it, "gather'd flowers by pecks;" and the Indian Regent is avaricious (C. 8, st. 95)—

Meaning a better penny thence to get.

But enough of these have already appeared in the notes. It may be necessary to add, that the version of Fanshaw, though the Lusiad very particularly requires them, was given to the public without one note.

[22] Some liberties of a less poetical kind, however, require to be mentioned. In Homer and Virgil's lists of slain warriors, Dryden and Pope have omitted several names which would have rendered English versification dull and tiresome. Several allusions to ancient history and fable have for this reason been abridged; e.g. in the prayer of Gama (Book 6) the mention of Paul, "thou who deliveredst Paul and defendest him from quicksands and wild waves—

Das scyrtes arenosas e ondas feas—"

is omitted. However excellent in the original, the prayer in English would lose both its dignity and ardour. Nor let the critic, if he find the meaning of Camoëns in some instances altered, imagine that he has found a blunder in the translator. He who chooses to see a slight alteration of this kind will find an instance, which will give him an idea of others, in Canto 8, st. 48, and another in Canto 7, st. 41. It was not to gratify the dull few, whose greatest pleasure in reading a translation is to see what the author exactly says; it was to give a poem that might live in the English language, which was the ambition of the translator. And, for the same reason, he has not confined himself to the Portuguese or Spanish pronunciation of proper names. Regardless, therefore, of Spanish pronunciation, the translator has accented Granáda, Evóra, etc. in the manner which seemed to him to give most dignity to English versification. In the word Sofala he has even rejected the authority of Milton, and followed the more sonorous usage of Fanshaw. Thus Sir Richard: "Against Sofála's batter'd fort." Which is the more sonorous there can be no dispute.

[23] Judges xviii. 7, 9, 27, 28.

[24] This ferocity of savage manners affords a philosophical account how the most distant and inhospitable climes were first peopled. When a Romulus erects a monarchy and makes war on his neighbours, some naturally fly to the wilds. As their families increase, the stronger commit depredations on the weaker; and thus from generation to generation, they who either dread just punishment or unjust oppression, fly farther and farther in search of that protection which is only to be found in civilized society.

[25] The author of that voluminous work, Histoire Philosophique et Politique des Etablissements et du Commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, is one of the many who assert that savage life is happier than civil. His reasons are thus abridged: The savage has no care or fear for the future; his hunting and fishing give him a certain subsistence. He sleeps sound, and knows not the diseases of cities. He cannot want what he does not desire, nor desire that which he does not know, and vexation or grief do not enter his soul. He is not under the control of a superior in his actions; in a word, says our author, the savage only suffers the evils of nature.

If the civilized, he adds, enjoy the elegancies of life, have better food, and are more comfortably defended against the change of seasons, it is use which makes these things necessary, and they are purchased by the painful labours of the multitude who are the basis of society. To what outrages is not the man of civil life exposed? if he has property, it is in danger; and government or authority is, according to our author, the greatest of all evils. If there is a famine in North America, the savage, led by the wind and the sun, can go to a better clime; but in the horrors of famine, war, or pestilence, the ports and barriers of civilized states place the subjects in a prison, where they must perish. There still remains an infinite difference between the lot of the civilized and the savage; a difference, all entirely to the disadvantage of society, that injustice which reigns in the inequality of fortunes and conditions.

[26] The innocent simplicity of the Americans in their conferences with the Spaniards, and the horrid cruelties they suffered from them, divert our view from their complete character. Almost everything was horrid in their civil customs and religious rites. In some tribes, to cohabit with their mothers, sisters, and daughters was esteemed the means of domestic peace. In others, catamites were maintained in every village; they went from house to house as they pleased, and it was unlawful to refuse them what victuals they chose. In every tribe, the captives taken in war were murdered with the most wanton cruelty, and afterwards devoured by the victors. Their religious rites were, if possible, still more horrid. The abominations of ancient Moloch were here outnumbered; children, virgins, slaves, and captives bled on different altars, to appease their various gods. If there was a scarcity of human victims, the priests announced that the gods were dying of thirst for human blood. And, to prevent a threatened famine, the kings of Mexico were obliged to make war on the neighbouring states. The prisoners of either side died by the hand of the priest. But the number of the Mexican sacrifices so greatly exceeded those of other nations, that the Tlascalans, who were hunted down for this purpose, readily joined Cortez with about 200,000 men, and enabled him to make one great sacrifice of the Mexican nation. Who that views Mexico, steeped in her own blood, can restrain the emotion which whispers to him, This is the hand of Heaven!—By the number of these sacred butcheries, one would think that cruelty was the greatest amusement of Mexico. At the dedication of the temple of Vitzliputzli, A.D. 1486, no less than 64,080 human victims were sacrificed in four days. And, according to the best accounts, the annual sacrifices of Mexico required several thousands. The skulls of the victims sometimes were hung on strings which reached from tree to tree around their temples, and sometimes were built up in towers and cemented with lime. In some of these towers Andrew de Tapia one day counted 136,000 skulls. During the war with Cortez they increased their usual sacrifices, till priest and people were tired of their bloody religion.—See, for ample justification of these statements, the Histories of the Conquest of Mexico and Peru, by Prescott.—Ed.

[27] Mahommed Ali Khan, Nawab of the Carnatic, declared, "I met the British with that freedom of openness which they love, and I esteem it my honour as well as security to be the ally of such a nation of princes."

[28] Every man must follow his father's trade, and must marry a daughter of the same occupation. Innumerable are their other barbarous restrictions of genius and inclination.

[29] Extremity; for it were both highly unjust and impolitic in government to allow importation in such a degree as might be destructive of domestic agriculture.

[30] Even that warm admirer of savage happiness, the author of Histoire Philosophique et Politique des Etablissements, confesses that the wild Americans seem destitute of the feeling of love. When the heat of passion, says he, is gratified, they lose all affection and attachment for their women, whom they degrade to the most servile offices.—A tender remembrance of the first endearments, a generous participation of care and hope, the compassionate sentiments of honour; all these delicate feelings, which arise into affection, and bind attachment, are indeed, incompatible with the ferocious and gross sensations of barbarians.

[31] It is a question still debated among medical writers, and by no means yet decided, whether the disease referred to is of American origin. We do not read, it is true, of any such disease in the pages of the ancient classic writers; it has hence been inferred that it was unknown to them.—Ed.

[32] The degeneracy of the Roman literature preceded the fate of the state, and the reason is obvious. The men of fortune grew frivolous, and superficial in every branch of knowledge, and were therefore unable to hold the reigns of empire. The degeneracy of literary taste is, therefore, the surest proof of the general ignorance.

[33] The soldiers and navigators were the only considerable gainers by their acquirements in the Indies. Agriculture and manufactures are the natural strength of a nation; these received little or no increase in Spain and Portugal by the great acquisitions of these crowns.

[34] Ariosto, who adopted the legends of the old romance, chose this period for the subject of his Orlando Furioso. Paris besieged by the Saracens, Orlando and the other Christian knights assemble in aid of Charlemagne, who are opposed in their amours and in battle by Rodomont, Ferraw, and other Saracen knights. That there was a noted Moorish Spaniard, named Ferraw, a redoubted champion of that age, we have the testimony of Marcus Antonius Sabellicus, a writer of note of the fifteenth century.

[35] Small indeed in extent, but so rich in fertility, that it was called Medulla Hispanica, "The marrow of Spain."—Vid. Resandii Antiq. Lusit. l. iii.

[36] In propriety most certainly a crusade, though that term has never before been applied to this war.

[37] The power of deposing, and of electing their kings, under certain circumstances, is vested in the people by the statutes of Lamego.

[38] For the character of this prince, see the note, Bk. iii. p. 96.

[39] For anecdotes of this monarch, see the notes, Bk. iii. p. 99.

[40] This great prince was the natural son of Pedro the Just. Some years after the murder of his beloved spouse, Inez de Castro (see Lusiad, Bk. iii. p. 96), lest his father, whose severe temper he too well knew, should force him into a disagreeable marriage, Don Pedro commenced an amour with a Galician lady, who became the mother of John I., the preserver of the Portuguese monarchy.

[41] The sons of John, who figure in history, were Edward, Juan, Fernando, Pedro and Henry. Edward succeeded his father. Juan, distinguished both in the camp and cabinet, in the reign of his brother Edward had the honour to oppose the expedition against Tangier, which was proposed by his brother Fernando, in whose perpetual captivity it ended.

[42] The dominion of the Portuguese in the Indian seas cut the sinews of the Egyptian and other Mohammedan powers.

[43] Flanders has been the school-mistress of husbandry to Europe. Sir Charles Lisle, a royalist, resided in this country several years during the Commonwealth; and after the Restoration, rendered England the greatest service, by introducing the present system of agriculture. Where trade increases, men's thoughts are set in action; hence the increase of food which is wanted is supplied by a redoubled attention to husbandry; and hence it was that agriculture was of old improved and diffused by the Phœnician colonies.

[44] At the reduction of Ceuta in Africa, and in other engagements, Prince Henry displayed military genius and valour of the first magnitude. The important fortress of Ceuta was in a manner won by his own sword.

[45] Nam, in Portuguese, a negative. It is now called by corruption Cape Nun.

[46] Cape Bojador, from the Spanish, bojar, to compass or go about.

[47] Unluckily, he also left on this island two rabbits, whose young so increased that in a few years it was found not habitable, every vegetable being destroyed by the great increase of these animals.

[48] Madeira in Portuguese signifies timber.—Ed.

[49] If one would trace the true character of Cortez and the Americans, he must have recourse to the numerous Spanish writers, who were either witnesses of the first wars, or soon after travelled in these countries. [The reader cannot do better than refer to Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico and Peru for information on these points.—Ed.] In these he will find many anecdotes which afford a light not to be found in our modern histories. Cortez set out to take gold by force, and not by establishing any system of commerce with the natives, the only just reason for effecting a settlement in a foreign country. He was asked by various states, what commodities or drugs he wanted, and was promised abundant supply. He and his Spaniards, he answered, had a disease at their hearts, which nothing but gold could cure; and he received intelligence that Mexico abounded with it. Under pretence of a friendly conference, he made the Mexican emperor, Montezuma, his prisoner, and ordered him to pay tribute to Charles V. Immense sums were paid, but the demand was boundless. Tumults ensued. Cortez displayed amazing generalship, and some millions of those who boasted of the greatness of Montezuma were sacrificed to the disease of Cortez's heart. Pizarro, however, in the barbarity of his character, far exceeded him. There is a bright side to the character of Cortez, if we can forget that his avarice was the cause of a most unjust and most bloody war; but Pizarro is a character completely detestable, destitute of every spark of generosity. He massacred the Peruvians because they were barbarians, and he himself could not read. Atabalipa, the Peruvian Inca, amazed at the art of reading, got a Spaniard to write the word Dios (God) on his finger. On trying if the Spaniards agreed in what it signified, he discovered that Pizarro could not read. And Pizarro, in revenge of the contempt he perceived in the face of Atabalipa, ordered that prince to be tried for his life, for having concubines, and being an idolater. Atabalipa was condemned to be burned; but on submitting to baptism, he was only hanged. See Prescott's Conquest of Peru.

[50] The difficulties he surmounted, and the assistance he received, are sufficient proofs that an adventurer of inferior birth could never have carried his designs into execution.

[51] Don Pedro was villainously accused of treacherous designs by his illegitimate brother, the first Duke of Braganza. Henry left his town of Sagrez to defend his brother at court, but in vain. Pedro, finding the young king in the power of Braganza, fled, and soon after was killed in defending himself against a party who were sent to seize him. His innocence, after his death, was fully proved, and his nephew, Alonzo V., gave him an honourable burial.

[52] Henry, who undertook to extend the boundaries which ignorance had given to the world, had extended them much beyond the sensible horizon long ere Columbus appeared. Columbus indeed taught the Spaniards the use of longitude and latitude in navigation, but that great mathematician, Henry, was the author of that grand discovery, and of the use of the compass. Every alteration ascribed to Columbus, had almost fifty years before been effected by Henry. Even Henry's idea of sailing to India was adopted by Columbus. It was everywhere his proposal. When he arrived in the West Indies he thought he had found the Ophir of Solomon, and thence these islands received their general name, and on his return he told John II. that he had been at the islands of India. To find the Spice Islands of the East was his proposal at the court of Spain; and even on his fourth and last voyage in 1502, three years after Gama's return, he promised the King of Spain to find India by a westward passage. But though great discoveries rewarded his toils, his first and last purpose he never completed. It was reserved for Magalhaens to discover the westward route to the Eastern world.

Gomara and other Spanish writers relate, that while Columbus lived in Madeira, a pilot, the only survivor of a ship's crew, died at his house. This pilot, they say, had been driven to the West Indies, or America, by tempest, and on his death-bed communicated the journal of his voyage to Columbus.

[53] Or Bethlehem, so named from the chapel.

[54] Now called St. Helen's.

[55] The voyage of Gama has been called merely a coasting one, and therefore regarded as much less dangerous and heroical than that of Columbus, or of Magalhaens. But this is one of the opinions hastily taken up, and founded on ignorance. Columbus and Magalhaens undertook to navigate unknown oceans, and so did Gama; with this difference, that the ocean around the Cape of Good Hope, which Gama was to encounter, was believed to be, and had been avoided by Diaz, as impassable. Prince Henry suggested that the current of Cape Bojador might be avoided by standing out to sea, and thus that Cape was first passed. Gama for this reason did not coast, but stood out to sea for upwards of three months of tempestuous weather. The tempests which afflicted Columbus and Magalhaens are by their different historians described with circumstances of less horror and danger than those which attacked Gama. All the three commanders were endangered by mutiny; but none of their crews, save Gama's, could urge the opinion of ages, and the example of a living captain, that the dreadful ocean which they attempted was impassable. Columbus and Magalhaens always found means, after detecting a conspiracy, to keep the rest in hope; but Gama's men, when he put the pilots in irons, continued in the utmost despair. Columbus was indeed ill obeyed; Magalhaens sometimes little better; but nothing, save the wonderful authority of Gama's command, could have led his crew through the tempest which he surmounted ere he doubled the Cape of Good Hope. Columbus, with his crew, must have returned. The expedients which he used to soothe them, would, under his authority, have had no avail in the tempest which Gama rode through. From every circumstance it is evident that Gama had determined not to return, unless he found India. Nothing less than such resolution to perish or attain his point could have led him on.

[56] It afterwards appeared that the Moorish King of Mombas had been informed of what happened at Mozambique, and intended to revenge it by the total destruction of the fleet.

[57] Amerigo Vespucci, describing his voyage to America, says, "Having passed the line, e come desideroso d'essere autore che segnassi la stella—desirous to be the namer and discoverer of the Pole-star of the other hemisphere, I lost my sleep many nights in contemplating the stars of the other pole." He then laments, that as his instruments could not discover any star of less motion then ten degrees, he had not the satisfaction of giving a name to any one. But as he observed four stars, in form of an almond, which had but little motion, he hoped in his next voyage he should be able to mark them out.—All this is curious, and affords a good comment on the temper of the man who had the art to defraud Columbus, by giving his own name to America; of which he challenged the discovery. Near fifty years before the voyage of Amerigo Vespucci, the Portuguese had crossed the line; and Diaz fourteen, and Gama nearly three years before, had doubled the Cape of Good Hope; had discovered seven stars in the constellation of the south pole, and from the appearance of the four most luminous, had given it the name of "The Cross," a figure which it better resembles than that of an almond.

[58] Properly "Samudra-Rajah," King of the Sea, corrupted into Zamorim.—Ed.

[59] "Kotwâl" signifies Superintendent of the Police.—Ed.

[60] Faria y Sousa.

[61] It was the custom of the first discoverers to erect crosses at various places remarkable in their voyage. Gama erected six: one, dedicated to St. Raphael, at the river of Good Signs; one to St. George, at Mozambique; one to St. Stephen, at Melinda; one to St. Gabriel, at Calicut; and one to St. Mary, at the island thence named, near Anchediva.

[62] The Lusiad; in the original, Os Lusiadas, The Lusiads, from the Latin name (Lusitania) of Portugal, derived from Lusus or Lysas, the companion of Bacchus in his travels, who settled a colony in Lusitania, See Plin. 1, iii. c. i.

[63] Thro' seas where sail was never spread before.—M. Duperron de Castera, who has given a French prose translation, or rather paraphrase, of the Lusiad, has a long note on this passage, which, he tells us, must not be understood literally. Our author, he says, could not be ignorant that the African and Indian Oceans had been navigated before the times of the Portuguese. The Phœnicians, whose fleets passed the straits of Gibraltar, made frequent voyages in these seas, though they carefully concealed the course of their navigation that other nations might not become partakers of their lucrative traffic.—See the Periplus of Hanno, in Cory's Ancient Fragments.—Ed.

[64] And all my country's wars.—He interweaves artfully the history of Portugal.—Voltaire.

[65] To Holy Faith unnumber'd altars rear'd.—In no period of history does human nature appear with more shocking, more diabolical features than in the wars of Cortez, and the Spanish conquerors of South America. Zeal for the Christian religion was esteemed, at the time of the Portuguese grandeur, as the most cardinal virtue, and to propagate Christianity and extirpate Mohammedanism were the most certain proofs of that zeal. In all their expeditions this was professedly a principal motive of the Lusitanian monarchs, and Camoëns understood the nature of epic poetry too well to omit it.

[66] Ulysses, who is the subject of the Odyssey.

[67] The voyage of Æneas, described in the Æneid of Virgil.

[68] Alexander the Great, who claimed to be the son of Jupiter Ammon.

[69] Vasco de Gama is, in a great measure, though not exclusively, the hero of the Lusiad.

[70] King Sebastian, who came to the throne in his minority. Though the warm imagination of Camoëns anticipated the praises of the future hero, the young monarch, like Virgil's Pollio, had not the happiness to fulfil the prophecy. His endowments and enterprising genius promised, indeed, a glorious reign. Ambitious of military laurels, he led a powerful army into Africa, on purpose to replace Muley Hamet on the throne of Morocco, from which he had been deposed by Muley Molucco. On the 4th of August, 1578, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, he gave battle to the usurper on the plains of Alcazar. This was that memorable engagement, to which the Moorish Emperor, extremely weakened by sickness, was carried in his litter. By the impetuosity of the attack, the first line of the Moorish infantry was broken, and the second disordered. Muley Molucco on this mounted his horse, drew his sabre, and would have put himself at the head of his troops, but was prevented by his attendants. His emotion of mind was so great that he fell from his horse, and one of his guards having caught him in his arms, conveyed him to his litter, where, putting his finger on his lips to enjoin them silence, he immediately expired. Hamet Taba stood by the curtains of the carriage, opened them from time to time, and gave out orders as if he had received them from the Emperor. Victory declared for the Moors, and the defeat of the Portuguese was so total, that not above fifty of their whole army escaped. Hieron de Mendoça and Sebastian de Mesa relate, that Don Sebastian, after having two horses killed under him, was surrounded and taken; but the party who had secured him, quarrelling among themselves whose prisoner he was, a Moorish officer rode up and struck the king a blow over the right eye, which brought him to the ground; when, despairing of ransom, the others killed him. About twenty years after this fatal defeat there appeared a stranger at Venice, who called himself Sebastian, King of Portugal, whom he so perfectly resembled, that the Portuguese of that city acknowledged him for their sovereign. He underwent twenty-eight examinations before a committee of the nobles, in which he gave a distinct account of the manner in which he had passed his time from the fatal defeat at Alcazar. It was objected, that the successor of Muley Molucco sent a corpse to Portugal which had been owned as that of the king by the Portuguese nobility who survived the battle. To this he replied, that his valet de chambre had produced that body to facilitate his escape, and that the nobility acted upon the same motive, and Mesa and Baena confess, that some of this nobility, after their return to Portugal acknowledged that the corpse was so disfigured with wounds that it was impossible to know it. He showed natural marks on his body, which many remembered on the person of the king whose name he assumed. He entered into a minute detail of the transactions that had passed between himself and the republic, and mentioned the secrets of several conversations with the Venetian ambassadors in the palace of Lisbon. He fell into the hands of the Spaniards, who conducted him to Naples, where they treated him with the most barbarous indignities. After they had often exposed him, mounted on an ass, to the cruel insults of the brutal mob, he was shipped on board a galley, as a slave. He was then carried to St. Lucar, from thence to a castle in the heart of Castile, and never was heard of more. The firmness of his behaviour, his singular modesty and heroical patience, are mentioned with admiration by Le Clede. To the last he maintained the truth of his assertions: a word never slipped from his lips which might countenance the charge of imposture, or justify the cruelty of his persecutors.

[71] Portugal, when Camoëns wrote his Lusiad, was at the zenith of its power and splendour. The glorious successes which had attended the arms of the Portuguese in Africa, had gained them the highest military reputation. Their fleets covered the ocean. Their dominions and settlements extended along the western and eastern sides of the vast African continent. From the Red Sea to China and Japan, they were sole masters of the riches of the East; and in America, the fertile and extensive regions of Brazil completed their empire.

[72] Lusitania is the Latin name of a Roman province which comprised the greater part of the modern kingdom of Portugal, besides a considerable portion of Leon and Spanish Estremadura.—Ed.

[73] The sun.—Imitated, perhaps, from Rutilius, speaking of the Roman Empire—

Volvitur ipse tibi, qui conspicit omnia, Phœbus,
Atque tuis ortos in tua condit equos;

or, more probably, from these lines of Buchanan, addressed to John III. King of Portugal, the grandfather of Sebastian—

Inque tuis Phœbus regnis oriensque cadensque
Vix longum fesso conderet axe diem.
Et quæcunque vago se circumvolvit Olympo
Affulget ratibus flamma ministra tuis.

[74] i.e. poetic. Aonia was the ancient name of Bœotia, in which country was a fountain sacred to the Muses, whence Juvenal sings of a poet—

"Enamoured of the woods, and fitted for drinking
At the fountains of the Aonides."

Juv. Sat. vii. 58.—Ed.

[75] To match the Twelve so long by bards renown'd.—The Twelve Peers of France, often mentioned in the old romances. For the episode of Magricio and his eleven companions, see the sixth Lusiad.

[76] Afonso in Portuguese. In the first edition Mickle had Alfonso, which he altered to Alonzo in the second edition.

[77] Thy grandsires.—John III. King of Portugal, celebrated for a long and peaceful reign; and the Emperor Charles V., who was engaged in almost continual wars.

[78] Some critics have condemned Virgil for stopping his narrative to introduce even a short observation of his own. Milton's beautiful complaint of his blindness has been blamed for the same reason, as being no part of the subject of his poem. The address of Camoëns to Don Sebastian at the conclusion of the tenth Lusiad has not escaped the same censure; though in some measure undeservedly, as the poet has had the art to interweave therein some part of the general argument of his poem.

[79] This brave Lusitanian, who was first a shepherd and a famous hunter, and afterwards a captain of banditti, exasperated at the tyranny of the Romans, encouraged his countrymen to revolt and shake off the yoke. Being appointed general, he defeated Vetilius the prætor, who commanded in Lusitania, or farther Spain. After this he defeated, in three pitched battles, the prætors, C. Plautius Hypsæus and Claudius Unimanus, though they led against him very numerous armies. For six years he continued victorious, putting the Romans to flight wherever he met them, and laying waste the countries of their allies. Having obtained such advantages over the proconsul, Servilianus, that the only choice which was left to the Roman army was death or slavery, the brave Viriatus, instead of putting them all to the sword, as he could easily have done, sent a deputation to the general, offering to conclude a peace with him on this single condition, That he should continue master of the country now in his power, and that the Romans should remain possessed of the rest of Spain.

The proconsul, who expected nothing but death or slavery, thought these very favourable and moderate terms, and without hesitation concluded a peace, which was soon after ratified by the Roman senate and people. Viriatus, by this treaty, completed the glorious design he had always in view, which was to erect a kingdom in the vast country he had conquered from the republic. And, had it not been for the treachery of the Romans, he would have become, as Florus calls him, the Romulus of Spain.

The senate, desirous to revenge their late defeat, soon after this peace, ordered Q. Servilius Cæpio to exasperate Viriatus, and force him, by repeated affronts, to commit the first acts of hostility. But this mean artifice did not succeed: Viriatus would not be provoked to a breach of the peace. On this the Conscript Fathers, to the eternal disgrace of their republic, ordered Cæpio to declare war, and to proclaim Viriatus, who had given no provocation, an enemy to Rome. To this baseness Cæpio added one still greater; he corrupted the ambassadors whom Viriatus had sent to negotiate with him, who, at the instigation of the Roman, treacherously murdered their protector and general while he slept.—Univ. History.

[80] Sertorius, who was invited by the Lusitanians to defend them against the Romans. He had a tame white hind, which he had accustomed to follow him, and from which he pretended to receive the instructions of Diana. By this artifice he imposed upon the superstition of that people.

[81] No more in Nysa.—An ancient city in India sacred to Bacchus.

[82] Urania-Venus.—An Italian poet has given the following description of the celestial Venus—

Questa è vaga di Dio Venere bella
Vicina al Sole, e sopra ogni altra estella
Questa è quella beata, a cui s'inchina,
A cui si volge desiando amore,
Chiamata cui del Ciel rara e divina
Beltà che vien tra noi per nostro honore,
Per far le menti desiando al Cielo
Obliare l'altrui col proprio velo.—Martel.

[83] See the note in the Second Book on the following passage—

As when in Ida's bower she stood of yore, etc.

[84] The manly music of their tongue the same.—Camoëns says:

E na lingoa, na qual quando imagina,
Com pouca corrupçao cré que he Latina.

Qualifications are never elegant in poetry. Fanshaw's translation and the original both prove this:

——their tongue
Which she thinks Latin, with small dross among.

[85] i.e. helmet.

[86]—— and the light turn'd pale.—The thought in the original has something in it wildly great, though it is not expressed in the happiest manner of Camoëns—

O ceo tremeo, e Apollo detorvado
Hum pauco a luz perdeo, como infiado.

[87] Mercury, the messenger of the gods.—Ed.

[88] And pastoral Madagascar.—Called by the ancient geographers, Menuthia and Cerna Ethiopica; by the natives, the Island of the Moon; and by the Portuguese, the Isle of St. Laurence, on whose festival they discovered it.

[89] Praso.—Name of a promontory near the Red Sea.—Ed.

[90] Lav'd by the gentle waves.—The original says, the sea showed them new islands, which it encircled and laved. Thus rendered by Fanshaw—

Neptune disclos'd new isles which he did play
About, and with his billows danc't the hay.

[91] The historical foundation of the fable of Phaeton is this. Phaeton was a young enterprising prince of Libya. Crossing the Mediterranean in quest of adventures, he landed at Epirus, from whence he went to Italy to see his intimate friend Cygnus. Phaeton was skilled in astrology, from whence he arrogated to himself the title of the son of Apollo. One day in the heat of summer, as he was riding along the banks of the Po, his horses took fright at a clap of thunder, and plunged into the river, where, together with their master, they perished. Cygnus, who was a poet, celebrated the death of his friend in verse, from whence the fable.—Vid. Plutarch, in Vit. Pyrr.

[92] Acheron.—The river of Hades, or hell.—Ed.

[93] From Abram's race our holy prophet sprung.—Mohammed, who was descended from Ishmael, the son of Abraham by Hagar.

[94] The Hydaspes was a tributary of the river Indus.—Ed.

[95] Calm twilight now.—Camoëns, in this passage, has imitated Homer in the manner of Virgil: by diversifying the scene he has made the description his own. The passage alluded to is in the eighth Iliad—

Ως δ᾽ ὅτ᾽ ἐν οὐρανω ἄστρα φαεινὴν ἀμφὶ σελἡνην Φαἰνετ᾽ αριπρεπέα, etc.

Thus elegantly translated by Pope:—

As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene;
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole,
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
And tip with silver every mountain's head;
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies:
The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,
Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light.

[96] The Turks, or Osmanli Turcomans.—Ed.

[97] Constantinople.

[98] Straight as he spoke.—The description of the armoury, and account which Vasco de Gama gives of his religion, consists, in the original, of thirty-two lines, which M. Castera has reduced into the following sentence: Leur Governeur fait differentes questions au Capitaine, qui pour le satisfaire lui explique en peu des mots la Religion que les Portugais suivent, l'usage des armes dont ils se servent dans la guerre, et le dessein qui les amène.

[99] i.e., helmets.

[100] Coats of mail.

[101] When Gama's lips Messiah's name confess'd.—This, and the reason of the Moor's hate, is entirely omitted by Castera. The original is, the Moor conceived hatred, "knowing they were followers of the truth which the Son of David taught." Thus rendered by Fanshaw:—

Knowing they follow that unerring light,
The Son of David holds out in his Book.

Zacocia (governor of Mozambique) made no doubt but our people were of some Mohammedan country. The mutual exchange of good offices between our people and these islanders promised a long continuance of friendship, but it proved otherwise. No sooner did Zacocia understand they were Christians, than all his kindness was turned into the most bitter hatred; he began to meditate their ruin, and sought to destroy the fleet.—Osorio, Bp. of Sylves, Hist. of the Portug. Discov.

[102] Bacchus, god of wine.

[103] Whom nine long months his father's thigh conceal'd.—Bacchus was nourished during his infancy in a cave of mount Meros, which in Greek signifies a thigh. Hence the fable.

[104] Alexander the Great, who on visiting the temple of Jupiter Ammon, was hailed as son of that deity by his priests.—Ed.

[105] Bacchus.

[106] His form divine he cloth'd in human shape—

Alecto torvam faciem et furialia membra
Exuit: in vultus sese transformat aniles,
Et frontem obscænum rugis arat.
Vir. Æn. vii.

[107] To be identified with the Sun, in the opinion of later mythologists; but not so in Homer, with whom Helios (the Sun) is himself a deity.—Ed.

[108]

Thus, when to gain his beauteous charmer's smile,
The youthful lover dares the bloody toil.

This simile is taken from a favourite exercise in Spain, where it is usual to see young gentlemen of the best families entering the lists to fight with a bull, adorned with ribbons, and armed with a javelin or kind of cutlass, which the Spaniards call Machete.

[109]

——————e maldizia
O velho inerte, e a māy, que o filho cria.

Thus translated by Fanshaw—

——————curst their ill luck,
Th' old Devil and the Dam that gave them suck.

[110]

Flints, clods, and javelins hurling as they fly,
As rage, &c.—
Jamque faces et saxa volant, furor arma ministrat.

Virg. Æn. i.

The Spanish commentator on this place relates a very extraordinary instance of the furor arma ministrans. A Portuguese soldier at the siege of Diu in the Indies, being surrounded by the enemy, and having no ball to charge his musket, pulled out one of his teeth, and with it supplied the place of a bullet.

[111] The italics indicate that there is nothing in the original corresponding to these lines.—Ed.

[112] See Virgil's Æneid, bk. ii.—Ed.

[113] Quiloa is an island, with a town of the same name, on the east coast of Africa.—Ed.

[114] But heavenly Love's fair queen.—When Gama arrived in the East, the Moors were the only people who engrossed the trade of those parts. Jealous of such formidable rivals as the Portuguese, they employed every artifice to accomplish the destruction of Gama's fleet. As the Moors were acquainted with these seas and spoke the Arabic language, Gama was obliged to employ them both as pilots and interpreters. The circumstance now mentioned by Camoëns is an historical fact. "The Moorish pilot," says De Barros, "intended to conduct the Portuguese into Quiloa, telling them that place was inhabited by Christians; but a sudden storm arising, drove the fleet from that shore, where death or slavery would have been the certain fate of Gama and his companions. The villainy of the pilot was afterwards discovered. As Gama was endeavouring to enter the port of Mombaz his ship struck on a sand-bank, and finding their purpose of bringing him into the harbour defeated, two of the Moorish pilots leaped into the sea and swam ashore. Alarmed at this tacit acknowledgment of guilt, Gama ordered two other Moorish pilots who remained on board to be examined by whipping, who, after some time, made a full confession of their intended villainy. This discovery greatly encouraged Gama and his men, who now interpreted the sudden storm which had driven them from Quiloa as a miraculous interposition of Divine Providence in their favour.

[115] i.e. Mohammed.—Ed.

[116] After Gama had been driven from Quiloa by a sudden storm, the assurances of the Mozambique pilot, that the city was chiefly inhabited by Christians, strongly inclined him to enter the harbour of Mombas.

[117] "There were," says Osorius, "ten men in the fleet under sentence of death, whose lives had been spared on condition that, wherever they might be landed, they should explore the country and make themselves acquainted with the manners and laws of the people."

During the reign of Emmanuel, and his predecessor John II., few criminals were executed in Portugal. These great and political princes employed the lives which were forfeited to the public in the most dangerous undertakings of public utility. In their foreign expeditions the condemned criminals were sent upon the most hazardous undertakings. If death was their fate, it was the punishment they had merited: if successful in what was required, their crimes were expiated; and often they rendered their country the greatest atonement for their guilt which men in their circumstances could possibly make. What multitudes every year, in the prime of their life, end their days in Great Britain by the hands of the executioner! That the legislature might devise means to make the greatest part of these lives useful to society is a fact, which surely cannot be disputed; though, perhaps, the remedy of an evil so shocking to humanity may be at some distance.

[118] Semele was the mother of Bacchus, but, as he was prematurely born, Jupiter, his father, sewed him up in his thigh until he came to maturity.—Ed.

[119]

On it, the picture of that shape he placed,
In which the Holy Spirit did alight,
The picture of the dove, so white, so chaste,
On the blest Virgin's head, so chaste, so white.

In these lines, the best of all Fanshaw's, the happy repetition "so chaste, so white," is a beauty which, though not contained in the original, the present translator was unwilling to lose.

[120] See the [Preface.]

[121] When Gama lay at anchor among the islands of St. George, near Mozambique, "there came three Ethiopians on board (says Faria y Sousa) who, seeing St. Gabriel painted on the poop, fell on their knees in token of their Christianity, which had been preached to them in the primitive times, though now corrupted." Barros, c. 4, and Castaneda, l. i. c. 9, report, that the Portuguese found two or three Abyssinian Christians in the city of Mombas, who had an oratory in their house. The following short account of the Christians of the East may perhaps be acceptable. In the south parts of Malabar, about 200,000 of the inhabitants professed Christianity before the arrival of the Portuguese. They use the Syriac language in their services, and read the Scriptures in that tongue, and call themselves Christians of St. Thomas, by which apostle their ancestors had been converted. For 1300 years they had been under the Patriarch of Babylon, who appointed their Mutran, or archbishop. Dr. Geddes, in his History of the Church of Malabar, relates that Francisco Roz, a Jesuit missionary, complained to Menezes, the Portuguese archbishop of Goa, that when he showed these people an image of the Virgin Mary, they cried out, "Away with that filthiness, we are Christians, and do not adore idols."

Dom Frey Aleixo de Menezes, archbishop of Goa, "endeavoured to thrust upon the church of Malabar the whole mass of popery, which they were before unacquainted with."—Millar's History of the Propag. of Christianity.

[122] Venus.

[123] Proud of her kindred birth.—The French translator has the following note on this place:—"This is one of the places which discover our author's intimate acquaintance with mythology, and at the same time how much attention his allegory requires. Many readers, on finding that the protectress of the Lusians sprung from the sea, would be apt to exclaim, Behold, the birth of the terrestrial Venus! How can a nativity so infamous be ascribed to the celestial Venus, who represents Religion? I answer, that Camoëns had not his eye on those fables, which derive the birth of Venus from the foam of the waves, mixed with the blood which flowed from the dishonest wound of Saturn: he carries his views higher; his Venus is from a fable more noble. Nigidius relates that two fishes one day conveyed an egg to the seashore. This egg was hatched by two pigeons whiter than snow, and gave birth to the Assyrian Venus, which, in the pagan theology, is the same with the celestial. She instructed mankind in religion, gave them the lessons of virtue and the laws of equity. Jupiter, in reward of her labours, promised to grant her whatever she desired. She prayed him to give immortality to the two fishes, who had been instrumental in her birth, and the fishes were accordingly placed in the Zodiac, the sign Pisces.... This fable agrees perfectly with Religion, as I could clearly show; but I think it more proper to leave to the ingenious reader the pleasure of tracing the allegory."

[124] Doto, Nyse, and Nerine.—Cloto, or Clotho, as Castera observes, has by some error crept into almost all the Portuguese editions of the Lusiad. Clotho was one of the Fates, and neither Hesiod, Homer, nor Virgil has given such a name to any of the Nereids; but in the ninth Æneid Doto is mentioned—

——magnique jubebo
Æquoris esse Deas, qualis Nereïa Doto
Et Galatea secant spumantem pectore pontum.

The Nereids, in the Lusiad, says Castera, are the virtues divine and human. In the first book they accompany the Portuguese fleet—

——before the bounding prows
The lovely forms of sea-born nymphs arose.

[125] The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer.—Proverbs xxx. 25.—Ed.

[126] Imitated from Virgil—

Cymothoë simul, et Triton adnixus acuto
Detrudunt naves scopulo.—Virg. Æn. i.

[127] Latona, says the fable, flying from the serpent Python, and faint with thirst, came to a pond, where some Lycian peasants were cutting the bulrushes. In revenge of the insults which they offered her in preventing her to drink, she changed them into frogs. This fable, says Castera, like almost all the rest, is drawn from history. Philocorus, as cited by Boccace, relates, that the Rhodians having declared war against the Lycians, were assisted by some troops from Delos, who carried the image of Latona on their standards. A detachment of these going to drink at a lake in Lycia, a crowd of peasants endeavoured to prevent them. An encounter ensued; the peasants fled to the lake for shelter, and were there slain. Some months afterwards their companions came in search of their corpses, and finding an unusual quantity of frogs, imagined, according to the superstition of their age, that the souls of their friends appeared to them under that metamorphosis.

To some it may, perhaps, appear needless to vindicate Camoëns, in a point wherein he is supported by the authority of Homer and Virgil. Yet, as many readers are infected with the sang froid of a Bossu or a Perrault, an observation in defence of our poet cannot be thought impertinent. If we examine the finest effusions of genius, we shall find that the most genuine poetical feeling has often dictated those similes which are drawn from familiar and low objects. The sacred writers, and the greatest poets of every nation, have used them. We may, therefore, conclude that the criticism which condemns them is a refinement not founded on nature. But, allowing them admissible, it must be observed, that to render them pleasing requires a peculiar happiness and delicacy of management. When the poet attains this indispensable point, he gives a striking proof of his elegance, and of his mastership in his art. That the similes of the emmets and of the frogs in Camoëns are happily expressed and applied, is indisputable. In that of the frogs there is a peculiar propriety, both in the comparison itself, and in the allusion to the fable, as it was the intent of the poet to represent not only the flight, but the baseness of the Moors. The simile he seems to have copied from Dante, Inf. Cant. 9—

Come le rane innanzi a la nemica
Biscia per l'acqua si dileguan tutte
Fin che a la terra ciascuna s'abbica.

And Cant. 22—

E come a l'orlo de l'acqua d'un fosso
Stan li ranocchi pur col muso fuori
Sì che celano i piedi, e l'altro grosso.

[128] Barros and Castaneda, in relating this part of the voyage of Gama, say that the fleet, just as they were entering the port of Mombas, were driven back as it were by an invisible hand. By a subsequent note it will appear that the safety of the Armada depended upon this circumstance.

[129] Venus.

[130] As the planet of Jupiter is in the sixth heaven, the author has with propriety there placed the throne of that god.—Castera.

[131] "I am aware of the objection, that this passage is by no means applicable to the celestial Venus. I answer once for all, that the names and adventures of the pagan divinities are so blended and uncertain in mythology, that a poet is at great liberty to adapt them to his allegory as he pleases. Even the fables, which may appear as profane, even these contain historical, physical, and moral truths, which fully atone for the seeming licentiousness of the letter. I could prove this in many instances, but let the present suffice. Paris, son of Priam, king of Troy, spent his first years as a shepherd in the country. At this time Juno, Minerva, and Venus disputed for the apple of gold, which was destined to be given to the most beautiful goddess. They consented that Paris should be their judge. His equity claimed this honour. He saw them all naked. Juno promised him riches, Minerva the sciences, but he decided in favour of Venus, who promised him the possession of the most beautiful woman. What a ray of light is contained in this philosophical fable! Paris represents a studious man, who, in the silence of solitude, seeks the supreme good. Juno is the emblem of riches and dignities; Minerva, that of the sciences purely human; Venus is that of religion, which contains the sciences both human and divine; the charming female, which she promises to the Trojan shepherd, is that divine wisdom which gives tranquillity of heart. A judge so philosophical as Paris would not hesitate a moment to whom to give the apple of gold."—Castera.

[132] "The allegory of Camoëns is here obvious. If Acteon, and the slaves of their violent passions, could discover the beauties of true religion, they would be astonished and reclaimed: according to the expression of Seneca, 'Si virtus cerni posset oculis corporeis, omnes ad amorem suum pelliceret.'"—Castera.

[133] "That is Divine love, which always accompanies religion. Behold how our author insinuates the excellence of his moral!"—Castera.

As the French translator has acknowledged, there is no doubt but several readers will be apt to decry this allegorical interpretation of the machinery of Camoëns. Indeed there is nothing more easy than to discover a system of allegory in the simplest narrative. The reign of Henry VIII. is as susceptible of it as any fable in the heathen mythology. Nay, perhaps, more so. Under the names of Henry, More, Wolsey, Cromwell, Pole, Cranmer, etc., all the war of the passions, with their different catastrophes, might be delineated. Though it may be difficult to determine how far, yet one may venture to affirm that Homer and Virgil sometimes allegorised. The poets, however, who wrote on the revival of letters have left us in no doubt; we have their own authority for it that their machinery is allegorical. Not only the pagan deities, but the more modern adventures of enchantment were used by them to delineate the affections, and the trials and rewards of the virtues and vices. Tasso published a treatise to prove that his Gerusalemme Liberata is no other than the Christian spiritual warfare. And Camoëns, as observed in the preface, has twice asserted that his machinery is allegorical. The poet's assertion, and the taste of the age in which he wrote, sufficiently vindicate and explain the allegory of the Lusiad.

[134] The following speech of Venus and the reply of Jupiter, are a fine imitation from the first Æneid, and do great honour to the classical taste of the Portuguese poet.

[135] Imitated from Virg. Æn. i.—

Olli subridens hominum sator atque Deorum,
Vultu, quo cœlum tempestatesque serenat,
Oscula libavit natæ——

[136] Ulysses, king of Ithaka.—Ed.

[137] i.e., the slave of Calypso, who offered Ulysses immortality on condition that he would live with her.

[138] Æneas.—Ed.

[139]

"Far on the right her dogs foul Scylla hides,
Charybdis roaring on the left presides,
And in her greedy whirlpool sucks the tides."
Dryden's Virg. Æn. iii.—Ed.

[140] After the Portuguese had made great conquests in India, Gama had the honour to be appointed Viceroy. In 1524, when sailing thither to take possession of his government, his fleet was so becalmed on the coast of Cambaya that the ships stood motionless on the water, when in an instant, without the least change of the weather, the waves were shaken with a violent agitation, like trembling. The ships were tossed about, the sailors were terrified, and in the utmost confusion, thinking themselves lost. Gama, perceiving it to be the effect of an earthquake, with his wonted heroism and prudence, exclaimed, "Of what are you afraid? Do you not see how the ocean trembles under its sovereigns!" Barros, l. 9, c. 1, and Faria, c. 9, say, that such as lay sick of fevers were cured by the fright.

[141] Ormuz, or Hormuz, an island at the entrance of the Persian Gulf, once a great commercial dépôt.—Ed.

[142] Both Barros and Castaneda relate this fact. Albuquerque, during the war of Ormuz, having given battle to the Persians and Moors, by the violence of a sudden wind the arrows of the latter were driven back upon themselves, whereby many of their troops were wounded.

[143] Calicut was a seaport town of Malabar, more properly Colicodu.

[144]

Hinc ope barbarica, variisque Antonius armis,
Victor ab Auroræ populis et littore rubro,
Ægyptum, viresque Orientis, et ultima secum
Bactra vehit: sequiturque nefas! Ægyptia conjux.
Una omnes ruere, ac totum spumare, reductis
Convulsum remis rostrisque tridentibus, æquor.
Alta petunt: pelago credas innare revulsas
Cycladas, aut montes concurrere montibus altos:
Tanta mole viri turritis puppibus instant.
Stuppea flamma manu telisque volatile ferrum
Spargitur: arva nova Neptunia cæde rubescunt.
——Sævit medio in certamine Maxors.
Virg. Æn. viii.

[145] Antony.

[146] Gades, now Cadiz, an ancient and still flourishing seaport of Spain.—Ed.

[147] The Lusian pride, etc.—Magalhaens, a most celebrated navigator, neglected by Emmanuel, king of Portugal, offered his service to the king of Spain, under whom he made most important discoveries round the Straits which bear his name, and in parts of South America. Of this hero see further, Lusiad X., in the notes.

[148] Mercury.

[149] Mombas, a seaport town on an island of the same name off the coast of Zanguebar, East Africa.—Ed.

[150] Mercury, so called from Cyllēnē, the highest mountain in the Peloponnesus, where he had a temple, and on which spot he is said to have been born.—Ed.

[151] Petasus.

[152] The caduceus, twined with serpents.—Ed.

[153]

"But first he grasps within his awful hand
The mark of sovereign power, the magic wand:
With this he draws the ghosts from hollow graves,
With this he drives them down the Stygian waves,
With this he seals in sleep the wakeful sight,
And eyes, though closed in death, restores to light."
Æneid, iv. 242. (Dryden's Trans.)

[154] Mercury.

[155] Diomede, a tyrant of Thrace, who fed his horses with human flesh; a thing, says the grave Castera, almost incredible. Busiris was a king of Egypt, who sacrificed strangers.

Quis ... illaudati nescit Busiridis aras?
Virg. Geor. iii.

Hercules vanquished both these tyrants, and put them to the same punishments which their cruelty had inflicted on others. Isocrates composed an oration in honour of Busiris; a masterly example of Attic raillery and satire.

[156] i.e. the equator.

[157] Hermes is the Greek name for the god Mercury.

[158] Having mentioned the escape of the Moorish pilots, Osorius proceeds: Rex deinde homines magno cum silentio scaphis et lintribus submittebat, qui securibus anchoralia nocte præciderent. Quod nisi fuisset à nostris singulari Gamæ industria vigilatum, et insidiis scelerati illius regis occursum, nostri in summum vitæ discrimen incidissent.

[159] Mercury.

[160] A city and kingdom of the same name on the east coast of Africa.

[161] Ascension Day.

[162] Jesus Christ.

[163]

Vimen erat dum stagna subit, processerat undis
Gemma fuit.
Claud.

Sic et coralium, quo primum contigit auras,
Tempore durescit, mollis fuit herba sub undis.
Ovid.

[164] There were on board Gama's fleet several persons skilled in the Oriental languages.—Osor.

[165] See the Eighth Odyssey, etc.

[166] Castera's note on this place is so characteristic of a Frenchman, that the reader will perhaps be pleased to see it transcribed. In his text he says, "Toi qui occupes si dignement le rang supreme." "Le Poete dit," says he, in the note, "Tens de Rey o officio, Toi qui sais le metier de Roi. (The poet says, thou who holdest the business of a king.) I confess," he adds, "I found a strong inclination to translate this sentence literally. I find much nobleness in it. However, I submitted to the opinion of some friends, who were afraid that the ears of Frenchmen would be shocked at the word business applied to a king. It is true, nevertheless, that Royalty is a business. Philip II. of Spain was convinced of it, as we may discern from one of his letters. Hallo, says he, me muy embaraçado, &c. I am so entangled and encumbered with the multiplicity of business, that I have not a moment to myself. In truth, we kings hold a laborious office (or trade); there is little reason to envy us."

[167] The propriety and artfulness of Homer's speeches have been often and justly admired. Camoëns is peculiarly happy in the same department of the Epopæa. The speech of Gama's herald to the King of Melinda is a striking instance of it. The compliments with which it begins have a direct tendency to the favours afterwards to be asked. The assurances of the innocence, the purpose of the voyagers, and the greatness of their king, are happily touched. The exclamation on the barbarous treatment they had experienced—"Not wisdom saved us, but Heaven's own care"—are masterly insinuations. Their barbarous treatment is again repeated in a manner to move compassion: Alas! what could they fear? etc., is reasoning joined with pathos. That they were conducted to the King of Melinda by Heaven, and were by Heaven assured of his truth, is a most delicate compliment, and in the true spirit of the epic poem. The apology for Gama's refusal to come on shore is exceeding artful. It conveys a proof of the greatness of the Portuguese sovereign, and affords a compliment to loyalty, which could not fail to be acceptable to a monarch.

[168] Rockets.

[169] The Tyrian purple, obtained from the murex, a species of shell-fish, was very famous among the ancients.—Ed.

[170] A girdle, or ornamented belt, worn over one shoulder and across the breast.—Ed.

[171] Camoëns seems to have his eye on the picture of Gama, which is thus described by Faria y Sousa: "He is painted with a black cap, cloak, and breeches edged with velvet, all slashed, through which appears the crimson lining, the doublet of crimson satin, and over it his armour inlaid with gold."

[172] The admiration and friendship of the King of Melinda, so much insisted on by Camoëns, is a judicious imitation of Virgil's Dido. In both cases such preparation was necessary to introduce the long episodes which follow.

[173] The Moors, who are Mohammedans, disciples of the Arabian prophet, who was descended from Abraham through the line of Hagar.—Ed.

[174] The famous temple of the goddess Diana at Ephesus.—Ed.

[175] Apollo.

[176] Calliope.—The Muse of epic poesy, and mother of Orpheus. Daphne, daughter of the river Peneus, flying from Apollo, was turned into the laurel. Clytia was metamorphosed into the sun-flower, and Leucothoë, who was buried alive by her father for yielding to the solicitations of Apollo, was by her lover changed into an incense tree.

[177] A fountain of Bœotia sacred to the Muses.—Ed.

[178] The preface to the speech of Gama, and the description of Europe which follows, are happy imitations of the manner of Homer. When Camoëns describes countries, or musters an army, it is after the example of the great models of antiquity: by adding some characteristical feature of the climate or people, he renders his narrative pleasing, picturesque, and poetical.

[179] The Mediterranean.

[180] The Don.—Ed.

[181] The Sea of Azof.—Ed.

[182] Italy. In the year 409 the city of Rome was sacked, and Italy laid desolate by Alaric, king of the Gothic tribes. In mentioning this circumstance Camoëns has not fallen into the common error of little poets, who on every occasion bewail the outrage which the Goths and Vandals did to the arts and sciences. A complaint founded on ignorance. The Southern nations of Europe were sunk into the most contemptible degeneracy. The sciences, with every branch of manly literature, were almost unknown. For near two centuries no poet of note had adorned the Roman empire. Those arts only, the abuse of which have a certain and fatal tendency to enervate the mind, the arts of music and cookery, were passionately cultivated in all the refinement of effeminate abuse. The art of war was too laborious for their delicacy, and the generous warmth of heroism and patriotism was incompatible with their effeminacy. On these despicable Sybarites{*} the North poured her brave and hardy sons, who, though ignorant of polite literature, were possessed of all the manly virtues in a high degree. Under their conquests Europe wore a new face, which, however rude, was infinitely preferable to that which it had lately worn. And, however ignorance may talk of their barbarity, it is to them that England owes her constitution, which, as Montesquieu observes, they brought from the woods of Saxony.

{*} Sybaris, a city in Magna Grecia (South Italy), whose inhabitants were so effeminate, that they ordered all the cocks to be killed, that they might not be disturbed by their early crowing.

[183] The river Don.

[184] This was the name of an extensive forest in Germany. It exists now under different names, as the Black Forest, the Bohemian and the Thuringian Forest, the Hartz, etc.—Ed.

[185] The Hellespont, or Straits of the Dardanelles.—Ed.

[186] The Balkan Mountains separating Greece and Macedonia from the basin of the Danube, and extending from the Adriatic to the Black Sea.—Ed.

[187] Now Constantinople.

[188] Julius Cæsar, the conqueror of Gaul, or France.—Ed.

[189] Faithless to the vows of lost Pyrene, etc.—She was daughter to Bebryx, a king of Spain, and concubine to Hercules. Having wandered one day from her lover, she was destroyed by wild beasts, on one of the mountains which bear her name.

[190] Hercules, says the fable, to crown his labours, separated the two mountains Calpe and Abyla, the one in Spain, the other in Africa, in order to open a canal for the benefit of commerce; on which the ocean rushed in, and formed the Mediterranean, the Ægean, and Euxine seas. The twin mountains Abyla and Calpe were known to the ancients by the name of the Pillars of Hercules.—See Cory's Ancient Fragments.

[191] The river Guadalquivir; i.e., in Arabic, the great river.—Ed.

[192] Viriatus.—See the note on Book I. [p. 9.]

[193] The assassination of Viriatus.—See the note on Book I. [p. 9.]

[194] The name of Saracen is derived from the Arabic Es-shurk, the East, and designates the Arabs who followed the banner of Mohammed.—Ed.

[195] Don Alonzo, king of Spain, apprehensive of the superior number of the Moors, with whom he was at war, demanded assistance from Philip I. of France, and the Duke of Burgundy. According to the military spirit of the nobility of that age, no sooner was his desire known than numerous bodies of troops thronged to his standard. These, in the course of a few years, having shown signal proofs of their courage, the king distinguished the leaders with different marks of his regard. To Henry, a younger son of the Duke of Burgundy, he gave his daughter Teresa in marriage, with the sovereignty of the countries to the south of Galicia, commissioning him to enlarge his boundaries by the expulsion of the Moors. Under the government of this great man, who reigned by the title of Count, his dominion was greatly enlarged, and became more rich and populous than before. The two provinces of Entre Minho e Douro, and Tras os Montes, were subdued, with that part of Beira which was held by the Moorish king of Lamego, whom he constrained to pay tribute. Many thousands of Christians, who had either lived in miserable subjection to the Moors, or in desolate independency in the mountains, took shelter under the protection of Count Henry. Great multitudes of the Moors also chose rather to submit, than be exposed to the severities and the continual feuds and seditions of their own governors. These advantages, added to the great fertility of the soil of Henry's dominions, will account for the numerous armies, and the frequent wars of the first sovereigns of Portugal.

[196] Camoëns, in making the founder of the Portuguese monarchy a younger son of the King of Hungary, has followed the old chronologist Galvan. The Spanish and Portuguese historians differ widely in their accounts of the parentage of this gallant stranger. Some bring him from Constantinople, and others from the house of Lorraine. But the clearest and most probable account of him is in the chronicle of Fleury, wherein is preserved a fragment of French history, written by a Benedictine monk in the beginning of the twelfth century, and in the time of Count Henry. By this it appears, that he was a younger son of Henry, the only son of Robert, the first duke of Burgundy, who was a younger brother of Henry I. of France. Fanshaw having an eye to this history, has taken the unwarrantable liberty to alter the fact as mentioned by his author.

Amongst these Henry, saith the history,
A younger son of France, and a brave prince,
Had Portugal in lot.——
And the same king did his own daughter tie
To him in wedlock, to infer from thence
His firmer love.

Nor are the historians agreed on the birth of Donna Teresa, the spouse of Count Henry. Brandam, and other Portuguese historians, are at great pains to prove she was the legitimate daughter of Alonzo and the beautiful Ximena de Guzman. But it appears from the more authentic chronicle of Fleury, that Ximena was only his concubine. And it is evident from all the historians, that Donna Urraca, the heiress of her father's kingdom, was younger than her half-sister, the wife of Count Henry.

[197] The Mohammedan Arabs.

[198] Deliver'd Judah Henry's might confess'd.—His expedition to the Holy Land is mentioned by some monkish writers, but from the other parts of his history it is highly improbable.

[199] Jerusalem.

[200] Godfrey of Bouillon.

[201] Don Alonzo Enriquez, son of Count Henry, had only entered into his third year when his father died. His mother assumed the reins of government, and appointed Don Fernando Perez de Traba to be her minister. When the young prince was in his eighteenth year, some of the nobility, who either envied the power of Don Perez, or suspected his intention to marry the queen, and exclude the lawful heir, easily persuaded the young Count to take arms, and assume the sovereignty. A battle ensued, in which the prince was victorious. Teresa, it is said, retired into the castle of Legonaso, where she was taken prisoner by her son, who condemned her to perpetual imprisonment, and ordered chains to be put upon her legs. That Don Alonso made war against his mother, vanquished her party, and that she died in prison about two years after, A.D. 1130, are certain. But the cause of the war, that his mother was married to, or intended to marry, Don Perez, and that she was put in chains, are uncertain.

[202] Guimaraens was the scene of a very sanguinary battle.—Ed.

[203] The Scylla here alluded to was, according to fable, the daughter of Nisus, king of Megara, who had a purple lock, in which lay the fate of his kingdom. Minos of Crete made war against him, for whom Scylla conceived so violent a passion, that she cut off the fatal lock while her father slept. Minos on this was victorious, but rejected the love of the unnatural daughter, who in despair flung herself from a rock, and in the fall was changed into a lark.

[204] Guimaraens, the scene of a famous battle.—Ed.

[205] Some historians having related this story of Egas, add, "All this is very pleasant and entertaining, but we see no sufficient reason to affirm that there is one syllable of it true."

[206] When Darius laid siege to Babylon, one of his lords, named Zopyrus, having cut off his own nose and ears, persuaded the enemy that he had received these indignities from the cruelty of his master. Being appointed to a chief command in Babylon, he betrayed the city to Darius.—Vid. Justin's History.

[207] Spanish and Portuguese histories afford several instances of the Moorish chiefs being attended in the field of battle by their mistresses, and of the romantic gallantry and Amazonian courage of these ladies.

[208] Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, who, after having signalized her valour at the siege of Troy, was killed by Achilles.

[209] The Greek name of Troy.—Ed.

[210] The Amazons.

[211] Thermodon, a river of Scythia in the country of the Amazons.

Quales Threïciæ cum flumina Thermodontis
Pulsant et pictis bellantur Amazones armis:
Seu circum Hippolyten, seu cum se Martia curru
Penthesilea refert: magnoque ululante tumultu
Fœminea exsultant lunatis agmina peltis. Virg. Æn. xi. 659.

[212] It may, perhaps, be agreeable to the reader, to see the description of a bull-fight as given by Homer.

As when a lion, rushing from his den,
Amidst the plain of some wide-water'd fen,
(Where num'rous oxen, as at ease they feed,
At large expatiate o'er the ranker mead;)
Leaps on the herds before the herdsman's eyes:
The trembling herdsman far to distance flies:
Some lordly bull (the rest dispers'd and fled)
He singles out, arrests, and lays him dead.
Thus from the rage of Jove-like Hector flew
All Greece in heaps; but one he seiz'd, and slew
Mycenian Periphas.——
Pope, II. xv.

[213] A shirt of mail, formed of small iron rings.

[214] Mohammed.

[215] There is a passage in Xenophon, upon which perhaps Camoëns had his eye. Επεὶ δέ ἒληξεν ἡ μάχη, παρῆν ἰδεἱν την μέν γῆν αἵματι πεφυρμένην, &c. "When the battle was over, one might behold through the whole extent of the field the ground purpled with blood; the bodies of friends and enemies stretched over each other, the shields pierced, the spears broken, and the drawn swords, some scattered on the earth, some plunged in the bosoms of the slain, and some yet grasped in the hands of the dead soldiers."

[216] This memorable battle was fought in the plains of Ourique, in 1139. The engagement lasted six hours; the Moors were totally routed with incredible slaughter. On the field of battle Alonzo was proclaimed King of Portugal. The Portuguese writers have given many fabulous accounts of this victory. Some affirm that the Moorish army amounted to 380,000, others, 480,000, and others swell it to 600,000, whereas Don Alonzo's did not exceed 13,000. Miracles must also be added. Alonzo, they tell us, being in great perplexity, sat down to comfort his mind by the perusal of the Holy Scriptures. Having read the story of Gideon, he sunk into a deep sleep, in which he saw a very old man in a remarkable dress come into his tent, and assure him of victory. His chamberlain coming in, awoke him, and told him there was an old man very importunate to speak with him. Don Alonzo ordered him to be brought in, and no sooner saw him than he knew him to be the old man whom he had seen in his dream. This venerable person acquainted him that he was a fisherman, and had led a life of penance for sixty years on an adjacent rock, where it had been revealed to him, that if the count marched his army the next morning, as soon as he heard a certain bell ring, he should receive the strongest assurance of victory. Accordingly, at the ringing of the bell, the count put his army in motion, and suddenly beheld in the eastern sky the figure of the cross, and Christ upon it, who promised him a complete victory, and commanded him to accept the title of king, if it were offered him by the army. The same writers add, that as a standing memorial of this miraculous event, Don Alonzo changed the arms which his father had given, of a cross azure in a field argent, for five escutcheons, each charged with five bezants, in memory of the wounds of Christ. Others assert, that he gave, in a field argent, five escutcheons azure in the form of a cross, each charged with five bezants argent, placed saltierwise, with a point sable, in memory of five wounds he himself received, and of five Moorish kings slain in the battle. There is an old record, said to be written by Don Alonzo, in which the story of the vision is related upon his majesty's oath. The Spanish critics, however, have discovered many inconsistencies in it. They find the language intermixed with phrases not then in use: and it bears the date of the year of our Lord, at a time when that era had not been introduced into Spain.

[217] Troy.

[218] The tradition, that Lisbon was built by Ulysses, and thence called Olyssipolis, is as common as, and of equal authority with, that which says, that Brute landed a colony of Trojans in England, and gave the name of Britannia to the island.

[219] The conquest of Lisbon was of the utmost importance to the infant monarchy. It is one of the finest ports in the world, and before the invention of cannon, was of great strength. The old Moorish wall was flanked by seventy-seven towers, was about six miles in length, and fourteen in circumference. When besieged by Don Alonzo, according to some, it was garrisoned by an army of 200,000 men. This is highly incredible. However, that it was strong and well garrisoned is certain, as also that Alonzo owed the conquest of it to a fleet of adventurers, who were going to the Holy Land, the greater part of whom were English. One Udal op Rhys, in his tour through Portugal, says, that Alonzo gave them Almada, on the side of the Tagus opposite to Lisbon, and that Villa Franca was peopled by them, which they called Cornualla, either in honour of their native country, or from the rich meadows in its neighbourhood, where immense herds of cattle are kept, as in the English Cornwall.

[220] Jerusalem.

[221] Unconquer'd towers.—This assertion of Camoëns is not without foundation, for it was by treachery that Herimeneric, the Goth, got possession of Lisbon.

[222] The aqueduct of Sertorius, here mentioned, is one of the grandest remains of antiquity. It was repaired by John III. of Portugal about A.D. 1540.

[223] Badajoz.

[224] The history of this battle wants authenticity.

[225] As already observed, there is no authentic proof that Don Alonzo used such severity to his mother as to put her in chains. Brandan says it was reported that Don Alonzo was born with both his legs growing together, and that he was cured by the prayers of his tutor, Egas Nunio. Legendary as this may appear, this however is deducible from it, that from his birth there was something amiss about his legs. When he was prisoner to his son-in-law, Don Fernando, king of Leon, he recovered his liberty ere his leg, which was fractured in the battle, was restored, on condition that as soon as he was able to mount on horseback, he should come to Leon, and in person do homage for his dominions. This condition, so contrary to his coronation agreement, he found means to avoid. He ever after affected to drive in a calash, and would never mount on horseback more. The superstitious of those days ascribed this infirmity to the curses of his mother.

[226] Phasis.—A river of Colchis.

[227] A frontier town on the Nile, bordering on Nubia.

[228] Colchis.—A country of Asia Minor bordering on the Black Sea.—Ed.

[229] Tu quoque littoribus nostris, Æneia nutrix,
Æternam moriens famam, Caieta, dedisti.
Virg. Æn. vii.

[230] i.e. Tangiers, opposite to Gibraltar.—Ed.

[231] This should be Emir el Moumeneen, i.e., Commander of the Faithful.—Ed.

[232] The Mondego is the largest river having its rise within the kingdom of Portugal and entering no other state.—Ed.

[233] Miramolin.—Not the name of a person, but a title, quasi Sultan; the Emperor of the Faithful.

[234] In this poetical exclamation, expressive of the sorrow of Portugal on the death of Alonzo, Camoëns has happily imitated some passages of Virgil.

——Ipsæ te, Tityre, pinus,
Ipsi te fontes, ipsa hæc arbusta vocabant.
Ecl. i.

——Eurydicen vox ipsa et frigida lingua,
Ah miseram Eurydicen, anima fugiente, vocabat:
Eurydicen toto referebant flumine ripæ.
Georg. iv.

——littus, Hyla, Hyla, omne sonaret.
Ecl. vi.

[235] The Guadalquiver, the largest river in Spain.—Ed.

[236] The Portuguese, in their wars with the Moors, were several times assisted by the English and German crusaders. In the present instance the fleet was mostly English, the troops of which nation were, according to agreement, rewarded with the plunder, which was exceeding rich, of the city of Silves. Nuniz de Leon as cronicas dos Reis de Port, A.D. 1189.—Ed.

[237] Barbarossa, A.D. 1189.—Ed.

[238] Unlike the Syrian (rather Assyrian).—Sardanapalus.

[239] When Rome's proud tyrant far'd.—Heliogabalus, infamous for his gluttony.

[240] Alluding to the history of Phalaris.

[241] Camoëns, who was quite an enthusiast for the honour of his country, has in this instance disguised the truth of history. Don Sancho was by no means the weak prince here represented, nor did the miseries of his reign proceed from himself. The clergy were the sole authors of his, and the public, calamities. The Roman See was then in the height of its power, which it exerted in the most tyrannical manner. The ecclesiastical courts had long claimed the sole right to try an ecclesiastic: and, to prohibit a priest to say mass for a twelve-month, was by the brethren, his judges, esteemed a sufficient punishment for murder, or any other capital crime. Alonzo II., the father of Don Sancho, attempted to establish the authority of the king's courts of justice over the offending clergy. For this the Archbishop of Braga excommunicated Gonzalo Mendez, the chancellor; and Honorius, the pope, excommunicated the king, and put his dominions under an interdict. The exterior offices of religion were suspended, the people fell into the utmost dissoluteness of manners; Mohammedanism made great advances, and public confusion everywhere prevailed. By this policy the Church constrained the nobility to urge the king to a full submission to the papal chair. While a negotiation for this purpose was on foot Alonzo died, and left his son to struggle with an enraged and powerful clergy. Don Sancho was just, affable, brave, and an enamoured husband. On this last virtue faction first fixed its envenomed fangs. The queen was accused of arbitrary influence over her husband; and, according to the superstition of that age, she was believed to have disturbed his senses by an enchanted draught. Such of the nobility as declared in the king's favour were stigmatized, and rendered odious, as the creatures of the queen. The confusions which ensued were fomented by Alonso, Earl of Bologna, the king's brother, by whom the king was accused as the author of them. In short, by the assistance of the clergy and Pope Innocent IV., Sancho was deposed, and soon after died at Toledo. The beautiful queen, Donna Mencia, was seized upon, and conveyed away by one Raymond Portocarrero, and was never heard of more. Such are the triumphs of faction!

[242] Alexander the Great.

[243] Mondego, the largest exclusively Portuguese river.—Ed.

[244] The baccaris, or Lady's glove, a herb to which the Druids and ancient poets ascribed magical virtues.

——Baccare frontem
Cingite, ne vati noceat mala lingua futuro.
Virg. Ecl. vii.

[245] Semiramis, who is said to have invaded India.—Ed.

[246] Attila, a king of the Huns, surnamed "The Scourge of God." He lived in the fifth century. He may be reckoned among the greatest of conquerors.

[247] His much-lov'd bride.—The Princess Mary. She was a lady of great beauty and virtue, but was exceedingly ill used by her husband, who was violently attached to his mistresses, though he owed his crown to the assistance of his father-in-law, the King of Portugal.

[248]

By night our fathers' shades confess their fear,
Their shrieks of terror from the tombs we hear.—

Camoëns says, "A mortos faz espanto;" to give this elegance in English required a paraphrase. There is something wildly great, and agreeable to the superstition of that age, to suppose that the dead were troubled in their graves on the approach of so terrible an army. The French translator, contrary to the original, ascribes this terror to the ghost of only one prince, by which this stroke of Camoëns, in the spirit of Shakespeare, is reduced to a piece of unmeaning frippery.

[249] The Muliya, a river of Morocco.—Ed.

[250] See the first Æneid.

[251] Goliath, the Philistine champion.—Ed.

[252] David, afterwards king of Israel.—Ed.

[253] Though wove.—It may perhaps be objected that this is ungrammatical. But—

——Usus
Quem penes arbitrium est, et jus et norma loquendi.

and Dryden, Pope, etc., often use wove as a participle in place of the harsh-sounding woven, a word almost incompatible with the elegance of versification.

[254] Hannibal, who, as a child, was compelled to swear perpetual hostility to the Romans.—Ed.

[255] Where the last great battle between Hannibal and the Romans took place, in which the Romans sustained a crushing defeat.—Ed.

[256] When the soldiers of Marius complained of thirst, he pointed to a river near the camp of the Ambrones. "There," says he, "you may drink, but it must be purchased with blood." "Lead us on," they replied, "that we may have something liquid, though it be blood." The Romans, forcing their way to the river, the channel was filled with the dead bodies of the slain.—Vid. Plutarch's Lives.

[257] This unfortunate lady, Donna Inez de Castro, was the daughter of a Castilian gentleman, who had taken refuge in the court of Portugal. Her beauty and accomplishments attracted the regard of Don Pedro, the king's eldest son, a prince of a brave and noble disposition. La Neufville, Le Clede, and other historians, assert that she was privately married to the prince ere she had any share in his bed. Nor was his conjugal fidelity less remarkable than the ardour of his passion. Afraid, however, of his father's resentment, the severity of whose temper he knew, his intercourse with Donna Inez passed at the court as an intrigue of gallantry. On the accession of Don Pedro the Cruel to the throne of Castile many of the disgusted nobility were kindly received by Don Pedro, through the interest of his beloved Inez. The favour shown to these Castilians gave great uneasiness to the politicians. A thousand evils were foreseen from the prince's attachment to his Castilian mistress: even the murder of his children by his deceased spouse, the princess Constantia, was surmised; and the enemies of Donna Inez, finding the king willing to listen, omitted no opportunity to increase his resentment against the unfortunate lady. The prince was about his twenty-eighth year when his amour with his beloved Inez commenced.

[258]Ad cœlum tendens ardentia lumina frustra,
Lumina nam teneras arcebant vincula palmas.
Virg. Æn. ii.

[259] Romulus and Remus, who were said to have been suckled by a wolf.—Ed.

[260] It has been observed by some critics, that Milton on every occasion is fond of expressing his admiration of music, particularly of the song of the nightingale, and the full woodland choir. If in the same manner we are to judge of the favourite taste of Homer, we shall find it of a less delicate kind. He is continually describing the feast, the huge chine, the savoury viands on the glowing coals, and the foaming bowl. The ruling passion of Camoëns is also strongly marked in his writings. One may venture to affirm, that there is no poem of equal length that abounds with so many impassioned encomiums on the fair sex as the Lusiad. The genius of Camoëns seems never so pleased as when he is painting the variety of female charms; he feels all the magic of their allurements, and riots in his descriptions of the happiness and miseries attendant on the passion of love. As he wrote from his feelings, these parts of his works have been particularly honoured with the attention of the world.

[261] To give the character of Alphonso IV. will throw light on this inhuman transaction. He was an undutiful son, an unnatural brother, and a cruel father, a great and fortunate warrior, diligent in the execution of the laws, and a Macchiavellian politician. His maxim was that of the Jesuits; so that a contemplated good might be attained, he cared not how villainous might be the means employed. When the enemies of Inez had persuaded him that her death was necessary to the welfare of the state, he took a journey to Coimbra, that he might see the lady, when the prince, his son, was absent on a hunting party. Donna Inez, with her children, threw herself at his feet. The king was moved with the distress of the beautiful suppliant, when his three counsellors, Alvaro Gonsalez, Diego Lopez Pacheco, and Pedro Coello, reproaching him for his disregard to the state, he relapsed to his former resolution. She was then dragged from his presence, and brutally murdered by the hands of his three counsellors, who immediately returned to the king with their daggers reeking with the innocent blood of his daughter-in-law. Alonzo, says La Neufville, avowed the horrid assassination, as if he had done nothing of which he ought to be ashamed.

[262] Pyrrhus, son of Achilles: he was also called Neoptolemus. He sacrificed Polyxena, daughter of Priam king of Troy, to the manes of his father. Euripides and Sophocles each wrote a tragedy having the sacrifice of Polyxena for the subject. Both have unfortunately perished.—Ed.

[263] Hecuba, mother of Polyxena, and wife of Priam.—Ed.

[264] The fair Inez was crowned Queen of Portugal after her interment.

[265] Atreus, having slain the sons of Thyestes, cut them in pieces, and served them up for a repast to their own father. The sun, it is said, hid his face rather than shine on so barbarous a deed.—Ed.

[266] At an old royal castle near Mondego, there is a rivulet called the fountain of Amours. According to tradition, it was here that Don Pedro resided with his beloved Inez. The fiction of Camoëns, founded on the popular name of the rivulet, is in the spirit of Homer.

[267] When the prince was informed of the death of his beloved Inez, he was transported into the most violent fury. He took arms against his father. The country between the rivers Minho and Doura was laid desolate: but, by the interposition of the queen and the Archbishop of Braga, the prince relented, and the further horrors of a civil war were prevented. Don Alonzo was not only reconciled to his son, but laboured by every means to oblige him, and to efface from his memory the injury and insult he had received. The prince, however, still continued to discover the strongest marks of affection and grief. When he succeeded to the crown, one of his first acts was a treaty with the King of Castile, whereby each monarch engaged to give up such malcontents as should take refuge in each other's dominions. In consequence of this, Pedro Coello and Alvaro Gonsalez, who, on the death of Alonzo had fled to Castile, were sent prisoners to Don Pedro. Diego Pacheco, the third murderer, made his escape. The other two were put to death with the most exquisite tortures, and most justly merited, if torture is in any instance to be allowed. After this the king, Don Pedro, summoned an assembly of the states at Cantanedes. Here, in the presence of the Pope's nuncio, he solemnly swore on the holy Gospels, that having obtained a dispensation from Rome, he had secretly, at Braganza, espoused the Lady Inez de Castro, in the presence of the Bishop of Guarda, and of his master of the wardrobe; both of whom confirmed the truth of the oath. The Pope's Bull, containing the dispensation, was published; the body of Inez was lifted from the grave, was placed on a magnificent throne, and with the proper regalia, crowned Queen of Portugal. The nobility did homage to her skeleton, and kissed the bones of her hand. The corpse was then interred at the royal monastery of Alcobaca, with a pomp before unknown in Portugal, and with all the honours due to a queen. Her monument is still extant, where her statue is adorned with the diadem and the royal robe. This, with the legitimation of her children, and the care he took of all who had been in her service, consoled him in some degree, and rendered him more conversable than he had hitherto been; but the cloud which the death of Inez brought over the natural cheerfulness of his temper, was never totally dispersed.—— A circumstance strongly characteristic of the rage of his resentment must not be omitted. When the murderers were brought before him, he was so transported with indignation, that he struck Pedro Coello several blows on the face with the shaft of his whip.

[268] Pedro the Just.—History cannot afford an instance of any prince who has a more eminent claim to the title of just than Pedro I. His diligence to correct every abuse was indefatigable, and when guilt was proved his justice was inexorable. He was dreadful to the evil, and beloved by the good, for he respected no persons, and his inflexible severity never digressed from the line of strict justice. An anecdote or two will throw some light on his character. A priest having killed a mason, the king dissembled his knowledge of the crime, and left the issue to the ecclesiastical court, where the priest was punished by one year's suspension from saying mass. The king on this privately ordered the mason's son to revenge the murder of his father. The young man obeyed, was apprehended, and condemned to death. When his sentence was to be confirmed by the king, Pedro enquired, what was the young man's trade. He was answered, that he followed his father's. "Well then," said the king, "I shall commute his punishment, and interdict him from meddling with stone or mortar for a twelve-month." After this he fully established the authority of the king's courts over the clergy, whom he punished with death when their crimes were capital. When solicited to refer the causes of such criminals to a higher tribunal, he would answer very calmly, "That is what I intend to do: I will send them to the highest of all tribunals, to that of their Maker and mine." Against adulterers he was particularly severe, often declaring it as his opinion, that conjugal infidelity was the source of the greatest evils, and that therefore to restrain it was the interest and duty of the sovereign. Though the fate of his beloved Inez chagrined and soured his temper, he was so far from being naturally sullen or passionate, that he was rather of a gay and sprightly disposition; he was affable and easy of access; delighted in music and dancing; was a lover of learning, a man of letters, and an elegant poet.—Vide Le Clede, Mariana, Faria.

[269] This lady, named Leonora de Tellez, was the wife of Don Juan Lorenzo Acugna, a nobleman of one of the most distinguished families in Portugal. After a sham process this marriage was dissolved, and the king privately espoused to her, though, at this time, he was publicly married by proxy to Donna Leonora of Arragon. A dangerous insurrection, headed by one Velasquez, a tailor, drove the king and his adulterous bride from Lisbon. Soon after, he caused his marriage to be publicly celebrated in the province of Entre Douro e Minho. Henry, king of Castile, being informed of the general discontent that reigned in Portugal, marched a formidable army into that kingdom, to revenge the injury offered to some of his subjects, whose ships had been unjustly seized at Lisbon. The desolation hinted at by Camoëns ensued. After the subjects of both kingdoms had severely suffered, the two kings ended the war, much to their mutual satisfaction, by an intermarriage of their illegitimate children.

[270] Judges, chap. xix. and xx.

[271] Samuel, chap. xii. 10, "The sword shall never depart from thine house."

[272] Hercules.

[273] Love compelled Hercules to spin wool.—Ovid.

[274] Hannibal.

[275] Dom John was a natural brother of Fernando, being an illegitimate son of Pedro.—Ed.

[276] A cradled infant gave the wondrous sign.—No circumstance has ever been more ridiculed by the ancient and modern pedants than Alexander's pretensions to divinity. Some of his courtiers expostulating with him one day on the absurdity of such claim, he replied, "I know the truth of what you say, but these," (pointing to a crowd of Persians) "these know no better." The report that the Grecian army was commanded by a son of Jupiter spread terror through the East, and greatly facilitated the operations of the conqueror. The miraculous speech of the infant, attested by a few monks, was adapted to the superstition of the age of John I. and, as he was illegitimate, was of infinite service to his cause. The pretended fact, however, is differently related.

[277] Lisbon, or Ulyssipolis, supposed to be founded by Ulysses.—Ed.

[278] The mitred head.—Don Martin, bishop of Lisbon, a man of exemplary life. He was by birth a Castilian, which was esteemed a sufficient reason to murder him, as of the queen's party. He was thrown from the tower of his own cathedral, whither he had fled to avoid the popular fury.

[279] The queen beheld her power, her honours lost.—Possessed of great beauty and great abilities, this bad woman was a disgrace to her sex, and a curse to the age and country which gave her birth. Her sister, Donna Maria, a lady of unblemished virtue, had been secretly married to the infant, Don Juan, the king's brother, who was passionately attached to her. Donna Maria had formerly endeavoured to dissuade her sister from the adulterous marriage with the king. In revenge of this, the queen, Leonora, persuaded Don Juan that her sister was unfaithful to his bed. The enraged husband hastened to his wife, and, without enquiry or expostulation, says Mariana, dispatched her with two strokes of his dagger. He was afterwards convinced of her innocence. Having sacrificed her honour, and her first husband, to a king, (says Faria), Leonora soon sacrificed that king to a wicked gallant, a Castilian nobleman, named Don Juan Fernandez de Andeyro. An unjust war with Castile, wherein the Portuguese were defeated by sea and land, was the first fruits of the policy of the new favourite. Andeyro one day being in a great perspiration, by some military exercise, the queen tore her veil, and publicly gave it him to wipe his face. The grand master of Avis, the king's illegitimate brother, afterwards John I., and some others, expostulated with her on the indecency of this behaviour. She dissembled her resentment, but, soon after, they were seized and committed to the castle of Evora, where a forged order for their execution was sent; but the governor suspecting some fraud, showed it to the king. Yet, such was her ascendancy over Fernando, that though convinced of her guilt, he ordered his brother to kiss the queen's hand, and thank her for his life. Soon after, Fernando died, but not till he was fully convinced of the queen's conjugal infidelity, and had given an order for the assassination of the gallant. Not long after the death of the king, the favourite Andeyro was stabbed in the palace by the grandmaster of Avis, and Don Ruy de Pereyra. The queen expressed all the transport of grief and rage, and declared she would undergo the trial-ordeal in vindication of his, and her, innocence. But this she never performed: in her vows of revenge, however, she was more punctual. Don Juan, king of Castile, who had married her only daughter and heiress, at her earnest entreaties invaded Portugal, and was proclaimed king. Don John, grand master of Avis, was proclaimed by the people protector and regent. A desperate war ensued. Queen Leonora, treated with indifference by her daughter and son-in-law, resolved on the murder of the latter, but the plot was discovered, and she was sent prisoner to Castile. The regent was besieged in Lisbon, and the city reduced to the utmost extremities, when an epidemic broke out in the Castilian army, and made such devastation, that the king suddenly raised the siege, and abandoned his views on Portugal. The happy inhabitants ascribed their deliverance to the valour and vigilance of the regent. The regent reproved their ardour, exhorted them to repair to their churches, and return thanks to God, to whose interposition he solely ascribed their safety. This behaviour increased the admiration of the people; the nobility of the first rank joined the regent's party, and many garrisons in the interest of the king of Castile opened their gates to him. An assembly of the states met at Coimbra, where it was proposed to invest the regent with the regal dignity. This he pretended to decline. Don John, son of Pedro the Just and the beautiful Inez de Castro, was by the people esteemed their lawful sovereign, but was, and had been long, detained a prisoner by the King of Castile. If the states would declare the infant, Don John, their king, the regent professed his willingness to swear allegiance to him, that he would continue to expose himself to every danger, and act as regent, till Providence restored to Portugal her lawful sovereign. The states, however, saw the necessity that the nation should have a head. The regent was unanimously elected king, and some articles in favour of liberty were added to those agreed upon at the coronation of Don Alonzo Enriquez, the first king of Portugal.

Don John I., one of the greatest of the Portuguese monarchs, was the natural son of Pedro the Just, by Donna Teresa Lorenza, a Galician lady, and was born some years after the death of Inez. At seven years of age he was made grand master of Avis, where he received an excellent education, which, joined to his great parts, brought him out early on the political theatre. He was a brave commander, and a deep politician, yet never forfeited the character of candour and honour. To be humble to his friends, and haughty to his enemies, was his leading maxim. His prudence gained him the confidence of the wise; his steadiness and gratitude the friendship of the brave; his liberality the bulk of the people. He was in the twenty-seventh year of his age when declared protector, and in his twenty-eighth when proclaimed king.

The following anecdote is much to the honour of this prince when regent. A Castilian officer, having six Portuguese gentleman prisoners, cut off their noses and hands, and sent them to Don John. Highly incensed, the protector commanded six Castilian gentlemen to be treated in the same manner. But, before the officer, to whom he gave the orders, had quitted the room, he relented. "I have given enough to resentment," said he, "in giving such a command. It were infamous to put it in execution. See that the Castilian prisoners receive no harm."

[280] Beatrice.

[281] By Rodrick given.—The celebrated hero of Corneille's tragedy of the Cid.

[282] [283] Cadiz: in ancient times a Phœnician colony, whose coins bear the emblem of two pillars—the pillars of Hercules (Alcides).—Ed.

[284] The Gascons or Basques, a very ancient and singular people. Their language has no relation to that of any other people. They are regarded as the earliest inhabitants of the Spanish peninsula.—Ed.

[285] See Judges xvi. 17-19.

[286] This speech in the original has been much admired by foreign critics, as a model of military eloquence. The critic, it is hoped, will perceive that the translator has endeavoured to support the character of the speaker.

[287] This was the famous P. Corn. Scipio Africanus. The fact, somewhat differently related by Livy, is this. After the defeat at Cannæ, a considerable body of Romans fled to Canusium, and appointed Scipio and Ap. Claudius their commanders. While they remained there, it was told Scipio, that some of his chief officers, at the head of whom was Cæcilius Metellus, were taking measures to transport themselves out of Italy. He went immediately to their assembly; and drawing his sword, said, I swear that I will not desert the Commonwealth of Rome, nor suffer any other citizen to do it. The same oath I require of you, Cæcilius, and of all present; whoever refuses, let him know that this sword is drawn against him. The historian adds, that they were as terrified by this, as if they had beheld the face of their conqueror, Hannibal. They all swore, and submitted themselves to Scipio.—Vid. Livy, bk. 22. c. 53.

[288] Sestos was a city of Thrace, on the Dardanelles, opposite Abydos.—Ed.

[289] The Guadiana, one of the two great rivers of Spain.—Ed.

[290] The Douro.

[291] Homer and Virgil have, with great art, gradually heightened the fury of every battle, till the last efforts of their genius were lavished in describing the superior prowess of the hero in the decisive engagement. Camoëns, in like manner, has bestowed his utmost attention on this his principal battle. The circumstances preparatory to the engagement are happily imagined, and solemnly conducted, and the fury of the combat is supported with a poetical heat, and a variety of imagery, which, one need not hesitate to affirm, would do honour to an ancient classic author.

[292] And his own brothers shake the hostile lance.—The just indignation with which Camoëns treats the kindred of the brave Nunio Alvaro de Pereyra, is condemned by the French translator. "The Pereyras," says he, "deserve no stain on their memory for joining the King of Castile, whose title to the crown of Portugal was infinitely more just and solid than that of Don John." Castera, however, is grossly mistaken. Don Alonzo Enriquez, the first King of Portugal, was elected by the people, who had recovered their liberties at the glorious battle of Ourique. At the election the constitution of the kingdom was settled in eighteen short statutes, wherein it is expressly provided, that none but a Portuguese can be king of Portugal; that if an infanta marry a foreign prince, he shall not, in her right, become King of Portugal, and a new election of a king, in case of the failure of the male line, is, by these statutes, supposed legal. By the treaty of marriage between the King of Castile and Donna Beatrix, the heiress of Fernando of Portugal, it was agreed, that only their children should succeed to the Portuguese crown; and that, in case the throne became vacant ere such children were born, the Queen-dowager, Leonora, should govern with the title of Regent. Thus, neither by the original constitution, nor by the treaty of marriage, could the King of Castile succeed to the throne of Portugal. And any pretence he might found on the marriage contract was already forfeited; for he caused himself and his queen to be proclaimed, added Portugal to his titles, coined Portuguese money with his bust, deposed the queen regent, and afterwards sent her prisoner to Castile. The lawful heir, Don Juan, the son of Inez de Castro, was kept in prison by his rival, the King of Castile; and, as before observed, a new election was, by the original statutes, supposed legal in cases of emergency. These facts, added to the consideration of the tyranny of the King of Castile, and the great services which Don John had rendered his country, fully vindicate the indignation of Camoëns against the traitorous Pereyras.

[293] Near Pharsalus was fought the decisive battle between Cæsar and Pompey, B.C. 48.—Ed.

[294] Ceuta, a small Spanish possession on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco.—Ed.

[295] Tetuan, a city of Morocco.—Ed.

[296] Through the fierce Brigians.—The Castilians, so called from one of their ancient kings, named Brix, or Brigus, whom the monkish writers call the grandson of Noah.

[297] These lines are not in the common editions of Camoëns. They consist of three stanzas in the Portuguese, and are said to have been left out by the author himself in his second edition. The translator, however, as they breathe the true spirit of Virgil, was willing to preserve them with this acknowledgment.

[298] Massylia, a province in Numidia, greatly infested with lions, particularly that part of it called Os sete montes irmaõs, the seven brother mountains.

[299] And many a gasping warrior sigh'd his last.—This, which is almost literal from—

Muitos lançaraõ o ultimo suspiro,—

and the preceding circumstance of Don John's brandishing his lance four times—

E sopesando a lança quatro vezes,

are poetical, and in the spirit of Homer. Besides Maldonat, Castera has, in this battle, introduced several other names which have no place in Camoëns. Carrillo, Robledo, John of Lorca, Salazar of Seville were killed, he tells us: And, "Velasques and Sanches, natives of Toledo, Galbes, surnamed the 'Soldier without Fear,' Montanches, Oropesa, and Mondonedo, all six of proved valour, fell by the hand of young Antony, who brought to the fight either more address, or better fortune than these." Not a word of this is in the Portuguese.

[300] Their swords seem dipp'd in fire.—This is as literal as the idiom of the two languages would allow. Dryden has a thought like that of this couplet, but which is not in his original:—

"Their bucklers clash; thick blows descend from high,
And flakes of fire from their hard helmets fly."
Dryd. Virg. Æn. xii.

[301] Grand master of the order of St. James, named Don Pedro Nunio. He was not killed, however, in this battle, which was fought on the plains of Aljubarota, but in that of Valverda, which immediately followed. The reader may, perhaps, be surprised to find that every soldier mentioned in these notes is a Don, a Lord. The following piece of history will account for the number of the Portuguese nobles. Don Alonzo Enriquez, Count of Portugal, was saluted king by his army at the battle of Ourique; in return, his majesty dignified every man in his army with the rank of nobility.—Vide the 9th of the Statutes of Lamego.

[302] Cerberus.

[303] The Spaniards.

[304] This tyrant, whose unjust pretensions to the crown of Portugal laid his own, and that, kingdom in blood, was on his final defeat overwhelmed with all the frenzy of grief. In the night after the decisive battle of Aljubarota, he fled upwards of thirty miles upon a mule. Don Laurence, archbishop of Braga, in a letter written in old Portuguese to Don John, abbot of Alcobaza, gives this account of his behaviour: "The constable has informed me that he saw the King of Castile at Santaren, who behaved as a madman, cursing his existence, and tearing the hairs of his beard. And, in good faith, my good friend, it is better that he should do so to himself than to us; the man who thus plucks his own beard, would be much better pleased to do so to others." The writer of this letter, though a prelate, fought at the battle of Aljubarota, where he received on the face a large wound from a sabre.

[305] The festive days by heroes old ordain'd.—As a certain proof of the victory, it was required, by the honour of these ages, that the victor should encamp three days on the field of battle. By this knight-errantry the advantages which ought to have been pursued were frequently lost. Don John, however, though he complied with the reigning ideas of honour, sent Don Nunio, with a proper army, to reap the fruits of his victory.

[306] John of Portugal, about a year after the battle of Aljubarota, married Philippa, eldest daughter of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, son of Edward III. who assisted the king, his son-in-law, in an irruption into Castile, and, at the end of the campaign, promised to return with more numerous forces for the next. But this was prevented by the marriage of his youngest daughter, Catalina, with Don Henry, eldest son of the King of Castile. The King of Portugal on this entered Galicia, and reduced the cities of Tui and Salvaterra. A truce followed. While the tyrant of Castile meditated a new war, he was killed by a fall from his horse, and, leaving no issue by his queen, Beatrix (the King of Portugal's daughter), all pretension to that crown ceased. The truce was now prolonged for fifteen years, and, though not strictly kept, yet, at last the influence of the English queen, Catalina, prevailed, and a long peace, happy for both kingdoms, ensued.

[307] The Pillars of Hercules, or Straits of Gibraltar.—Ed.

[308] The character of this great prince claims a place in these notes, as it affords a comment on the enthusiasm of Camoëns, who has made him the hero of his episode. His birth, excellent education, and masterly conduct when regent, have already been mentioned. The same justice, prudence, and heroism always accompanied him when king. He had the art to join the most winning affability with all the manly dignity of the sovereign. To those who were his friends, when a private man, he was particularly attentive. His nobility dined at his table, he frequently made visits to them, and introduced among them the taste for, and the love of, letters. As he felt the advantages of education, he took the utmost care of that of his children. He had many sons, and he himself often instructed them in solid and useful knowledge, and was amply repaid. He lived to see them men, men of parts and of action, whose only emulation was to show affection to his person, and to support his administration by their great abilities. One of his sons, Don Henry, duke of Viseo, was that great prince whose ardent passion for maritime affairs gave birth to all the modern improvements in navigation. The clergy, who had disturbed almost every other reign, were so convinced of the wisdom of his, that they confessed he ought to be supported out of the treasures of the church, and granted him the church plate to be coined. When the pope ordered a rigorous inquiry to be made into his having brought ecclesiastics before lay tribunals, the clergy had the singular honesty to desert what was styled the church immunities, and to own that justice had been impartially administered. He died in the seventy-sixth year of his age, and in the forty-eighth of his reign. His affection to his queen, Philippa, made him fond of the English, whose friendship he cultivated, and by whom he was frequently assisted.

[309] Camoëns, in this instance, has raised the character of one brother at the other's expense, to give his poem an air of solemnity. The siege of Tangier was proposed. The king's brothers differed in their opinions: that of Don Fernand, though a knight-errant adventure, was approved of by the young nobility. The infants, Henry and Fernand, at the head of 7000 men, laid siege to Tangier, and were surrounded by a numerous army of Moors, some writers say six hundred thousand. On condition that the Portuguese army should be allowed to return home, the infants promised to surrender Ceuta. The Moors gladly accepted of the terms, but demanded one of the infants as a hostage. Fernand offered himself, and was left. The king was willing to comply with the terms to relieve his brother, but the court considered the value of Ceuta, and would not consent. The pope also interposed his authority, that Ceuta should be kept as a check on the infidels, and proposed to raise a crusade for the delivery of Fernand. In the meanwhile large offers were made for his liberty. These were rejected by the Moors, who would accept of nothing but Ceuta, to whose vast importance they were no strangers. When negotiations failed, King Edward assembled a large army to effect his brother's release, but, just as he was setting out, he was seized with the plague, and died, leaving orders with his queen to deliver up Ceuta for the release of his brother. This, however, was never performed. Don Fernand remained with the Moors till his death. The magnanimity of his behaviour gained him their esteem and admiration, nor is there good proof that he received any very rigorous treatment; the contrary is rather to be inferred from the romantic notions of military honour which then prevailed among the Moors. Don Fernand is to this day esteemed as a saint and martyr in Portugal, and his memory is commemorated on the fifth of June. King Edward reigned only five years and a month. He was the most eloquent man in his dominions, spoke and wrote Latin elegantly, was author of several books, one on horsemanship, in which art he excelled. He was brave in the field, active in business, and rendered his country infinite service by reducing the laws to a regular code. He was knight of the Order of the Garter, which honour was conferred upon him by his cousin, Henry V. of England. In one instance he gave great offence to the superstitious populace. He despised the advice of a Jew astrologer, who entreated him to delay his coronation because the stars that day were unfavourable. To this the misfortune of Tangier was ascribed, and the people were always on the alarm, as if some terrible disaster were impending over them.

[310] The Moors.

[311] When Henry IV. of Castile died, he declared that the infanta Joanna, was his heiress, in preference to his sister, Donna Isabella, married to Don Ferdinand, son to the King of Arragon. In hopes to attain the kingdom of Castile, Don Alonzo, king of Portugal, obtained a dispensation from the pope to marry his niece, Donna Joanna. After a bloody war, the ambitious views of Alonzo and his courtiers were defeated.

[312] The Pyrenees which separate France from Spain.—Ed.

[313] The Prince of Portugal.

[314] Julius Cæsar.

[315] Naples.

[316] Parthenope was one of the Syrens. Enraged because she could not allure Ulysses, she threw herself into the sea. Her corpse was thrown ashore, and buried where Naples now stands.

[317] The coast of Alexandria.

[318] Among the Christians of Abyssinia.

[319] Sandy, the French sable = sand.—Ed.

[320] The Nabathean mountains; so named from Nabaoth, the son of Ishmael.

[321] Beyond where Trajan.—The Emperor Trajan extended the bounds of the Roman Empire in the East far beyond any of his predecessors. His conquests reached to the river Tigris, near which stood the city of Ctesiphon, which he subdued. The Roman historians boasted that India was entirely conquered by him; but they could only mean Arabia Felix.—Vid. Dion. Cass. Euseb. Chron. p. 206.

[322] Qui mores hominum multorum vidit.—Hor.

[323] Emmanuel was cousin to the late king, John II. and grandson to king Edward, son of John I.

[324] The river Indus, which gave name to India.

[325] Vasco de Gama, who is, in a certain sense, the hero of the Lusiad, was born in 1469, at Sines, a fishing town on the Atlantic, midway between Lisbon and Cape St. Vincent, where, in a small church on a cliff, built by the great navigator after his appointment as Viceroy of India, is an inscription to his memory.—Ed.

[326] Hercules.

[327] Orac'lous Argo.—According to the fable, the vessel of the Argonauts spoke and prophesied. See The Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius.—Ed.

[328] This fact is according to history: Aberat Olysippone prope littus quatuor passuum millia templum sanè religiosum et sanctum ab Henrico in honorem Sanctissimæ Virginis edificatum.... In id Gama pridie illius diei, quo erat navem conscensurus, se recepit, ut noctem cum religiosis hominibus qui in ædibus templo conjunctis habitabant, in precibus et votis consumeret. Sequenti die cum multi non illius tantùm gratia, sed aliorum etiam, qui illi comites erant, convenissent, fuit ab omnibus in scaphis deductus. Neque solùm homines religiosi, sed reliqui omnes voce maxima cum lacrymis à Deo precabantur, ut benè et prosperè illa tam periculosa navigatio omnibus eveniret, et universi re benè gesta, incolumes in patriam redirent.

[329] By this old man is personified the populace of Portugal. The endeavours to discover the East Indies by the Southern Ocean, for about eighty years had been the favourite topic of complaint, and never was any measure of government more unpopular than the expedition of Gama. Emmanuel's council were almost unanimous against the attempt. Some dreaded the introduction of wealth, and its attendants, luxury and effeminacy; while others affirmed, that no adequate advantages could arise from so perilous and remote a navigation. The expressions of the thousands who crowded the shore when Gama gave his sails to the wind, are thus expressed by Osorius: "A multis tamen interim is fletus atque lamentatio fiebat, un funus efferre viderentur. Sic enim dicebant: En quo miseros mortales provexit cupiditas et ambitio? Potuitne gravius supplicium hominibus istis constitui, si in se scelestum aliquod facinus admisissent? Est enim illis immensi maris longitudo peragranda, fluctus immanes difficillima navigatione superandi, vitæ discrimen in locis infinitis obeundum. Non fuit multò tolerabilius, in terra quovis genere mortis absumi, quàm tam procul à patria marinis fluctibus sepeliri. Hæc et alia multa in hanc sententiam dicebant, cùm omnia multò tristiora fingere præ metu cogerentur." The tender emotion and fixed resolution of Gama, and the earnest passion of the multitudes on the shore, are thus added by the same venerable historian: "Gama tamen quamvis lacrymas suorum desiderio funderet, rei tamen benè gerendæ fiducia confirmatus, alacriter in navem faustis ominibus conscendit.... Qui in littore consistebant, non prius abscedere voluerunt, quàm naves vento secundo plenissimis velis ab omnium conspectu remotæ sunt."

[330] More literally rendered by Capt. R. Burton:—

"——He spoke
From a full heart, and skill'd in worldly lore,
In deep, slow tones this solemn warning, fraught
With wisdom, by long-suffering only taught:
'O passion of dominion! O fond lust
Of that poor vanity which men call fame!
O treach'rous appetite, whose highest gust
Is vulgar breath that taketh honour's name!
O fell ambition, terrible but just
Art thou to breasts that cherish most thy flame!
Brief life for them in peril, storm, and rage;
This world a hell, and death their heritage.
"'Shrewd prodigal! whose riot is the dearth
Of states and principalities oppress'd,
Plunder and rape are of thy loathly birth,
Thou art alike of life and soul the pest.
High titles greet thee on this slavish earth,
Yet, none so vile but they would fit thee best.
But Fame, forsooth, and Glory thou art styl'd,
And the blind herd is by a sound beguil'd.'"

[331] The Moor.—Ed.

[332] The Muses.—Ed.

[333] Prometheus is said to have stolen fire from heaven.—Ed.

[334] Alluding to the fables of Phaeton and Icarus; the former having obtained from Helios, his father, permission to guide the chariot of the sun for one day, nearly set the world on fire. He perished in the river Eridanus (the Po.) Icarus, the sun having melted the wax with which his wings were cemented, fell into that part of the Ægean which, from his misfortune, was called the Icarian Sea.—Ed.

[335] The sun is in the constellation Leo in July.—Ed.

[336] The Serra de Cintra, situated about 15 miles N.W. of Lisbon.—Ed.

[337] See the life of Don Henry, prince of Portugal, in the preface.

[338] Morocco.

[339] The discovery of some of the West Indian islands by Columbus was made in 1492 and 1493. His discovery of the continent of America was not till 1498. The fleet of Gama sailed from the Tagus in 1497.

[340] Called by the ancients Insulæ Purpurariæ. Now Madeira, and Porto Santo. The former was so named by Juan Gonzales, and Tristan Vaz, from the Spanish word madera, wood. These discoverers wens sent out by the great Don Henry.

[341] The Tropic of Cancer.—Ed.

[342] Called by Ptolemy Caput Assinarium, now Cape Verde.

[343] The Canaries, called by the ancients Insulæ Fortunatæ.

[344] The province of Jalofo lies between the two rivers, the Gambia and the Zanago. The latter has other names in the several countries through which it runs. In its course it makes many islands, inhabited only by wild beasts. It is navigable for 150 leagues, at the end of which it is crossed by a stupendous ridge of perpendicular rocks, over which the river rushes with such violence, that travellers pass under it without any other inconvenience than the prodigious noise. The Gambia, or Rio Grande, runs 180 leagues, but is not so far navigable. It carries more water, and runs with less noise than the other, though filled with many rivers which water the country of Mandinga. Both rivers are branches of the Niger. Their waters have this remarkable quality; when mixed together they operate as an emetic, but when separate do not. They abound with great variety of fishes, and their banks are covered with horses, crocodiles, winged serpents, elephants, ounces, wild boars, with great numbers of others, wonderful for the variety of their nature and different forms.—Faria y Sousa.

[345] Timbuctu, the mart of Mandinga gold, was greatly resorted to by the merchants of Grand Cairo, Tunis, Oran, Tlemicen, Fez, Morocco, etc.

[346] Contra hoc promontorium (Hesperionceras) Gorgades insulæ narrantur, Gorgonum quondam domus, bidui navigatione distantes a continente, ut tradit Xenophon Lampsacenus. Penetravit in eas Hanno Pœnorum imperator, prodiditque hirta fœminarum corpora viros pernicitate evasisse, duarumque Gorgonum cutes argumenti et miraculi gratia in Junonis templo posuit, spectatas usque ad Carthaginem captam.—Plin. Hist. Nat. l. 6. c. 31.

[347] Sierra Leone.

[348] Cape Palmas.—Ed.

[349] During the reign of John II. the Portuguese erected several forts, and acquired great power in the extensive regions of Guinea. Azambuja, a Portuguese captain, having obtained leave from Caramansa, a negro prince, to erect a fort on his territories, an unlucky accident had almost proved fatal to the discoverers. A huge rock lay very commodious for a quarry; the workmen began on it; but this rock, as the devil would have it, happened to be a negro god. The Portuguese were driven away by the enraged worshippers, who were afterwards with difficulty pacified by a profusion of such presents as they most esteemed.

[350] The Portuguese, having brought an ambassador from Congo to Lisbon, sent him back instructed in the faith. By this means the king, queen, and about 100,000 of the people were baptized; the idols were destroyed and churches built. Soon after, the prince, who was then absent at war, was baptized by the name of Alonzo. His younger brother, Aquitimo, however, would not receive the faith, and the father, because allowed only one wife, turned apostate, and left the crown to his pagan son, who, with a great army, surrounded his brother, when only attended by some Portuguese and Christian blacks, in all only thirty-seven. By the bravery of these, however, Aquitimo was defeated, taken, and slain. One of Aquitimo's officers declared, they were not defeated by the thirty-seven Christians, but by a glorious army who fought under a shining cross. The idols were again destroyed, and Alonzo sent his sons, grandsons, and nephews to Portugal to study; two of whom were afterwards bishops in Congo.—Extracted from Faria y Sousa.

[351] According to fable, Calisto was a nymph of Diana. Jupiter having assumed the figure of that goddess, completed his amorous desires. On the discovery of her pregnancy, Diana drove her from her train. She fled to the woods, where she was delivered of a son. Juno changed them into bears, and Jupiter placed them in heaven, where they form the constellations of Ursa Major and Minor. Juno, still enraged, entreated Thetis never to suffer Calisto to bathe in the sea. This is founded on the appearance of the northern pole-star, to the inhabitants of our hemisphere; but, when Gama approached the austral pole, the northern, of consequence, disappeared under the waves.

[352] The Southern Cross.

[353] The constellation of the southern pole was called The Cross by the Portuguese sailors, from the appearance of that figure formed by seven stars. In the southern hemisphere, as Camoëns observes, the nights are darker than in the northern, the skies being adorned with much fewer stars.

[354]Non, mihi si linguæ centum sunt, oraque
centum, Ferrea vox, omnes scelerum comprendere formas.—ÆN. vi.

[355] That living fire, by seamen held divine.—The sulphureous vapours of the air, after being violently agitated by a tempest, unite, and when the humidity begins to subside, as is the case when the storm is almost exhausted, by the agitation of their atoms they take fire, and are attracted by the masts and cordage of the ship. Being thus, naturally, the pledges of the approaching calm, it is no wonder that the superstition of sailors should in all ages have esteemed them divine, and—

Of heaven's own care in storms the holy sign.

In the expedition of the Golden Fleece, in a violent tempest these fires were seen to hover over the heads of Castor and Pollux, who were two of the Argonauts, and a calm immediately ensued. After the apotheoses of these heroes, the Grecian sailors invoked these fires by the names of Castor and Pollux, or the sons of Jupiter. The Athenians called them Σωτῆρες, Saviours.

[356] In this book, particularly in the description of Massilia, the Gorgades, the fires called Castor and Pollux, and the water-spout, Camoëns has happily imitated the manner of Lucan. It is probable that Camoëns, in his voyage to the East Indies, was an eye witness of the phenomena of the fires and water-spout. The latter is thus described by Pliny, l. 2. c. 51. Fit et caligo, belluæ similis nubes dira navigantibus vocatur et columna, cum spissatus humor rigensque ipse se sustinet, et in longam veluti fistulam nubes aquam trahit. When the violent heat attracts the waters to rise in the form of a tube, the marine salts are left behind, by the action of rarefaction, being too gross and fixed to ascend. It is thus, when the overloaded vapour bursts, that it descends—

Sweet as the waters of the limpid rill.

[357] That sage device.—The astrolabe, an instrument of infinite service in navigation, by which the altitude of the sun, and distance of the stars is taken. It was invented in Portugal during the reign of John II. by two Jewish physicians, named Roderic and Joseph. It is asserted by some that they were assisted by Martin of Bohemia, a celebrated mathematician.—Partly from Castera. Vid. Barros, Dec. 1. lib. iv. c. 2.

[358] Arabic, one of the most copious and wide-spoken of languages.—Ed.

[359] Camoëns, in describing the adventure of Fernando Velosó, by departing from the truth of history, has shown his judgment as a poet. The place where the Portuguese landed they named the Bay of St. Helen. They caught one of two negroes, says Faria, who were busied in gathering honey on a mountain. Their behaviour to this savage, whom they gratified with a red cap, some glasses and bells, induced him to bring a number of his companions for the like trifles. Though some who accompanied Gama were skilled in the various African languages, not one of the natives could understand them. A commerce, however, was commenced by signs and gestures. Gama behaved to them with great civility; the fleet was cheerfully supplied with fresh provisions, for which the natives received cloths and trinkets. But this friendship was soon interrupted by a young, rash Portuguese. Having contracted an intimacy with some of the negroes, he obtained leave to penetrate into the country along with them, to observe their habitations and strength. They conducted him to their huts with great good nature, and placed before him, what they esteemed an elegant repast, a sea-calf dressed in the way of their country. This so much disgusted the delicate Portuguese, that he instantly got up and abruptly left them. Nor did they oppose his departure, but accompanied him with the greatest innocence. As fear, however, is always jealous, he imagined they were leading him as a victim to slaughter. No sooner did he come near the ships, than he called aloud for assistance. Coëllo's boat immediately set off for his rescue. The Africans fled to the woods; and now esteeming the Portuguese as a band of lawless plunderers, they provided themselves with arms, and lay in ambush. Their weapons were javelins, headed with short pieces of horn, which they throw with great dexterity. Soon after, while Gama and some of his officers were on the shore taking the altitude of the sun by the astrolabe, they were suddenly and with great fury attacked by the ambush from the woods. Several were much wounded, multos convulnerant, inter quos Gama in pede vulnus accepit, and Gama received a wound in the foot. The admiral made a speedy retreat to the fleet, prudently choosing rather to leave the negroes the honour of the victory, than to risk the life of one man in a quarrel so foreign to the destination of his expedition, and where, to impress the terror of his arms could be of no service to his interest. When he came nearer to the East Indies he acted in a different manner. He then made himself dreaded whenever the treachery of the natives provoked his resentment.—Collected from Faria and Osorius.

[360] The critics have vehemently declaimed against the least mixture of the comic, with the dignity of the epic poem. It is needless to enter into any defence of this passage of Camoëns, farther than to observe that Homer, Virgil, and Milton have offended the critics in the same manner, and that this piece of raillery in the Lusiad is by much the politest, and the least reprehensible, of anything of the kind in the four poets. In Homer are several strokes of low raillery. Patroclus having killed Hector's charioteer, puns thus on his sudden fall: It is a pity he is not nearer the sea! He would soon catch abundance of oysters, nor would the storms frighten him. See how he dives from his chariot down to the sand! What excellent divers are the Trojans! Virgil, the most judicious of all poets, descends even to burlesque, where the commander of a galley tumbles the pilot into the sea:—

——Segnemque Menœten
In mare præcipitem puppi deturbat ab alta.
At gravis ut sundo vix tandem redditus imo est
Jam senior, madidaque fluens in veste Menœtes,
Summa petit scopuli siccaque in rupe resedit.
Illum et labentem Teucri, et risere natantem;
Et salsos rident revomentem pectore fluctus.

And, though the character of the speakers, the ingenious defence which has been offered for Milton, may, in some measure, vindicate the raillery which he puts into the mouths of Satan and Belial, the lowness of it, when compared with that of Camoëns, must still be acknowledged. Talking of the execution of the diabolical artillery among the good angels, they, says Satan—

"Flew off, and into strange vagaries fell
As they would dance, yet for a dance they seem'd
Somewhat extravagant and wild, perhaps
For joy of offer'd peace.——
To whom thus Belial, in like gamesome mood.
Leader, the terms we sent were terms of weight,
Of hard contents, and full of force urg'd home,
Such as we might perceive amus'd them all,
And stumbled many——
——this gift they have beside,
They show us when our foes walk not upright."

[361] The translator in reply to the critics will venture the assertion, that the fiction of the apparition of the Cape of Tempests, in sublimity and awful grandeur of imagination, stands unsurpassed in human composition.

[362] The next proud fleet.—On the return of Gama to Portugal, a fleet of thirteen sail, under the command of Pedro Alvarez Cabral, was sent out on the second voyage to India, where the admiral with only six ships arrived. The rest were mostly destroyed by a terrible tempest at the Cape of Good Hope, which lasted twenty days. "The daytime," says Faria, "was so dark that the sailors could scarcely see each other, or hear what was said for the horrid noise of the winds." Among those who perished was the celebrated Bartholomew Diaz, who was the first modern discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope, which he named the Cape of Tempests.

[363] Behold a hero come.—Don Francisco de Almeyda. He was the first Portuguese viceroy of India, in which country he obtained several great victories over the Mohammedans and pagans. He was the first who conquered Quiloa and Mombas, or Mombaz. On his return to Portugal he put into the bay of Saldanha, near the Cape of Good Hope, to take in water and provisions. The rudeness of one of his servants produced a quarrel with the Caffres, or Hottentots. His attendants, much against his will, forced him to march against the blacks. "Ah, whither," he exclaimed, "will you carry the infirm man of sixty years?" After plundering a miserable village, on the return to their ships they were attacked by a superior number of Caffres, who fought with such fury in rescue of their children, whom the Portuguese had seized, that the viceroy and fifty of his attendants were slain.

[364] The crescent, the symbol of Mohammedanism.—Ed.

[365] This poetical description of the miserable catastrophe of Don Emmanuel de Souza, and his beautiful spouse, Leonora de Sà, is by no means exaggerated. He was several years governor of Diu in India, where he amassed immense wealth. On his return to his native country, the ship in which was his lady, all his riches, and five hundred men, his sailors and domestics, was dashed to pieces on the rocks at the Cape of Good Hope. Don Emmanuel, his lady, and three children, with four hundred of the crew escaped, having only saved a few arms and provisions. As they marched through the wild uncultivated deserts, some died of famine, of thirst, and fatigue; others, who wandered from the main body in search of water, were murdered by the savages, or destroyed by the wild beasts. They arrived, at last, at a village inhabited by African banditti. At first they were courteously received, but the barbarians, having unexpectedly seized their arms, stripped the whole company naked, and left them destitute to the mercy of the desert. The wretchedness of the delicate and exposed Leonora was increased by the brutal insults of the negroes. Her husband, unable to relieve, beheld her miseries. After having travelled about 300 leagues, her legs swelled, her feet bleeding at every step, and her strength exhausted, she sunk down, and with the sand covered herself to the neck, to conceal her nakedness. In this dreadful situation, she beheld two of her children expire. Her own death soon followed. Her husband, who had been long enamoured of her beauty, received her last breath in a distracted embrace. Immediately, he snatched his third child in his arms, and uttering the most lamentable cries, he ran into the thickest of the wood, where the wild beasts were soon heard to growl over their prey. Of the whole four hundred who escaped the waves, only six and twenty arrived at another village, whose inhabitants were more civilized, and traded with the merchants of the Red Sea, from whence they found a passage to Europe, and brought the tidings of the unhappy fate of their companions. Jerome de Cortereal, a Portuguese poet, has written an affecting poem on the shipwreck, and deplorable catastrophe of Don Emmanuel, and his beloved spouse.—Partly from Castera.

[366] The giants or Titans; called "sons of God" in Gen. vi. 2.—Ed.

[367] Briareus.

[368] Doris, the sister and spouse of Nereus, and mother of the Nereides. By Nereus, in the physical sense of the fable, is understood the water of the sea, and by Doris, the bitterness or salt, the supposed cause of its prolific quality in the generation of fishes.

[369] And give our wearied minds a lively glow.—Variety is no less delightful to the reader than to the traveller, and the imagination of Camoëns gave an abundant supply. The insertion of this pastoral landscape, between the terrific scenes which precede and follow, has a fine effect. "Variety," says Pope, in one of his notes on the Odyssey, "gives life and delight; and it is much more necessary in epic, than in comic or tragic, poetry, sometimes to shift the scenes, to diversify and embellish the story."

The Portuguese, sailing upon the Atlantic Ocean, discovered the most southern point of Africa: here they found an immense sea, which carried them to the East Indies. The dangers they encountered in the voyage, the discovery of Mozambique, of Melinda, and of Calecut, have been sung by Camoëns, whose poem recalls to our minds the charms of the Odyssey, and the magnificence of the Æneid.—Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, bk. xxi. c. 21.

[370] Virgil.

[371] A small island, named Santa Cruz by Bartholomew Diaz, who discovered it. According to Faria y Sousa, he went twenty-five leagues further, to the river Del Infante, which, till passed by Gama, was the utmost extent of the Portuguese discoveries.

[372] It was the force of this rushing current which retarded the further discoveries of Diaz. Gama got over it by the assistance of a tempest. The seasons when these seas are safely navigable, are now perfectly known.

[373] The wise men of the East, or magi, whom the Roman Catholic writers will have to have been kings.—Ed.

[374] The Epiphany.—Ed.

[375] Dos Reis, i.e., of the kings.—Ed.

[376] The frequent disappointments of the Portuguese, when they expect to hear some account of India, is a judicious imitation of several parts of Virgil; who, in the same manner, magnifies the distresses of the Trojans in their search for the fated seat of Empire:—

——O gens
Infelix! cui to exitio fortuna reservat?
Septima post Trojæ excidium jam vertitur æstas;
Cum freta, cum terras omnes, tot inhospita saxa
Sideraque emensæ ferimur: dum per mare magnum
Italiam sequimur fugientem, et volvimur undis. Æn. v. 625.

[377] Hop.

[378] It had been extremely impolitic in Gama to mention the mutiny of his followers to the King of Melinda. The boast of their loyalty, besides, has a good effect in the poem, as it elevates the heroes, and gives uniformity to the character of bravery, which the dignity of the epopea required to be ascribed to them. History relates the matter differently. In standing for the Cape of Good Hope, Gama gave the highest proofs of his resolution. The fleet seemed now tossed to the clouds, ut modo nubes contingere, and now sunk to the lowest whirlpools of the abyss. The winds were insufferably cold, and, to the rage of the tempest was added the horror of an almost continual darkness. The crew expected every moment to be swallowed up in the deep. At every interval of the storm, they came round Gama, asserting the impossibility to proceed further, and imploring him to return. This he resolutely refused. A conspiracy against his life was formed, but was discovered by his brother. He guarded against it with the greatest courage and prudence; put all the pilots in chains, and he himself, with some others, took the management of the helms. At last, after having many days withstood the tempest, and a perfidious conspiracy, invicto animo, with an unconquered mind, a favourable change of weather revived the spirits of the fleet, and allowed them to double the Cape of Good Hope.—Extr. from Osorius's Historia.

[379] Gama and his followers were, from the darkness of the Portuguese complexion, thought to be Moors. When Gama arrived in the East, a considerable commerce was carried on between the Indies and the Red Sea by the Moorish traders, by whom the gold mines of Sofala, and the riches of East Africa were enjoyed. The traffic was brought by land to Cairo, from whence Europe was supplied by the Venetian and Antwerpian merchants.

[380] "O nome lhe ficou dos Bons-Signais."

[381] Raphael. See Tobit, ch. v. and xii.—Ed.

[382] It was the custom of the Portuguese navigators to erect crosses on the shores of new-discovered countries. Gama carried materials for pillars of stone with him, and erected six crosses during his expedition. They bore the name and arms of the king of Portugal, and were intended as proofs of the title which accrues from first discovery.

[383] This poetical description of the scurvy is by no means exaggerated. It is what sometimes really happens in the course of a long voyage.

[384] King of Ithaca.

[385] Æneas.

[386] Homer.

[387] Virgil.

[388] The Muses.

[389] Homer's Odyssey, bk. x. 460.

[390] See the Odyssey, bk. ix.

[391] See Æn. v. 833

[392] The Lotophagi, so named from the lotus, are thus described by Homer:—

"Not prone to ill, nor strange to foreign guest,
They eat, they drink, and Nature gives the feast;
The trees around them all their fruit produce;
Lotos the name; divine, nectareous juice;
(Thence call'd Lotophagi) which whoso tastes,
Insatiate, riots in the sweet repasts,
Nor other home, nor other care intends,
But quits his home, his country, and his friends:
The three we sent, from off th' enchanting ground
We dragg'd reluctant, and by force we bound:
The rest in haste forsook the pleasing shore,
Or, the charm tasted, had return'd no more."
Pope, Odyss. ix. 103.

The Libyan lotus is a shrub like a bramble, the berries like the myrtle, purple when ripe, and about the size of an olive. Mixed with bread-corn, it was used as food for slaves. They also made an agreeable wine of it, but which would not keep above ten days. See Pope's note in loco.

[393] In skins confin'd the blust'ring winds control.—The gift of Æolus to Ulysses.

"The adverse winds in leathern bags he brac'd,
Compress'd their force, and lock'd each struggling blast:
For him the mighty sire of gods assign'd,
The tempest's lord, the tyrant of the wind;
His word alone the list'ning storms obey,
To smooth the deep, or swell the foamy sea.
These, in my hollow ship the monarch hung,
Securely fetter'd by a silver thong;

But Zephyrus exempt, with friendly gales He charg'd to fill, and guide the swelling sails: Rare gift! but oh, what gift to fools avails?"

}

Pope, Odyss. x. 20.

The companions of Ulysses imagined that these bags contained some valuable treasure, and opened them while their leader slept. The tempests bursting out, drove the fleet from Ithaca, which was then in sight, and was the cause of a new train of miseries.

[394] See the third Æneid.

[395] See the sixth Æneid, and the eleventh Odyssey.

[396] Alexander the Great.—Ed.

[397] Achilles, son of Peleus.—Ed.

[398] Virgil, born at Mantua.—Ed.

[399] Don Francisco de Gama, grandson of Vasco de Gama, the hero of the Lusiad.—Ed.

[400] Cleopatra.

[401] Every display of eastern luxury and magnificence was lavished in the fishing parties on the Nile, with which Cleopatra amused Mark Antony, when at any time he showed symptoms of uneasiness, or seemed inclined to abandon the effeminate life which he led with his mistress. At one of these parties, Mark Antony, having procured divers to put fishes upon his hooks while under the water, he very gallantly boasted to his mistress of his great dexterity in angling. Cleopatra perceived his art, and as gallantly outwitted him. Some other divers received her orders, and in a little while Mark Antony's line brought up a fried fish in place of a live one, to the vast entertainment of the queen, and all the convivial company. Octavius was at this time on his march to decide who should be master of the world.

[402] The friendship of the Portuguese and Melindians was of long continuance. Alvaro Cabral, the second admiral who made the voyage to India, in an engagement with the Moors off the coast of Sofala, took two ships richly freighted from the mines of that country. On finding that Xeques Fonteyma, the commander, was uncle to the King of Melinda, he restored the valuable prize, and treated him with the utmost courtesy. Their good offices were reciprocal. By the information of the King of Melinda, Cabral escaped the treachery of the King of Calicut. The Kings of Mombaz and Quiloa, irritated at the alliance with Portugal, made several depredations on the subjects of Melinda, who in return were effectually revenged by their European allies.

[403] A giant.

[404] Two gods contending.—According to the fable, Neptune and Minerva disputed the honour of giving a name to the city of Athens. They agreed to determine the contest by a display of their wisdom and power, in conferring the most beneficial gift on mankind. Neptune struck the earth with his trident and produced the horse, whose bounding motions are emblematical of the agitation of the sea. Pallas commanded the olive-tree, the symbol of peace, and of riches, to spring forth. The victory was adjudged to the goddess, from whom the city was named Athens. The taste of the ancient Grecians clothed almost every occurrence in mythological allegory. The founders of Athens, it is most probable, disputed whether their new city should be named from the fertility of the soil or from the marine situation of Attica. The former opinion prevailed, and the town received its name in honour of the goddess of the olive-tree—Athēnē.

[405] While Pallas here appears to wave her hand.—As Neptune struck the earth with his trident, Minerva, says the fable, struck the earth with her lance. That she waved her hand while the olive boughs spread, is a fine poetical attitude, and varies the picture from that of Neptune, which follows.

[406] Though wide, and various, o'er the sculptur'd stone.—The description of palaces is a favourite topic several times touched upon by the two great masters of epic poetry, in which they have been happily imitated by their three greatest disciples among the moderns, Camoëns, Tasso, and Milton. The description of the palace of Neptune has great merit. Nothing can be more in place than the picture of chaos and the four elements. The war of the gods, and the contest of Neptune and Minerva are touched with the true boldness of poetical colouring. To show to the English reader that the Portuguese poet is, in his manner, truly classical, is the intention of many of these notes.

[407] Bacchus.

[408] The description of Triton, who, as Fanshaw says—

"Was a great nasty clown,"

is in the style of the classics. His parentage is differently related. Hesiod makes him the son of Neptune and Amphitrité. By Triton, in the physical sense of the fable, is meant the noise, and by Salacé, the mother by some ascribed to him, the salt of the ocean. The origin of the fable of Triton, it is probable, was founded on the appearance of a sea animal, which, according to some ancient naturalists, in the upward parts resembles the human figure. Pausanias relates a wonderful story of a monstrously large one, which often came ashore on the meadows of Bœotia. Over his head was a kind of finny cartilage, which, at a distance, appeared like hair; the body covered with brown scales; the nose and ears like the human; the mouth of a dreadful width, jagged with the teeth of a panther; the eyes of a greenish hue; the hands divided into fingers, the nails of which were crooked, and of a shelly substance. This monster, whose extremities ended in a tail like a dolphin's, devoured both men and beasts as they chanced in his way. The citizens of Tanagra, at last, contrived his destruction. They set a large vessel full of wine on the sea shore. Triton got drunk with it, and fell into a profound sleep, in which condition the Tanagrians beheaded him, and afterwards, with great propriety, hung up his body in the temple of Bacchus; where, says Pausanias, it continued a long time.

[409] A shell of purple on his head he bore.—In the Portuguese—

Na cabeça por gorra tinha posta
Huma mui grandé casco de lagosta.

Thus rendered by Fanshaw—

"He had (for a montera[413]) on his crown
The shell of a red lobster overgrown."

[410] Neptune.

[411] And changeful Proteus, whose prophetic mind.—The fullest and best account of the fable of Proteus is in the fourth Odyssey.

[412] Thetis.

[413] Montera, the Spanish word for a huntsman's cap.

[414] She who the rage of Athamas to shun.—Ino, the daughter of Cadmus and Hermione, and second spouse of Athamas, king of Thebes. The fables of her fate are various. That which Camoëns follows is the most common. Athamas, seized with madness, imagined that his spouse was a lioness, and her two sons young lions. In this frenzy he slew Learchus, and drove the mother and her other son, Melicertus, into the sea. The corpse of the mother was thrown ashore on Megara and that of the son at Corinth. They were afterwards deified, the one as a sea goddess, the other as the god of harbours.

[415] And Glaucus lost to joy.—A fisherman, says the fable, who, on eating a certain herb, was turned into a sea god. Circé was enamoured of him, and in revenge of her slighted love, poisoned the fountain where his mistress usually bathed. By the force of the enchantment the favoured Scylla was changed into a hideous monster, whose loins were surrounded with the ever-barking heads of dogs and wolves. Scylla, on this, threw herself into the sea, and was metamorphosed into the rock which bears her name. The rock Scylla at a distance appears like the statue of a woman. The furious dashing of the waves in the cavities, which are level with the water, resembles the barking of wolves and dogs.

[416] Thyoneus, a name of Bacchus.

[417] High from the roof the living amber glows.—

"From the arched roof,
Pendent by subtle magic, many a row
Of starry lamps, and blazing cressets, fed
With naptha and asphaltus, yielded light
As from a sky."
Milton.

[418] The Titans.

[419] The north wind.

[420] And rent the Mynian sails.—The sails of the Argonauts, inhabitants of Mynia.

[421] See the first note on the first book of the Lusiad.

[422]

In haughty England, where the winter spreads
His snowy mantle o'er the shining meads.—

In the original—

Là na grande Inglaterra, que de neve
Boreal sempre abunda;

that is, "In illustrious England, always covered with northern snow." Though the translator was willing to retain the manner of Homer, he thought it proper to correct the error in natural history fallen into by Camoëns. Fanshaw seems to have been sensible of the mistake of his author, and has given the following (uncountenanced by the Portuguese) in place of the eternal snows ascribed to his country:—

"In merry England, which (from cliffs that stand
Like hills of snow) once Albion's name did git."

[423] Eris, or Discordia, the goddess of contention.—Virgil, Æneid ii. 337.—Ed.

[424]

What knighthood asks, the proud accusers yield,
And, dare the damsels' champions to the field.—

The translator has not been able to discover the slightest vestige of this chivalrous adventure in any memoirs of the English history. It is probable, nevertheless, that however adorned with romantic ornament, it is not entirely without foundation in truth. Castera, who unhappily does not cite his authority, gives the names of the twelve Portuguese champions: Alvaro Vaz d'Almada, afterwards Count d'Avranches in Normandy; another Alvaro d'Almada, surnamed the Juster, from his dexterity at that warlike exercise; Lopez Fernando Pacheco; Pedro Homen d'Acosta; Juan Augustin Pereyra; Luis Gonfalez de Malafay; the two brothers Alvaro and Rodrigo Mendez de Cerveyra; Ruy Gomex de Sylva; Soueyro d'Acosta, who gave his name to the river Acosta in Africa; Martin Lopez d'Azevedo; and Alvaro Gonfalez de Coutigno, surnamed Magricio. The names of the English champions, and of the ladies, he confesses are unknown, nor does history positively explain the injury of which the dames complained. It must, however, he adds, have been such as required the atonement of blood; il falloit qu'elle fût sanglante, since two sovereigns allowed to determine it by the sword. "Some critics," says Castera, "may perhaps condemn this episode of Camoëns; but for my part," he continues, "I think the adventure of Olindo and Sophronia, in Tasso, is much more to be blamed. The episode of the Italian poet is totally exuberant, whereas that of the Portuguese has a direct relation to his proposed subject: the wars of his country, a vast field, in which he has admirably succeeded, without prejudice to the first rule of the epopea, the unity of the action." The severest critic must allow that the episode related by Veloso, is happily introduced. To one who has ever been at sea, the scene must be particularly pleasing. The fleet is under sail, they plough the smooth deep—

"And o'er the decks cold breath'd the midnight wind."

All but the second watch are asleep in their warm pavilions; the second watch sit by the mast, sheltered from the chilly gale by a broad sail-cloth; sleep begins to overpower them, and they tell stories to entertain one another. For beautiful, picturesque simplicity there is no sea-scene equal to this in the Odyssey, or Æneid.

[425] What time he claim'd the proud Castilian throne.—John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, claimed the crown of Castile in the right of his wife, Donna Constantia, daughter of Don Pedro, the late king. Assisted by his son-in-law, John I. of Portugal, he entered Galicia, and was proclaimed king of Castile at the city of St. Jago de Compostella. He afterwards relinquished his pretensions, on the marriage of his daughter, Catalina, with the infant, Don Henry of Castile.

[426] The dames by lot their gallant champions choose.—The ten champions, who in the fifth book of Tasso's Jerusalem are sent by Godfrey for the assistance of Armida, are chosen by lot. Tasso, who had read the Lusiad, and admired its author, undoubtedly had the Portuguese poet in his eye.

[427]

In that proud port half circled by the wave,
Which Portugallia to the nation gave,
A deathless name.—

Oporto, called by the Romans Calle. Hence Portugal.

[428]

Yet something more than human warms my breast,
And sudden whispers—

In the Portuguese—

Mas, se a verdade o espirito me adevinha.

Literally, "But, if my spirit truly divine." Thus rendered by Fanshaw—

But, in my aug'ring ear a bird doth sing.

[429] As Rome's Corvinus.—Valerius Maximus, a Roman tribune, who fought and slew a Gaul of enormous stature, in single combat. During the duel a raven perched on the helmet of his antagonist, sometimes pecked his face and hand, and sometimes blinded him with the flapping of his wings. The victor was thence named Corvinus, from Corvus. Vid. Livy, l. 7, c. 26.

[430] The Flandrian countess on her hero smil'd.—The princess, for whom Magricio signalized his valour, was Isabella of Portugal, and spouse to Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, and earl of Flanders. Some Spanish chronicles relate that Charles VII. of France, having assembled the states of his kingdom, cited Philip to appear with his other vassals. Isabella, who was present, solemnly protested that the earls of Flanders were not obliged to do homage. A dispute arose, on which she offered, according to the custom of that age, to appeal to the fate of arms. The proposal was accepted, and Magricio the champion of Isabella, vanquished a French chevalier, appointed by Charles. Though our authors do not mention this adventure, and though Emmanuel de Faria, and the best Portuguese writers treat it with doubt, nothing to the disadvantage of Camoëns is thence to be inferred. A poet is not obliged always to follow the truth of history.

[431] The Rhine another pass'd, and prov'd his might.—This was Alvaro Vaz d'Almada. The chronicle of Garibay relates, that at Basle he received from a German a challenge to measure swords, on condition that each should fight with the right side unarmed; the German by this hoping to be victorious, for he was left-handed. The Portuguese, suspecting no fraud, accepted. When the combat began he perceived the inequality. His right side unarmed was exposed to the enemy, whose left side, which was nearest to him was defended with half a cuirass. Notwithstanding all this, the brave Alvaro obtained the victory. He sprang upon the German, seized him, and, grasping him forcibly in his arms, stifled and crushed him to death; imitating the conduct of Hercules, who in the same manner slew the cruel Anteus. Here we ought to remark the address of our author; he describes at length the injury and grief of the English ladies, the voyage of the twelve champions to England, and the prowess they there displayed. When Veloso relates these, the sea is calm; but no sooner does it begin to be troubled, than the soldier abridges his recital: we see him follow by degrees the preludes of the storm, we perceive the anxiety of his mind on the view of the approaching danger, hastening his narration to an end. Behold the strokes of a master!—This note, and the one preceding, are from Castera.

[432] The halcyons, mindful of their fate, deplore.—Ceyx, king of Trachinia, son of Lucifer, married Alcyone, the daughter of Eolus. On a voyage to consult the Delphic Oracle, he was shipwrecked. His corpse was thrown ashore in the view of his spouse, who, in the agonies of her love and despair, threw herself into the sea. The gods, in pity of her pious fidelity, metamorphosed them into the birds which bear her name. The halcyon is a little bird about the size of a thrush, its plumage of a beautiful sky blue, mixed with some traits of white and carnation. It is vulgarly called the kingfisher. The halcyons very seldom appear but in the finest weather, whence they are fabled to build their nests on the waves. The female is no less remarkable than the turtle, for her conjugal affection. She nourishes and attends the male when sick, and survives his death but a few days. When the halcyons are surprised in a tempest, they fly about as in the utmost terror, with the most lamentable and doleful cries. To introduce them, therefore, in the picture of a storm is a proof, both of the taste and judgment of Camoëns.

[433] With shrill, faint voice, th' untimely ghost complains.—It may not perhaps be unentertaining to cite Madame Dacier and Mr. Pope on the voices of the dead. It will, at least, afford a critical observation which appears to have escaped them both. "The shades of the suitors," observes Dacier, "when they are summoned by Mercury out of the palace of Ulysses, emit a feeble, plaintive, inarticulate sound, τρίζουσι, strident: whereas Agamemnon, and the shades that have been long in the state of the dead, speak articulately. I doubt not but Homer intended to show, by the former description, that when the soul is separated from the organs of the body, it ceases to act after the same manner as while it was joined to it; but how the dead recover their voices afterwards is not easy to understand. In other respects Virgil paints after Homer:—

Pars tollere vocem
Exiguam: inceptus clamor frustratur hiantes."

To this Mr. Pope replies, "But why should we suppose, with Dacier, that these shades of the suitors (of Penelope) have lost the faculty of speaking? I rather imagine that the sounds they uttered were signs of complaint and discontent, and proceeded not from an inability to speak. After Patroclus was slain he appears to Achilles, and speaks very articulately to him; yet, to express his sorrow at his departure, he acts like these suitors: for Achilles—

'Like a thin smoke beholds the spirit fly,
And hears a feeble, lamentable cry.'

Dacier conjectures that the power of speech ceases in the dead, till they are admitted into a state of rest; but Patroclus is an instance to the contrary in the Iliad, and Elpenor in the Odyssey, for they both speak before their funereal rites are performed, and consequently before they enter into a state of repose amongst the shades of the happy."

The critic, in his search for distant proofs, often omits the most material one immediately at hand. Had Madame Dacier attended to the episode of the souls of the suitors, the world had never seen her ingenuity in these mythological conjectures; nor had Mr. Pope any need to bring the case of Patroclus or Elpenor to overthrow her system. Amphimedon, one of the suitors, in the very episode which gave birth to Dacier's conjecture, tells his story very articulately to the shade of Agamemnon, though he had not received the funereal rites:—

"Our mangled bodies, now deform'd with gore,
Cold and neglected spread the marble floor:
No friend to bathe our wounds! or tears to shed
O'er the pale corse! the honours of the dead."
Odys. xxiv.

On the whole, the defence of Pope is almost as idle as the conjectures of Dacier. The plain truth is, poetry delights in personification; everything in it, as Aristotle says of the Iliad, has manners; poetry must therefore personify according to our ideas. Thus in Milton:—

"Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth."

And thus in Homer, while the suitors are conducted to hell:—

"Trembling, the spectres glide, and plaintive vent
Thin, hollow screams, along the deep descent:"

and, unfettered with mythological distinctions, either shriek or articulately talk, according to the most poetical view of their supposed circumstances.

[434] Exod. xiv. 29.

[435] Noah.

[436] Venus.

[437] For the fable of Eolus see the tenth Odyssey.

[438]

And vow, that henceforth her Armada's sails
Should gently swell with fair propitious gales.

In innumerable instances Camoëns discovers himself a judicious imitator of the ancients. In the two great masters of the epic are several prophecies oracular of the fate of different heroes, which give an air of solemn importance to the poem. The fate of the Armada thus obscurely anticipated, resembles in particular the prophecy of the safe return of Ulysses to Ithaca, foretold by the shade of Tiresias, which was afterwards fulfilled by the Phæacians. It remains now to make some observations on the machinery used by Camoëns in this book. The necessity of machinery in the epopea, and the, perhaps, insurmountable difficulty of finding one unexceptionably adapted to a poem where the heroes are Christians, or, in other words, to a poem whose subject is modern, have already been observed in the preface. The machinery of Camoëns has also been proved, in every respect, to be less exceptionable than that of Tasso in his Jerusalem, or that of Voltaire in his Henriade. The descent of Bacchus to the palace of Neptune, in the depths of the sea, and his address to the watery gods, are noble imitations of Virgil's Juno in the first Æneid. The description of the storm is also masterly. In both instances the conduct of the Æneid is joined with the descriptive exuberance of the Odyssey. The appearance of the star of Venus through the storm is finely imagined; the influence of the nymphs of that goddess over the winds, and their subsequent nuptials, are in the spirit of the promise of Juno to Eolus:—

Sunt mihi bis septum præstanti corpore nymphæ:
Quarum, quæ forma pulcherrima; Deïopeiam
Connubio jungam stabili, propriamque dicabo:
Omnes ut tecum meritis pro talibus annos
Exigat, et pulchra faciat te prole párentem.—Virgil, Æn. bk. i.

And the fiction itself is an allegory, exactly in the manner of Homer. Orithia, the daughter of Erecteus, and queen of the Amazons, was ravished and carried away by Boreas.

[439] Vasco de Gama.

[440] This refers to the Catholic persecutions of Protestants whom they had previously condemned at the Diet of Spires. War was declared against the Protestants in 1546. It lasted for six years, when a treaty of peace was signed at Passau on the Danube, in 1552.—Ed.

[441] Some blindly wand'ring, holy faith disclaim.—At the time when Camoëns wrote, the German empire was plunged into all the miseries of a religious war, the Catholics using every endeavour to rivet the chains of Popery, the adherents of Luther as strenuously endeavouring to shake them off.

[442]

High sound the titles of the English crown,
King of Jerusalem.—

The title of "King of Jerusalem" was never assumed by the kings of England. Robert, duke of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror, was elected King of Jerusalem by the army in Syria, but declined it in hope of ascending the throne of England. Henry VIII. filled the throne of England when our author wrote: his luxury and conjugal brutality amply deserved the censure of the honest poet.

[443] France.

[444] What impious lust of empire steels thy breast.—The French translator very cordially agrees with the Portuguese poet in the strictures upon Germany, England, and Italy.

[445] The Mohammedans.

[446] Where Cynifio flows.—A river in Africa, near Tripoli.—Virgil, Georg. iii. 311.—Ed.

[447] O Italy! how fall'n, how low, how lost!—However these severe reflections on modern Italy may displease the admirers of Italian manners, the picture on the whole is too just to admit of confutation. Never did the history of any court afford such instances of villainy and all the baseness of intrigue as that of the pope's. That this view of the lower ranks in the pope's dominions is just, we have the indubitable testimony of Addison. Our poet is justifiable in his censures, for he only follows the severe reflections of the greatest of the Italian poets. It were easy to give fifty instances; two or three, however, shall suffice. Dante, in his sixth canto, del Purg.—

Ahi, serva Italia, di dolore ostello,
Nave senza nocchiero in gran tempesta,
Non donna di provincie, bordello.

"Ah, slavish Italy, the inn of dolour, a ship without a pilot in a horrid tempest:—not the mistress of provinces, but a brothel!"

Ariosto, canto 17:—

O d' ogni vitio fetida sentina
Dormi Italia imbríaco.

"O inebriated Italy, thou sleepest the sink of every filthy vice!"

And Petrarch:—

Del'empia Babilonia, ond'è fuggita
Ogni vergogna, ond'ogni bene è fuori,
Albergo di dolor, madre d'errori
Son fuggit'io per allungar la vita.

"From the impious Babylon (the Papal Court) from whence all shame and all good are fled, the inn of dolour, the mother of errors, have I hastened away to prolong my life."

[448] The fables old of Cadmus.—Cadmus having slain the dragon which guarded the fountain of Dirce, in Bœotia, sowed the teeth of the monster. A number of armed men immediately sprang up, and surrounded Cadmus, in order to kill him. By the counsel of Minerva he threw a precious stone among them, in striving for which they slew one another. Only five survived, who afterwards assisted him to build the city of Thebes.—Vid. Ovid. Met. iv.

Terrigenæ pereunt per mutua vulnera fratres.

[449]

So fall the bravest of the Christian name,
While dogs unclean.—

Imitated from a fine passage in Lucan, beginning—

Quis furor, O Cives! quæ tanta licentia ferri,
Gentibus invisis Latium præbere cruorem?

[450] The Mohammedans.

[451] Constantinople.

[452] Beyond the Wolgian Lake.—The Caspian Sea, so called from the large river Volga, or Wolga, which empties itself into it.

[453]

Their fairest offspring from their bosoms torn,
(A dreadful tribute !)—

By this barbarous policy the tyranny of the Ottomans was long sustained. The troops of the Turkish infantry and cavalry, known by the name of Janissaries and Spahis, were thus supported. "The sons of Christians—and those the most completely furnished by nature—were taken in their childhood from their parents by a levy made every five years, or oftener, as occasion required."—Sandys.

[454] Mohammedans.

[455]

O'er Afric's shores
The sacred shrines the Lusian heroes rear'd.—

See the note on book v. [p. 137.]

[456] Of deepest west.—Alludes to the discovery and conquest of the Brazils by the Portuguese.

[457] The poet, having brought his heroes to the shore of India, indulges himself with a review of the state of the western and eastern worlds; the latter of which is now, by the labour of his heroes, rendered accessible to the former. The purpose of his poem is also strictly kept in view. The west and the east he considers as two great empires; the one of the true religion, the other of a false. The professors of the true, disunited and destroying one another; the professors of the false one, all combined to extirpate the other. He upbraids the professors of the true religion for their vices, particularly for their disunion, and for deserting the interests of holy faith. His countrymen, however, he boasts, have been its defenders and planters, and, without the assistance of their brother powers, will plant it in Asia.

"The Crusaders," according to Voltaire, "were a band of vagabond thieves, who had agreed to ramble from the heart of Europe in order to desolate a country they had no right to, and massacre, in cold blood, a venerable prince, more than fourscore years old, and his whole people, against whom they had no pretence of complaint."

To prove that the Crusades were neither so unjustifiable, so impolitic, nor so unhappy in their consequences as superficial readers of history are accustomed to regard them, would not be difficult.

Upon the whole, it will be found that the Portuguese poet talks of the political reasons of a Crusade with an accuracy in the philosophy of history as superior to that of Voltaire, as the poetical merit of the Lusiad surpasses that of the Henriade. And the critic in poetry must allow, that, to suppose the discovery of Gama the completion of all the endeavours to overthrow the great enemies of the true religion, gives a dignity to the poem, and an importance to the hero, similar to that which Voltaire, on the same supposition, allows to the subject of the Jerusalem of Tasso.

[458] Calicut is the name of a famous sea-port town in the province of Malabar.

[459]

The herald hears
Castilia's manly tongue salute his ears.—

This in according to the truth of history. While the messenger sent ashore by Gama was borne here and there, and carried off his feet by the throng, who understood not a word of his language, he was accosted in Spanish by a Moorish merchant, a native of Tunis, who, according to Osorius, had been the chief person with whom King Ferdinand had formerly contracted for military stores. He proved himself an honest agent, and of infinite service to Gama; he returned to Portugal, where, according to Faria, he died in the Christian communion. He was named Monzaida.

[460] The sacred pledge of eastern faith.—To eat together was, and still is, in the east looked upon as the inviolable pledge of protection. As a Persian nobleman was one day walking in his garden, a wretch in the utmost terror prostrated himself before him, and implored to be protected from the rage of a multitude who were in pursuit of him, to take his life. The nobleman took a peach, eat part of it, and gave the rest to the fugitive, assuring him of safety. As they approached the house, they met a crowd who carried the murdered corpse of the nobleman's beloved son. The incensed populace demanded the murderer, who stood beside him, to be delivered to their fury. The father, though overwhelmed with grief and anger, replied, "We have eaten together, and I will not betray him." He protected the murderer of his son from the fury of his domestics and neighbours, and in the night facilitated his escape.

[461] i.e. crescent-shaped.—Ed.

[462] In Rhodope.—The beautiful fable of the descent of Orpheus to hell, for the recovery of his beloved wife, Eurydice, will be found in Virgil's Georgics, bk. iv., lines 460-80.—Ed.

[463]

(For now the banquet on the tented plain,
And sylvan chase his careless hours employ).—

The great Mogul, and other eastern sovereigns, attended by their courtiers, spend annually some months of the finest season in encampments in the field, in hunting parties, and military amusements.

[464] Th' enormous mountain.—The Himalaya range, which is a continuation of an immense chain of mountains girdling the northern regions of the earth and known by various names, as Caucasus, Homodus, Paropamissus, Imaus, etc., and from Imaus extended through Tartary to the sea of Kamschatka. Not the range of mountains so called in Asia Minor.—Ed.

[465] As wild traditions tell.—Pliny, imposed upon by some Greeks, who pretended to have been in India, relates this fable.—Vide Nat. Hist. lib. 12.

[466] Is fondly plac'd in Ganges' holy wave.—Almost all the Indian nations attribute to the Ganges the virtue of cleansing the soul from the stains of sin. They have such veneration for this river, that if any one in their presence were to throw any filth into the stream, an instant death would punish his audacity.

[467] Cambaya, the ancient Camanes of Ptolemy, gives name to the gulf of that name at the head of which it is situated. It is the principal seaport of Guzerat.—Ed.

[468] Porus was king of part of the Punjaub, and was conquered by Alexander the Great.—Ed.

[469] Narsinga.—The laws of Narsing oblige the women to throw themselves into the funeral pile, to be burnt with their deceased husbands. An infallible secret to prevent the desire of widowhood.—Castera from Barros, Dec. 4.

[470] The Canarese, who inhabit Canara, on the west coast of India.—Ed.

[471] Medina, a city of Arabia, famous as being the burial-place of Mohammed, and hence esteemed sacred.—Ed.

[472] According to tradition, Perimal, a sovereign of India, embraced Islamism about 800 years before Gama's voyage, divided his dominions into different kingdoms, and ended his days as a hermit at Mecca.—Ed.

[473] i.e. pariahs, outcasts.

[474] Brahma their founder as a god they boast.—Antiquity has talked much, but knew little with certainty of the Brahmins, and their philosophy. Porphyry and others esteem them the same as the Gymnosophists of the Greeks, and divide them into several sects, the Samanæi, the Germanes, the Pramnæ, the Gymnetæ, etc. Brahma is the head of the Hindu triad which consists of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva.—Ed.

[475] Almost innumerable, and sometimes as whimsically absurd as the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments," are the holy legends of India. The accounts of the god Brahma, or Brimha, are more various than those of any fable in the Grecian mythology. According to Father Bohours, in his life of Xavier, the Brahmins hold, that the Great God having a desire to become visible, became man. In this state he produced three sons, Mayso, Visnu, and Brahma; the first, born of his mouth, the second, of his breast, the third, of his belly. Being about to return to his invisibility, he assigned various departments to his three sons. To Brahma he gave the third heaven, with the superintendence of the rites of religion. Brahma having a desire for children, begat the Brahmins, who are the priests of India, and who are believed by the other tribes to be a race of demi-gods, who have the blood of heaven running in their veins. Other accounts say, that Brahma produced the priests from his head, the more ignoble tribes from his breast, thighs, and feet.

According to the learned Kircher's account of the theology of the Brahmins, the sole and supreme god Vishnu, formed the secondary god Brahma, out of a flower that floated on the surface of the great deep before the creation. And afterwards, in reward of the virtue, fidelity, and gratitude of Brahma, gave him power to create the universe.

Hesiod's genealogy of the gods, though refined upon by the schools of Plato, is of the same class with the divine genealogies of the Brahmins. The Jewish fables, foolish questions and genealogies, reproved by Saint Paul (epist. Tit.), were probably of this kind, for the Talmudical legends were not then sprung up. Binah, or Understanding, said the cabalists, begat Kochmah, or Wisdom, etc., till at last comes Milcah, the Kingdom, who begat Shekinah, the Divine Presence. In the same manner the Christian Gnostics, of the sect of Valentinus, held their Πλἡρωμα, and their thirty Æons. Ampsiu and Auraan, they tell us, i.e. Profundity and Silence, begat Bacua and Tharthuu, Mind and Truth; these begat Ubucua and Thardeadie, Word and Life, and these Merexa and Atarbarba, Man and Church. The other conjunctions of their thirty Æons are of similar ingenuity. The prevalence of the same spirit of mythological allegory in such different nations, affords the philosopher a worthy field for speculation.

Almost as innumerable as their legends are the dreadful penances to which the Hindus submit themselves for the expiation of sins. Some hold the transmigration of souls, and of consequence abstain from all animal food.{*} Yet, however austere in other respects, they freely abandon themselves to every species of debauchery, some of them esteeming the most unnatural abominations as the privilege of their sanctity. The cow they venerate as sacred. If a dying man can lay hold of a cow's tail, and expire with it in his hands, his soul is sure to be purified, and perhaps will enjoy the signal favour to transmigrate into the body of one of those animals. The temples of India, which are numerous, are filled with innumerable idols of the most horrid figures. The Brahmins are allowed to eat nothing but what is cooked by themselves. Astrology is their principal study; yet, though they are mostly a despicable set of fortune-tellers, some of them are excellent moralists, and particularly inculcate the comprehensive virtue of humanity, which is enforced by the opinion, that Divine beings often assume the habit of mendicants, in order to distinguish the charitable from the inhuman. They have several traditions of the virtuous, on these happy trials, being translated into heaven; the best designed incitement to virtue, perhaps, which their religion contains. Besides the Brahmins, the principal sect of that vast region called India, there are several others, who are divided and subdivided, according to innumerable variations, in every province. In Cambaya, the Banians, a sect who strictly abstain from all animal food, are numerous.

{*} Though from the extracts given by Mr. Dow, the philosopher Goutam appears to have been a very Duns Scotus or Aquinas in metaphysics, the Pythagorean reason why the Brahmins abstain from animal food, is a convincing proof of their ignorance in natural philosophy. Some will let vermin overrun them; some of the Banians cover their mouth with a cloth, lest they should suck in a gnat with their breath; and some carefully sweep the floor ere they tread upon it, lest they dislodge the soul of an insect. And yet they do not know that in the water they drink, and in every salad they eat, they cause the death of innumerable living creatures.

The sacred books of the Hindoos are written in a dead language, the Sanskrit, which none but the Brahmins are allowed to study. So strict in this are they, says Mr. Dow, that only one Mussulman was ever instructed in it, and his knowledge was obtained by fraud. Mahummud Akbar, emperor of India, though bred a Mohammedan, studied several religions. In the Christian he was instructed by a Portuguese. But, finding that of the Hindoos inaccessible, he had recourse to art. A boy named Feizi, was, as the orphan of a Brahmin, put under the care of one of the most eminent of these philosophers, and obtained full knowledge of their hidden religion. But the fraud being discovered, he was laid under the restraint of an oath, and it does not appear that he ever communicated the knowledge thus acquired.

[476] Kotwâl, the chief officer of police in a town.—Forbes' Hindustani Dictionary.

[477] The monster forms, Chimera-like, and rude.—Chimera, a monster slain by Bellerophon.

"First, dire Chimera's conquest was enjoin'd,
A mingled monster of no mortal kind;
Behind, a dragon's fiery tail was spread,
A goat's rough body bore a lion's head;
Her pitchy nostrils flaky flames expire,
Her gaping throat emits infernal fire."
Pope's II. vi.

[478] So Titan's son.—Briareus.

[479] Before these shrines the blinded Indians bow.—In this instance, Camoëns has, with great art, deviated from the truth of history. As it was the great purpose of his hero to propagate the law of heaven in the East, it would have been highly absurd to have represented Gama and his attendants as on their knees in a pagan temple. This, however, was the case. "Gama, who had been told," says Osorius, "that there were many Christians in India, conjectured that the temple, to which the catual led him, was a Christian church. At their entrance they were met by four priests, who seemed to make crosses on their foreheads. The walls were painted with many images. In the middle was it little round chapel, in the wall of which, opposite to the entrance, stood an image which could hardly be discovered. The four priests ascending, some entered the chapel by a little brass door, and pointing to the benighted image, cried aloud, 'Mary, Mary!' The catual and his attendants prostrated themselves an the ground, while the Lusians on their bended knees adored the blessed virgin." Thus Osorius. Another writer says, that a Portuguese, having some doubt, exclaimed, "If this be the devil's image, I however worship God."

[480] Here India's fate.—The description of the palace of the zamorim, situated among aromatic groves, is according to history; the embellishment of the walls is in imitation of Virgil's description of the palace of King Latinus:—

Tectum augustum, ingens, centum sublime columnis,
Urbe fuit summa, etc.

"The palace built by Picus, vast and proud, Supported by a hundred pillars stood, And round encompass'd with a rising wood.

}

The pile o'erlook'd the town, and drew the sight,
Surprised, at once, with reverence and delight....
Above the portal, carv'd in cedar wood,
Placed in their ranks their godlike grandsires stood.
Old Saturn, with his crooked scythe on high;
And Italus, that led the colony:
And ancient Janus with his double face,
And bunch of keys, the porter of the place.

There stood Sabinus, planter of the vines, On a short pruning-hook his head reclines; And studiously surveys his gen'rous wines.

}

Then warlike kings who for their country fought,
And honourable wounds from battle brought.

Around the posts hung helmets, darts, and spears; And captive chariots, axes, shields, and bars; And broken beaks of ships, the trophies of their wars.

}

Above the rest, as chief of all the band
Was Picus plac'd, a buckler in his hand;
His other wav'd a long divining wand.
Girt in his Gabin gown the hero sate——"
Dryden, Æn. vii.

[481]

Behind her founder Nysa's walls were rear'd——
——at distance far
The Ganges lav'd the wide-extended war.—

This is in the perspective manner of the beautiful descriptions of the figures on the shield of Achilles.—Il. xviii.

[482] Had Semele beheld the smiling boy.—The Theban Bacchus, to whom the Greek fabulists ascribed the Indian expedition of Sesostris, king of Egypt.

[483] Semiramis.

[484] Call'd Jove his father.—The bon-mot of Olympias on this pretension of her son Alexander, was admired by the ancients. "This hot-headed youth, forsooth, cannot be at rest unless he embroil me in a quarrel with Juno."—Quint. Curt.

[485]

The tap'stried walls with gold were pictur'd o'er,
And flow'ry velvet spread the marble floor.—

According to Osorius.

[486] A leaf.—The Betel.

[487] More now we add not.—The tenor of this first conversation between the zamorim and Gama, is according to the truth of history.

[488] What terrors oft have thrill'd my infant breast.—The enthusiasm with which Monzaida, a Moor, talks of the Portuguese, may perhaps to some appear unnatural. Camoëns seems to be aware of this by giving a reason for that enthusiasm in the first speech of Monzaida to Gama—

Heav'n sent you here for some great work divine,
And Heav'n inspires my breast your sacred toils to join.

And, that this Moor did conceive a great affection to Gama, whose religion he embraced, and to whom he proved of the utmost service, is according to the truth of history.

[489] The ruddy juice by Noah found.—Gen. ix. 20. "And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard, and he drank of the wine," etc.

[490]

His faith forbade with other tribe to join
The sacred meal, esteem'd a rite divine.—

The opinion of the sacredness of the table is very ancient in the East. It is plainly to be discovered in the history of Abraham. When Melchizedek, a king and priest, blessed Abraham, it is said, "And he brought forth bread and wine and he blessed him."—Gen. xiv. 18. The patriarchs only drank wine, according to Dr. Stukely, on their more solemn festivals, when they were said to rejoice before the Lord. Other customs of the Hindoos are mentioned by Camoëns in this book. If a noble should touch a person of another tribe—

A thousand rites, and washings o'er and o'er,
Can scarce his tainted purity restore.

Nothing, says Osorius, but the death of the unhappy commoner can wipe off the pollution. Yet we are told by the same author, that Hindoo nobility cannot be forfeited, or even tarnished by the basest and greatest of crimes; nor can one of mean birth become great or noble by the most illustrious actions. The noblemen, says the same writer, adopt the children of their sisters, esteeming there can be no other certainty of the relationship of their heirs.

[491] The warlike song.—Though Camoëns began his Lusiad in Portugal, almost the whole of it was written while on the ocean, while in Africa, and in India.—See his Life.

[492] As Canace.—Daughter of Eolus. Her father, having thrown her incestuous child to the dogs, sent her a sword, with which she slew herself. In Ovid she writes an epistle to her husband-brother, where she thus describes herself:—

Dextra tenet calamum, strictum tenet altera ferrum.

[493]

Soon I beheld that wealth beneath the wave
For ever lost.—

See the Life of Camoëns.

[494] My life, like Judah's Heaven-doom'd king of yore.—Hezekiah.—See Isaiah xxxviii.

[495] And left me mourning in a dreary jail.—This, and the whole paragraph from—

Degraded now, by poverty abhorr'd,

alludes to his fortunes in India. The latter circumstance relates particularly to the base and inhuman treatment he received on his return to Goa, after his unhappy shipwreck.—See his Life.

[496] Who spurns the muse.—Similarity of condition has produced similarity of sentiment in Camoëns and Spenser. Each was the ornament of his country and his age, and each was cruelly neglected by the men of power, who, in truth, were incapable to judge of their merit, or to relish their writings. We have seen several of the strictures of Camoëns on the barbarous nobility of Portugal. The similar complaints of Spenser will show, that neglect of genius, however, was not confined to the court of Lisbon:—

"O grief of griefs! O gall of all good hearts!
To see that virtue should despised be
Of such as first were raised for virtue's parts,
And now, broad spreading like an aged tree,
Let none shoot up that nigh them planted be.
O let not those of whom the muse is scorn'd,
Alive or dead be by the muse adorn'd."
Ruins of Time.

It is thought Lord Burleigh, who withheld the bounty intended by Queen Elizabeth, is here meant. But he is more clearly stigmatized in these remarkable lines, where the misery of dependence on court favour is painted in colours which must recall several strokes of the Lusiad to the mind of the reader:—

"Full little knowest thou that hast not tried,
What hell it is, in suing long to bide;
To lose good days, that might be better spent,
To waste long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow,
To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow;
To have thy princess' grace, yet want her peers';
To have thy asking, yet wait many years.
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares,
To eat thy heart thro' comfortless despairs;
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undone."
Mother Hubberd's Tale.

These lines exasperated still more the inelegant, illiberal Burleigh. So true is the observation of Mr. Hughes, that, "even the sighs of a miserable man are sometimes resented as an affront by him that is the occasion of them."

[497] Kotwâl, a sort of superintendent or inspector of police.—Forbes' Hindustani Dictionary.

[498] Lusus.

[499] His cluster'd bough, the same which Bacchus bore.—Camoëns immediately before, and in the former book, calls the ensign of Lusus a bough; here he calls it the green thyrsus of Bacchus:—

O verde Tyrso foi de Bacco usado.

The thyrsus, however, was a javelin twisted with ivy-leaves, used in the sacrifices of Bacchus.

[500] In those fair lawns the bless'd Elysium feign'd.—In this assertion our author has the authority of Strabo. a foundation sufficient for a poet. Nor are there wanting several Spanish writers, particularly Barbosa, who seriously affirm that Homer drew the fine description of Elysium, in his fourth Odyssey, from the beautiful valleys of Spain, where, in one of his voyages, they say, he arrived. Egypt, however, seems to have a better title to this honour. The fable of Charon, and the judges of hell, are evidently borrowed from the Egyptian rites of burial, and are older than Homer. After a ferryman had conveyed the corpse over a lake, certain judges examined the life of the deceased, particularly his claim to the virtue of loyalty, and, according to the report, decreed or refused the honours of sepulture. The place of the catacombs, according to Diodorus Siculus, was surrounded with deep canals, beautiful meadows, and a wilderness of groves. It is universally known that the greatest part of the Grecian fables were fabricated from the customs and opinions of Egypt. Several other nations have also claimed the honour of affording the idea of the fields of the blessed. Even the Scotch challenge it. Many Grecian fables, says an author of that country, are evidently founded on the reports of the Phœnician sailors. That these navigators traded to the coasts of Britain is certain. In the middle of summer, the season when the ancients performed their voyages, for about six weeks there is no night over the Orkney Islands; the disk of the sun, during that time, scarcely sinking below the horizon. This appearance, together with the calm which usually prevails at that season, and the beautiful verdure of the islands, could not fail to excite the admiration of the Phœnicians; and their accounts of the place naturally afforded the idea that these islands were inhabited by the spirits of the just. This, says our author, is countenanced by Homer, who places his "islands of the happy" at the extremity of the ocean. That the fables of Scylla, the Gorgones, and several others, were founded on the accounts of navigators, seems probable; and, on this supposition, the Insulæ Fortunatæ, and Purpurariæ, now the Canary and Madeira islands, also claim the honour of giving colours to the description of Elysium. The truth, however, appears to be this: That a place of happiness is reserved for the spirits of the good is the natural suggestion of that anxiety and hope concerning the future which animates the human breast. All the barbarous nations of Africa and America agree in placing their heaven in beautiful islands, at an immense distance over the ocean. The idea is universal, and is natural to every nation in a state of barbarous simplicity.

[501] The goddess Minerva.

[502] The heav'n-built towers of Troy.—Alluding to the fable of Neptune, Apollo, and Laomedon.

[503]

On Europe's strand, more grateful to the skies,
He bade th' eternal walls of Lisbon rise.—

For some account of this tradition, see the note on Lusiad, bk. iii. p. 76. Ancient traditions, however fabulous, have a good effect in poetry. Virgil has not scrupled to insert one, which required an apology:—

Prisca fides facto, sed fama perennis.

Spenser has given us the history of Brute and his descendants at full length in the Faerie Queene; and Milton, it is known, was so fond of that absurd legend, that he intended to write a poem on the subject; and by this fondness was induced to mention it as a truth in the introduction to his History of England.

[504] The brother chief.—Paulus de Gama.

[505] That gen'rous pride which Rome to Pyrrhus bore.—When Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, was at war with the Romans, his physician offered to poison him. The senate rejected the proposal, and acquainted Pyrrhus of the designed treason. Florus remarks on the infamous assassination of Viriatus, that the Roman senate did him great honour; ut videretur aliter vinci non potuisse; it was a confession that they could not otherwise conquer him,—Vid. Flor. l. 17. For a fuller account of this great man, see the note on Lusiad, bk. i. p. 9.

[506] Some deem the warrior of Hungarian race.—See the note on the Lusiad, bk. iii p. 67.

[507] Jerusalem.

[508] The first Alonzo.—King of Portugal.

[509] On his young pupil's flight.—"Some, indeed most, writers say, that the queen advancing with her army towards Guimaraez, the king, without waiting till his governor joined him, engaged them and was routed: but that afterwards the remains of his army, being joined by the troops under the command of Egaz Munitz, engaged the army of the queen a second time, and gained a complete victory."—Univ. Hist.

[510] Egaz behold, a chief self-doom'd to death.—See the same story in bk. iii. p. 71. Though history affords no authentic document of this transaction, tradition, the poet's authority, is not silent. And the monument of Egaz in the monastery of Paço de Souza gives it countenance. Egaz and his family are there represented, in bas relief, in the attitude and garb, says Castera, as described by Camoëns.

[511] Ah Rome! no more thy gen'rous consul boast.—Sc. Posthumus, who, overpowered by the Samnites, submitted to the indignity of passing under the yoke.

[512] The Moorish king.—The Alcaydes, or tributary governors under the Miramolin{*} or Emperor of Morocco, are often by the Spanish and Portuguese writers styled kings. He who was surprised and taken prisoner by Don Fuaz Roupinho was named Gama. Fuaz, after having gained the first naval victory of the Portuguese, also experienced their first defeat. With one and twenty sail he attacked fifty-four large galleys of the Moors. "The sea," says Brandan, "which had lately furnished him with trophies, now supplied him with a tomb."

{*} This should be (and is evidently only a corruption of), Emir-el-Mumenin, i.e. in Arabic, Commander of the believers.—Ed.

[513] A foreign navy brings the pious aid.—A navy of crusaders, mostly English.

[514] And from the leaves.—This legend is mentioned by some ancient Portuguese chronicles. Homer would have availed himself, as Camoëns has done, of a tradition so enthusiastic, and characteristic of the age. Henry was a native of Bonneville near Cologne. "His tomb," says Castera, "is still to be seen in the monastery of St. Vincent, but without the palm."

[515] In robes of white behold a priest advance.—Thestonius, prior of the regulars of St. Augustine of Conymbra. Some ancient chronicles relate this circumstance as mentioned by Camoëns. Modern writers assert, that he never quitted his breviary.—Castera.

[516] The son of Egas.—He was named Mem Moniz, and was son of Egas Moniz, celebrated for the surrender of himself and family to the King of Castile, as already mentioned.

[517] The dauntless Gerald.—"He was a man of rank, who, in order to avoid the legal punishment to which several crimes rendered him obnoxious, put himself at the head of a party of freebooters. Tiring, however, of that life, he resolved to reconcile himself to his sovereign by some noble action. Full of this idea, one evening he entered Evora, which then belonged to the Moors. In the night he killed the sentinels of one of the gates, which he opened to his companions, who soon became masters of the place. This exploit had its desired effect. The king pardoned Gerald, and made him governor of Evora. A knight with a sword in one hand, and two heads in the other, from that time became the armorial bearing of the city."—Castera.

[518] Wrong'd by his king.—Don Pedro Fernando de Castro, injured by the family of Lara, and denied redress by the King of Castile, took the infamous revenge of bearing arms against his native country. At the head of a Moorish army he committed several outrages in Spain; but was totally defeated in Portugal.

[519] And lo, the skies unfold.—"According to some ancient Portuguese histories, Don Matthew, bishop of Lisbon, in the reign of Alonso I, attempted to reduce Alcazar, then in possession of the Moors. His troops, being suddenly surrounded by a numerous party of the enemy, were ready to fly, when, at the prayers of the bishop, a venerable old man, clothed in white, with a red cross on his breast, appeared in the air. The miracle dispelled the fears of the Portuguese; the Moors were defeated, and the conquest of Alcazar crowned the victory."—Castera.

[520]

Her streets in blood deplore
The seven brave hunters murder'd by the Moor.—

"During a truce with the Moors, six cavaliers of the order of St. James were, while on a hunting party, surrounded and killed, by a numerous body of the Moors. During the fight, in which the gentlemen sold their lives dear, a common carter, named Garcias Rodrigo, who chanced to pass that way, came generously to their assistance, and lost his life along with them. The poet, in giving all seven the same title, shows us that virtue constitutes true nobility. Don Payo de Correa, grand master of the order of St. James, revenged the death of these brave unfortunates by the sack of Tavila, where his just rage put the garrison to the sword."—Castera.

[521] Those three bold knights how dread.—Nothing can give us a stronger picture of the romantic character of their age, than the manners of those champions, who were gentlemen of birth; and who, in the true spirit of knight-errantry, went about from court to court in quest of adventures. Their names were, Gonçalo Ribeiro; Fernando Martinez de Santarene; and Vasco Anez, foster-brother to Mary, queen of Castile, daughter of Alonzo IV. of Portugal.

[522] And I, behold, am off'ring sacrifice.—This line, the simplicity which, I think, contains great dignity, is adopted from Fanshaw—

"And I, ye see, am off'ring sacrifice;"

who has here caught the spirit of the original—

A quem lhe a dura nova estava dando,
Pois eu responde estou sacrificando;

i.e. To whom when they told the dreadful tidings, "And I," he replies "am sacrificing." The piety of Numa was crowned with victory.—Vid. 'Plut. in vit. Numæ.

[523]

The Lusian Scipio well might speak his fame,
But nobler Nunio shines a greater name.—

Castera justly observes the happiness with which Camoëns introduces the name of this truly great man. "Il va," says he, "le nommer tout à l'heure avec une adresse et une magnificence digne d'un si beau sujet."

[524] Two knights of Malta.—These knights were first named Knights Hospitalers of St. John of Jerusalem, afterwards Knights of Rhodes, from whence they were driven to Messina, ere Malta was assigned to them. By their oath of knighthood they were bound to protect the Holy Sepulchre from the profanation of infidels; immediately on taking this oath, they retired to their colleges, where they lived on their revenues in all the idleness of monkish luxury. Their original habit was black, with a white cross; their arms gules, a cross, argent.

[525] His captive friend.—Before John I. mounted the throne of Portugal, one Vasco Porcallo was governor of Villaviciosa. Roderic de Landroal and his friend, Alvarez Cuytado, having discovered that he was in the interest of the King of Castile, drove him from his town and fortress. On the establishment of King John, Porcallo had the art to obtain the favour of that prince; but, no sooner was he re-instated in the garrison, than he delivered it up to the Castilians; and plundered the house of Cuytado, whom, with his wife, he made prisoner and, under a numerous party, ordered to be sent to Olivença. Roderic de Landroal, hearing of this, attacked and defeated the escort, and set his friend at liberty.—Castera.

[526] Here treason's well-earn'd meed allures thine eyes.—While the kingdom of Portugal was divided, some holding with John the newly elected king, and others with the King of Castile, Roderic Marin, governor of Campo-Major, declared for the latter. Fernando d'Elvas endeavoured to gain him to the interest of his native prince, and a conference, with the usual assurances of safety, was agreed to. Marin, at this meeting, seized upon Elvas, and sent him prisoner to his castle. Elvas having recovered his liberty, a few days after met his enemy in the field, whom, in his turn, he made captive; and the traitorous Marin, notwithstanding the endeavours of their captain to save his life, met the reward of his treason from the soldiers of Elvas.—Partly from Castera.

[527] And safe the Lusian galleys speed away.—A numerous fleet of the Castilians being on their way to lay siege to Lisbon. Ruy Pereyra, the Portuguese commander, seeing no possibility of victory, boldly attacked the Spanish admiral. The fury of his onset put the Castilians in disorder, and allowed the Portuguese galleys a safe escape. In this brave piece of service the gallant Pereyra lost his life.—Castera.

[528] The shepherd.—Viriatus.

[529] Equal flame inspir'd these few.—The Castilians having laid siege to Almada, a fortress on a mountain near Lisbon, the garrison, in the utmost distress for water, were obliged at times to make sallies to the bottom of the hill in quest of it. Seventeen Portuguese thus employed were one day attacked by four hundred of the enemy. They made a brave defence, and effected a happy retreat into their fortress.—Castera.

[530] Far from the succour of the Lusian host.—When Alonzo V. took Ceuta, Don Pedro de Menezes was the only officer in the army who was willing to become governor of that fortress; which, on account of the uncertainty of succour from Portugal, and the earnest desire of the Moors to regain it, was deemed untenable. He gallantly defended his post in two severe sieges.

[531] That other earl.—He was the natural son of Don Pedro de Menezes. Alonzo V. one day, having ridden out from Ceuta with a few attendants, was attacked by a numerous party of the Moors, when De Vian, and some others under him, at the expense of their own lives, purchased the safe retreat of their sovereign.

[532] Two brother-heroes shine.—The sons of John I. Don Pedro was called the Ulysses of his age, on account both of his eloquence and his voyages. He visited almost every court of Europe, but he principally distinguished himself in Germany, where, under the standards of the Emperor Sigismond, he signalized his valour in the war against the Turks.—Castera.

[533] The glorious Henry.—In pursuance of the reasons assigned in the preface, the translator has here taken the liberty to make a transposition in the order of his author. In Camoëns, Don Pedro de Menezes, and his son De Vian, conclude the description of the pictured ensigns. Don Henry, the greatest man perhaps that ever Portugal produced, has certainly the best title to close this procession of the Lusian heroes. And, as he was the father of navigation, particularly of the voyage of Gama, to sum up the narrative with his encomium has even some critical propriety.

These observations were suggested by the conduct of Camoëns, whose design, like that of Virgil, was to write a poem which might contain all the triumphs of his country. As the shield of Æneas supplies what could not be introduced in the vision of Elysium, so the ensigns of Gama complete the purpose of the third and fourth Lusiads. The use of that long episode, the conversation with the King of Melinda, and its connection with the subject, have been already observed. The seeming episode of the pictures, while it fulfills the promise—

And all my country's wars the song adorn,

is also admirably connected with the conduct of the poem. The Hindoos naturally desire to be informed of the country, the history, and power of their foreign visitors, and Paulus sets it before their eyes. In every progression of the scenery the business of the poem advances. The regent and his attendants are struck with the warlike grandeur and power of the strangers, and to accept of their friendship, or to prevent the forerunners of so martial a nation from carrying home the tidings of the discovery of India, becomes the great object of their consideration.

[534] But ah, forlorn, what shame to barb'rous pride.—In the original.—

Mas faltamlhes pincel, faltamlhes cores,
Honra, premio, favor, que as artes criáo.

"But the pencil was wanting, colors were wanting, honour, reward, favour, the nourishers of the arts." This seemed to the translator as in impropriety, and contrary to the purpose of the whole speech of Paulus, which was to give the catual a high idea of Portugal. In the fate of the imaginary painter, the Lusian poet gives us the picture of his own, resentment wrung this impropriety from him. The spirit of the complaint, however, is preserved in the translation. The couplet—

"Immortal fame his deathless labours gave;
Poor man, he sunk neglected to the grave!"

is not in the original. It is the sigh of indignation over the unworthy fate of the unhappy Camoëns.

[535] The ghost-like aspect and the threat'ning look.—Mohammed, by some historians described as of a pale livid complexion, and trux aspectus et vox terribilis, of a fierce threatening aspect, voice, and demeanour.

[536]

When, softly usher'd by the milky dawn,
The sun first rises.—

"I deceive myself greatly," says Castera, "if this simile is not the most noble and the most natural that can be found in any poem. It has been imitated by the Spanish comedian, the illustrious Lopez de Vega, in his comedy of Orpheus and Eurydice, act i. sc. 1:—

"Como mirar puede ser
El sol al amanecer,
I quando se enciende, no."

Castera adds a very loose translation of these Spanish lines in French verse. The literal English is, As the sun may be beheld at its rising, but, when illustriously kindled, cannot. Naked, however, as this is, the imitation of Camoëns is evident. As Castera is so very bold in his encomium of this fine simile of the sun, it is but justice to add his translation of it, together with the original Portuguese, and the translation of Fanshaw. Thus the French translator:—

Les yeux peuvent soûtenir la clarté du soleil naissant, mais lorsqu'il s'est avancé dans sa carrière lumineuse, et que ses rayons répandent les ardeurs du midi, on tacherait en vain de l'envisager; un prompt aveuglement serait le prix de cette audace.

Thus elegantly in the original:—

"Em quanto he fraca a força desta gente,
Ordena como em tudo se resista,
Porque quando o Sol sahe, facilmente
Se pòde nelle por a aguda vista:
Porem despois que sobe claro, & ardente,
Se a agudeza dos olhos o conquista
Tao cega fica, quando ficareis,
Se raizes criar lhe nao tolheis."

And thus humbled by Fanshaw:—

"Now whilst this people's strength is not yet knit,
Think how ye may resist them by all ways.
For when the Sun is in his nonage yit,
Upon his morning beauty men may gaze;
But let him once up to his zenith git,
He strikes them blind with his meridian rays;
So blind will ye be, if ye look not too't,
If ye permit these cedars to take root."

[537]

Around him stand,
With haggard looks, the hoary Magi band.—

The Brahmins, the diviners of India. Ammianus Marcellinus, l. 23, says, that the Persian Magi derived their knowledge from the Brachmanes of India. And Arrianus, l. 7, expressly gives the Brahmins the name of Magi. The Magi of India, says he, told Alexander, on his pretensions to divinity, that in everything he was like other men, except that he took less rest, and did more mischief. The Brahmins are never among modern writers called Magi.

[538] The hov'ring demon gives the dreadful sign.—This has an allusion to the truth of history. Barros relates, that an anger being brought before the Zamorim, "Em hum vaso de agua l'he mostrara hunas naos, que vin ham de muy longe para a India, e que a gente d'ellas seria total destruiçam dos Mouros de aquellas partes.—In a vessel of water he showed him some ships which from a great distance came to India, the people of which would effect the utter subversion of the Moors." Camoëns has certainly chosen a more poetical method of describing this divination, a method in the spirit of Virgil; nor in this is he inferior to his great master. The supernatural flame which seizes on Lavinia while assisting at the sacrifice alone excepted, every other part of the augury of Latinus, and his dream in the Albunean forest, whither he went to consult his ancestor, the god Faunus, in dignity and poetical colouring, cannot come in comparison with the divination of the Magi, and the appearance of the demon in the dream of the Moorish priest.

[539] Th'eternal yoke.—This picture, it may perhaps be said, is but a bad compliment to the heroes of the Lusiad, and the fruits of their discovery. A little consideration, however, will vindicate Camoëns. It is the demon and the enemies of the Portuguese who procure this divination; everything in it is dreadful, on purpose to determine the zamorim to destroy the fleet of Gama. In a former prophecy of the conquest of India (when the catual describes the sculpture of the royal palace), our poet has been careful to ascribe the happiest effects to the discovery of his heroes:—

"Beneath their sway majestic, wise, and mild,
Proud of her victors' laws, thrice happier India smil'd."

[540] So let the tyrant plead.—In this short declamation, a seeming excrescence, the business of the poem in reality is carried on. The zamorim, and his prime minister, the catual, are artfully characterised in it; and the assertion—

Lur'd was the regent with the Moorish gold,

is happily introduced by the declamatory reflections which immediately precede it.

[541]

The Moors——their ancient deeds relate,
Their ever-faithful service of the state.—

An explanation of the word Moor is here necessary. When the East afforded no more field for the sword of the conqueror, the Saracens, assisted by the Moors, who had embraced their religion, laid the finest countries in Europe in blood and desolation. As their various embarkations were from the empire of Morocco, the Europeans gave the name of Moors to all the professors of the Mohammedan religion. In the same manner the eastern nations blended all the armies of the Crusaders under one appellation, and the Franks, of whom the army of Godfrey was mostly composed, became their common name for all the inhabitants of the West. Before the arrival of Gama, as already observed, all the traffic of the East, from the Ethiopian side of Africa to China, was in the hands of Arabian Mohammedans, who, without incorporating with the pagan natives, had their colonies established in every country commodious for commerce. These the Portuguese called Moors; and at present the Mohammedans of India are called the Moors of Hindostan by our English writers. The intelligence these Moors gave to one another, relative to the actions of Gama; the general terror with which they beheld the appearance of Europeans, whose rivalship they dreaded as the destruction of their power; the various frauds and arts they employed to prevent the return of one man of Gama's fleet to Europe, and their threat to withdraw from the dominions of the zamorim, are all according to the truth of history. The speeches of the zamorim and of Gama, which follow, are also founded in truth.

[542] Troy.

[543] No sumptuous gift thou bring'st.—"As the Portuguese did not expect to find any people but savages beyond the Cape of Good Hope, they only brought with them some preserves and confections, with trinkets of coral, of glass, and other trifles. This opinion, however, deceived them. In Melinda and in Calicut they found civilized nations, where the arts flourished; who wanted nothing; who were possessed of all the refinements and delicacies on which we value ourselves. The King of Melinda had the generosity to be contented with the present which Gama made; but the zamorim, with a disdainful eye, beheld the gifts which were offered to him. The present was this: Four mantles of scarlet, six hats adorned with feathers, four chaplets of coral beads, twelve Turkey carpets, seven drinking cups of brass, a chest of sugar, two barrels of oil, and two of honey."—Castera.

[544] Fair Acidalia, Love's celestial queen.—Castera derives Acidalia from ἁκηδἡς, which, he says, implies to act without fear or restraint. Acidalia is one of the names of Venus, in Virgil; derived from Acidalus, a fountain sacred to her in Bœotia.

[545] Sprung from the prince.—John I.

[546] And from her raging tempests, nam'd the Cape.—Bartholomew Diaz, was the first who discovered the southmost point of Africa. He was driven back by the storms, which on these seas were thought always to continue, and which the learned of former ages, says Osorius, thought impassable. Diaz, when he related his voyage to John II. called the southmost point the Cape of Tempests. The expectation of the king, however, was kindled by the account, and with inexpressible joy, says the same author, he immediately named it the Cape of Good Hope.

[547]

The pillar thus of deathless fame, begun
By other chiefs, etc.—

"Till I now ending what those did begin,
The furthest pillar in thy realm advance;
Breaking the element of molten tin,
Through horrid storms I lead to thee the dance."
Fanshaw.

[548]

The regent's palace high o'erlook'd the bay,
Where Gama's black-ribb'd fleet at anchor lay.—

The resemblance of this couplet to many passages in Homer, must be obvious to the intelligent critic.

[549] As in the sun's bright beam.—Imitated from Virgil, who, by the same simile, describes the fluctuation of the thoughts of Æneas, on the eve of the Latian war:—

"Laomedontius heros
Cuncta videns, magno curarum fluctuat æstu,
Atque animum nunc huc celerem, nunc dividit illuc,
In partesque rapit varias, perque omnia versat.
Sicut aquæ tremulum labris ubi lumen ahenis
Sole repercussum, aut radiantis imagine Lunæ,
Omnia pervolitat late loca: jamque sub auras
Erigitur, summique ferit laquearia tecti."
"This way and that he turns his anxious mind,
Thinks, and rejects the counsels he design'd;
Explores himself in vain, in ev'ry part,
And gives no rest to his distracted heart:
So when the sun by day or moon by night
Strike on the polish'd brass their trembling light,
The glitt'ring species here and there divide,
And cast their dubious beams from side to side;
Now on the walls, now on the pavement play,
And to the ceiling flash the glaring day."

Ariosto has also adopted this simile in the eighth book of his Orlando Furioso:—

"Qual d'acqua chiara il tremolante lume
Dal Sol per percossa, o da' notturni rai,
Per gli ampli tetti và con lungo salto
A destra, ed a sinistra, e basso, ed alto."
"So from a water clear, the trembling light
Of Phœbus, or the silver ray of night,
Along the spacious rooms with splendour plays,
Now high, now low, and shifts a thousand ways."
Hoole.

But the happiest circumstance belongs to Camoëns. The velocity and various shiftings of the sun-beam, reflected from a piece of crystal or polished steel in the hand of a boy, give a much stronger idea of the violent agitation and sudden shiftings of thought than the image of the trembling light of the sun or moon reflected from a vessel of water. The brazen vessel, however, and not the water, is only mentioned by Dryden. Nor must another inaccuracy pass unobserved. That the reflection of the moon flashed the glaring day is not countenanced by the original.

We have already seen the warm encomium paid by Tasso to his contemporary, Camoëns. That great poet, the ornament of Italy, has also testified his approbation by several imitations of the Lusiad. Virgil, in no instance, has more closely copied Homer, than Tasso has imitated the appearance of Bacchus, or the evil demon, in the dream of the Moorish priest. The enchanter Ismeno thus appears to the sleeping Solyman:—

"Soliman' Solimano, i tuoi silenti
Riposi à miglior tempo homai riserva:
Che sotto il giogo de straniere genti
La patria, ove regnasti, ancor' e serva.
In questa terra dormi, e non rammenti,
Ch'insepolte de' tuoi l'ossa conserva?
Ove si gran' vestigio e del tuo scorno,
Tu neghittoso aspetti il nuovo giorno?"

Thus elegantly translated by Mr. Hoole:—

"Oh! Solyman, regardless chief, awake!
In happier hours thy grateful slumber take:
Beneath a foreign yoke thy subjects bend,
And strangers o'er thy land their rule extend:
Here dost thou sleep? here close thy careless eyes,
While uninterr'd each lov'd associate lies?
Here where thy fame has felt the hostile scorn,
Canst thou, unthinking, wait the rising morn?"

The conclusion of this canto has been slightly altered by the translator. Camoëns, adhering to history, makes Gama (when his factors are detained on shore) seize upon some of the native merchants as hostages. At the intreaty of their wives and children the zamorim liberates his captives; while Gama, having recovered his men and the merchandise, sailed away, carrying with him the unfortunate natives, whom he had seized as hostages.

As there is nothing heroic in this dishonourable action of Gama's, Mickle has omitted it, and has altered the conclusion of the canto.—Ed.

[550] Mickle, in place of the first seventeen stanzas of this canto, has inserted about three hundred lines of his own composition; in this respect availing himself of the licence he had claimed in his preface.—Ed.

[551] Thy sails, and rudders too, my will demands.—According to history.

[552] My sov'reign's fleet I yield not to your sway.—The circumstance of Gama's refusing to put his fleet into the power of the zamorim, is thus rendered by Fanshaw:—

"The Malabar protests that he shall rot
In prison, if he send not for the ships.
He (constant, and with noble anger hot)
His haughty menace weighs not at two chips."

[553] Through Gata's hills.—The hills of Gata or Gate, mountains which form a natural barrier on the eastern side of the kingdom of Malabar.

"Nature's rude wall, against the fierce Canar
They guard the fertile walls of Malabar."
Lusiad, vii.

[554] Then, furious, rushing to the darken'd bay.—For the circumstances of the battle, and the tempest which then happened, see the Life of Gama.

[555] I left my fix'd command my navy's guard.—See the Life of Gama.

[556] Unmindful of my fate on India's shore.—This most magnanimous resolution, to sacrifice his own safety or his life for the safe return of the fleet, is strictly true.—See the Life of Gama.

[557] Abrupt—the monarch cries—"What yet may save!"—Gama's declaration, that no message from him to the fleet could alter the orders he had already left, and his rejection of any further treaty, have a necessary effect in the conduct of the poem. They hasten the catastrophe, and give a verisimilitude to the abrupt and full submission of the zamorim.

[558] The rollers—i.e. the capstans.—The capstan is a cylindrical windlass, worked with bars, which are moved from hole to hole as it turns round. It is used on board ship to weigh the anchors, raise the masts, etc. The versification of this passage in the original affords a most noble example of imitative harmony:—

"Mas ja nas naos os bons trabalhadores
Volvem o cabrestante, & repartidos
Pello trabalho, huns puxao pella amarra,
Outros quebrao co peito duro a barra."
Stanza x.

[559]

Mozaide, whose zealous care
To Gama's eyes reveal'd each treach'rous snare.—

Had this been mentioned sooner, the interest of the catastrophe of the poem must have languished. Though he is not a warrior, the unexpected friend of Gama bears a much more considerable part in the action of the Lusiad than the faithful Achates, the friend of the hero, bears in the business of the Æneid.

[560] There wast thou call'd to thy celestial home.—This exclamatory address to the Moor Monzaida, however it may appear digressive, has a double propriety. The conversion of the Eastern world is the great purpose of the expedition of Gama, and Monzaida is the first fruits of that conversion. The good characters of the victorious heroes, however neglected by the great genius of Homer, have a fine effect in making an epic poem interest us and please. It might have been said, that Monzaida was a traitor to his friends, who crowned his villainy with apostacy. Camoëns has, therefore, wisely drawn him with other features, worthy of the friendship of Gama. Had this been neglected, the hero of the Lusiad might have shared the fate of the wise Ulysses of the Iliad, against whom, as Voltaire justly observes, every reader bears a secret ill will. Nor is the poetical character of Monzaida unsupported by history. He was not an Arab Moor, so he did not desert his countrymen. These Moors had determined on the destruction of Gama; Monzaida admired and esteemed him, and therefore generously revealed to him his danger. By his attachment to Gama he lost all his effects in India, a circumstance which his prudence and knowledge of affairs must have certainly foreseen. By the known dangers he encountered, by the loss he thus voluntarily sustained, and by his after constancy, his sincerity is undoubtedly proved.

[561] The joy of the fleet on the homeward departure from India.—We are now come to that part of the Lusiad, which, in the conduct of the poem, is parallel to the great catastrophe of the Iliad, when, on the death of Hector, Achilles thus addresses the Grecian army—

"Ye sons of Greece, in triumph bring
The corpse of Hector, and your pæons sing:
Be this the song, slow moving toward the shore,
'Hector is dead, and Ilion is no more.'"

Our Portuguese poet, who in his machinery, and many other instances, has followed the manner of Virgil, now forsakes him. In a very bold and masterly spirit he now models his poem by the steps of Homer. What of the Lusiad yet remains, in poetical conduct (though not in an imitation of circumstances), exactly resembles the latter part of the Iliad. The games at the funeral of Patroclus, and the redemption of the body of Hector, are the completion of the rage of Achilles. In the same manner, the reward of the heroes, and the consequences of their expedition complete the unity of the Lusiad. I cannot say it appears that Milton ever read our poet (though Fanshaw's translation was published in his time); yet no instance can be given of a more striking resemblance of plan and conduct, than may be produced in two principal parts of the poem of Camoëns, and of the Paradise Lost.—See the Dissertation which follows this book.

[562] Near where the bowers of Paradise were plac'd.—Between the mouth of the Ganges and Euphrates.

[563] Swans.

[564] His falling kingdom claim'd his earnest care.—This fiction, in poetical conduct, bears a striking resemblance to the digressive histories with which Homer enriches and adorns his poems, particularly to the beautiful description of the feast of the gods with "the blameless Ethiopians." It also contains a masterly commentary on the machinery of the Lusiad. The Divine Love conducts Gama to India. The same Divine Love is represented as preparing to reform the corrupted world, when its attention is particularly called to bestow a foretaste of immortality on the heroes of the expedition which discovered the eastern world. Nor do the wild fantastic loves, mentioned in this little episode, afford any objection against this explanation, an explanation which is expressly given in the episode itself. These wild fantastic amours signify, in the allegory, the wild sects of different enthusiasts, which spring up under the wings of the best and most rational institutions; and which, however contrary to each other, all agree in deriving their authority from the same source.

[565] A young Actæon.—The French translator has the following characteristic note: "This passage is an eternal monument of the freedoms taken by Camoëns, and at the same time a proof of the imprudence of poets; an authentic proof of that prejudice which sometimes blinds them, notwithstanding all the light of their genius. The modern Actæon of whom he speaks, was King Sebastian. He loved the chase; but, that pleasure, which is one of the most innocent and one of the most noble we can possibly taste, did not at all interrupt his attention to the affairs of state, and did not render him savage, as our author pretends. On this point the historians are rather to be believed. And what would the lot of princes be, were they allowed no relaxation from their toils, while they allow that privilege to their people? Subjects as we are, let us venerate the amusements of our sovereigns; let us believe that the august cares for our good, which employ them, follow them often even to the very bosom of their pleasures."

Many are the strokes in the Lusiad which must endear the character of Camoëns to every reader of sensibility. The noble freedom and manly indignation with which he mentions the foible of his prince, and the flatterers of his court, would do honour to the greatest names of Greece or Rome. While the shadow of freedom remained in Portugal, the greatest men of that nation, in the days of Lusian heroism, thought and conducted themselves in the spirit of Camoëns. A noble anecdote of this brave spirit offers itself. Alonzo IV., surnamed the Brave, ascended the throne of Portugal in the vigour of his age. The pleasures of the chase engrossed all his attention. His confidants and favourites encouraged, and allured him to it. His time was spent in the forests of Cintra, while the affairs of government were neglected or executed by those whose interest it was to keep their sovereign in ignorance. His presence, at last, being necessary at Lisbon, he entered the council with all the brisk impetuosity of a young sportsman, and with great familiarity and gaiety entertained his nobles with the history of a whole month spent in hunting, in fishing, and shooting. When he had finished his narrative, a nobleman of the first rank rose up: "Courts and camps," said he, "were allotted for kings, not woods and deserts. Even the affairs of private men suffer when recreation is preferred to business. But when the whims of pleasure engross the thoughts of a king, a whole nation is consigned to ruin. We came here for other purposes than to hear the exploits of the chase, exploits which are only intelligible to grooms and falconers. If your majesty will attend to the wants, and remove the grievances of your people, you will find them obedient subjects; if not——" The king, starting with rage, interrupted him, "If not, what?" "If not," resumed the nobleman, in a firm tone, "they will look for another and a better king." Alonzo, in the highest transport of passion, expressed his resentment, and hasted out of the room. In a little while, however, he returned, calm and reconciled: "I perceive," said he, "the truth of what you say. He who will not execute the duties of a king, cannot long have good subjects. Remember, from this day, you have nothing more to do with Alonzo the sportsman, but with Alonzo the king of Portugal." His majesty was as good as his promise, and became, as a warrior and politician, one of the greatest of the Portuguese monarchs.

[566] With love's fierce flames his frozen heart shall burn.—"It is said, that upon the faith of a portrait Don Sebastian fell in love with Margaret of France, daughter of Henry II., and demanded her in marriage, but was refused. The Spaniards treated him no less unfavourably, for they also rejected his proposals for one of the daughters of Philip II. Our author considers these refusals as the punishment of Don Sebastian's excessive attachment to the chase; but this is only a consequence of the prejudice with which he viewed the amusements of his prince. The truth is, these princesses were refused for political reasons, and not with any regard to the manner in which he filled up his moments of leisure."

Thus Castera, who, with the same spirit of sagacity, starts and answers the following objections: "But here is a difficulty: Camoëns wrote during the life of Don Sebastian, but the circumstance he relates (the return of Gama) happened several years before, under the reign of Emmanuel. How, therefore, could he say that Cupid then saw Don Sebastian at the chase, when that prince was not then born? The answer is easy: Cupid, in the allegory of this work, represents the love of God, the Holy Spirit, who is God himself. Now the Divinity admits of no distinction of time; one glance of his eye beholds the past, the present, and the future; everything is present before him."

This defence of the fiction of Actæon is not more absurd than useless. The free and bold spirit of poetry, and in particular the nature of allegory, defend it. The poet might easily have said, that Cupid foresaw; but had he said so his satire had been much less genteel. As the sentiments of Castera on this passage are extremely characteristic of French ideas, another note from him will perhaps be agreeable. "Several Portuguese writers have remarked," says he, "that the wish—

'Of these lov'd dogs that now his passions sway,
Ah! may he never fall the hapless prey!'

Had in it an air of prophecy; and fate, in effect, seemed careful to accomplish it, in making the presaged woes to fall upon Don Sebastian. If he did not fall a prey to his pack of hounds, we may, however, say that he was devoured by his favourites, who misled his youth and his great soul. But at any rate our poet has carried the similitude too far. It was certainly injurious to Don Sebastian, who nevertheless had the bounty not only not to punish this audacity, but to reward the just eulogies which the author had bestowed on him in other places. As much as the indiscretion of Camoëns ought to surprise us, as much ought we to admire the generosity of his master."

This foppery, this slavery in thinking, cannot fail to rouse the indignation of every manly breast, when the facts are fairly stated. Don Sebastian, who ascended the throne when a child, was a prince of great abilities and great spirit, but his youth was poisoned with the most romantic ideas of military glory. The affairs of state were left to his ministers (for whose character see the next note), his other studies were neglected, and military exercises, of which he not unjustly esteemed the chase a principal, were almost his sole employ. Camoëns beheld this romantic turn, and in a genteel allegorical satire foreboded its consequences. The wish, that his prince might not fall the prey of his favourite passion, was in vain. In a rash, ill-concerted expedition into Africa, Don Sebastian lost his crown in his twenty-fifth year, an event which soon after produced the fall of the Portuguese empire. Had the nobility possessed the spirit of Camoëns, had they, like him, endeavoured to check the quixotism of a young generous prince, that prince might have reigned long and happy, and Portugal might have escaped the Spanish yoke, which soon followed his defeat at Alcazar; a yoke which sunk Portugal into an abyss of misery, from which, in all probability, she will never emerge into her former splendour.

[567]

Enraged, he sees a venal herd, the shame
Of human race, assume the titled name.—

"After having ridiculed all the pleasures of Don Sebastian, the author now proceeds to his courtiers, to whom he has done no injustice. Those who are acquainted with the Portuguese history, will readily acknowledge this."—Castera.

[568] On the hard bosoms of the stubborn crowd.—There in an elegance in the original of this line, which the English language will not admit:—

"Nos duros coraçoens de plebe dura,"—

i.e., In the hard hearts of the hard vulgar.

[569] Cupid.

[570]

Thus from my native waves a hero line
Shall rise, and o'er the East illustrious shine.—

"By the line of heroes to be produced by the union of the Portuguese with the Nereids, is to be understood the other Portuguese, who, following the steps of Gama, established illustrious colonies in India."—Castera.

[571] And Fame—a giant goddess.—This passage affords a striking instance of the judgment of Camoëns. Virgil's celebrated description of Fame is in his eye, but he copies it, as Virgil, in his best imitations, copies after Homer. He adopts some circumstances, but, by adding others, he makes a new picture, which justly may be called his own.

[572] The wat'ry gods.—To mention the gods in the masculine gender, and immediately to apply to them—

"O peito feminil, que levemente
Muda quaysquer propositos tomados."—

The ease with which the female breast changes its resolutions, may to the hypercritical appear reprehensible. The expression, however, is classical, and therefore retained. Virgil uses it, where Æneas is conducted by Venus through the flames of Troy:—

"Descendo, ac ducente Deo, flammam inter et hostes
Expedior."

This is in the manner of the Greek poets, who use the word Θεὁς for god or goddess.

[573] White as her swans.—A distant fleet compared to swans on a lake is certainly a happy thought. The allusion to the pomp of Venus, whose agency is immediately concerned, gives it besides a peculiar propriety. This simile, however, is not in the original. It is adopted from an uncommon liberty taken by Fanshaw:—

"The pregnant sails on Neptune's surface creep,
Like her own swans, in gate, out-chest, and fether."

[574] Soon as the floating verdure caught their sight.—As the departure of Gama from India was abrupt, he put into one of the beautiful islands of Anchediva for fresh water. "While he was here careening his ships," says Faria, "a pirate named Timoja, attacked him with eight small vessels, so linked together and covered with boughs, that they formed the appearance of a floating island." This, says Castera, afforded the fiction of the floating island of Venus. "The fictions of Camoëns," says he, "are the more marvellous, because they are all founded in history. It is not difficult to find why he makes his island of Anchediva to wander on the waves; it is an allusion to a singular event related by Barros." He then proceeds to the story of Timoja, as if the genius of Camoëns stood in need of so weak an assistance.

[575] In friendly pity of Latona's woes.—Latona, pregnant by Jupiter, was persecuted by Juno, who sent the serpent Python in pursuit of her. Neptune, in pity of her distress, raised the island of Delos for her refuge, where she was delivered of Apollo and Diana.—Ovid, Met.

[576] Form'd in a crystal lake the waters blend.—Castera also attributes this to history. "The Portuguese actually found in this island," says he, "a fine piece of water ornamented with hewn stones and magnificent aqueducts; an ancient and superb work, of which nobody knew the author."

In 1505 Don Francisco Almeyda built a fort in this island. In digging among some ancient ruins he found many crucifixes of black and red colour, from whence the Portuguese conjectured, says Osorius, that the Anchedivian islands had in former ages been inhabited by Christians.—Vid. Osor. 1. iv.

[577]

The orange here perfumes the buxom air.
And boasts the golden hue of Daphne's hair.—

Frequent allusions to the fables of the ancients form a characteristic feature of the poetry of the 16th and 17th centuries. A profusion of it is pedantry; a moderate use of it, however, in a poem of those times pleases, because it discovers the stages of composition, and has in itself a fine effect, as it illustrates its subject by presenting the classical reader with some little landscapes of that country through which he has travelled. The description of forests is a favourite topic in poetry. Chaucer, Tasso, and Spenser, have been happy in it, but both have copied an admired passage in Statius:—

"Cadit ardua fagus,
Chaoniumque nemus, brumæque illæsa cupressus;
Procumbunt piceæ, flammis alimenta supremis,
Ornique, iliceæque trabes, metuandaque sulco
Taxus, et infandos belli potura cruores
Fraxinus, atque situ non expugnabile robur:
Hinc audax abies, et odoro vulnere pinus
Scinditur, acclinant intonsa cacumina terræ
Alnus amica fretis, nec inhospita vitibus ulmus."

In rural descriptions three things are necessary to render them poetical: the happiness of epithet, of picturesque arrangement, and of little landscape views. Without these, all the names of trees and flowers, though strung together in tolerable numbers, contain no more poetry than a nurseryman or a florist's catalogue. In Statius, in Tasso and Spenser's admired forests (Ger. Liber. c. 3. st. 75, 76, and F. Queen, b. 1 c. 1. st. 8, 9), the poetry consists entirely in the happiness of the epithets. In Camoëns, all the three requisites are admirably attained and blended together.

[578] And stain'd with lover's blood.—Pyramus and Thisbe:—

"Arborei fœtus aspergine cædis in atram
Vertuntur faciem: madefactaque sanguine radix
Puniceo tingit pendentia mora colore.....
At tu quo ramis arbor miserabile corpus
Nunc tegis unius, mox es tectura duorum;
Signa tene cædis: pullosque et lectibus aptos
Semper habe fœtus gemini monumenta cruoris."
Ovid, Met.

[579] The shadowy vale.—Literal from the original,—O sombrio valle—which Fanshaw, however, has translated, "the gloomy valley," and thus has given us a funereal, where the author intended a festive, landscape. It must be confessed, however, that the description of the island of Venus, is infinitely the best part of all of Fanshaw's translation. And indeed the dullest prose translation might obscure, but could not possibly throw a total eclipse over, so admirable an original.

[580] The woe-mark'd flower of slain Adonis—water'd by the tears of love.—The Anemone. "This," says Castera, "is applicable to the celestial Venus, for, according to my theology, her amour with Adonis had nothing in it impure, but was only the love which nature bears to the sun." The fables of antiquity have generally a threefold interpretation, an historical allusion, a physical and a metaphysical allegory. In the latter view, the fable of Adonis is only applicable to the celestial Venus. A divine youth is outrageously slain, but shall revive again at the restoration of the golden age. Several nations, it is well known, under different names, celebrated the Mysteries, or the death and resurrection of Adonis; among whom were the British Druids, as we are told by Dr. Stukely. In the same manner Cupid, in the fable of Psyche, is interpreted by mythologists, to signify the Divine Love weeping over the degeneracy of human nature.

[581]

At strife appear the lawns and purpled skies,
Who from each other stole the beauteous dyes.—

On this passage Castera has the following sensible, though turgid, note: "This thought," says he, "is taken from the idyllium of Ausonius on the rose:—

'Ambigeres raperetne rosis Aurora ruborem,
An daret, et flores tingere torta dies.'

Camoëns who had a genius rich of itself, still further enriched it at the expense of the ancients. Behold what makes great authors! Those who pretend to give us nothing but the fruits of their own growth, soon fail, like the little rivulets which dry up in the summer, very different from the floods, who receive in their course the tribute of a hundred and a hundred rivers, and which even in the dog-days carry their waves triumphant to the ocean."

[582] The hyacinth bewrays the doleful Ai.—Hyacinthus, a youth beloved of Apollo, by whom he was accidentally slain, and afterwards turned into a flower:—

"Tyrioque nitentior ostro
Flos oritur, formamque capit, quam lilia: si non,
Purpureus color huic, argenteus esset in illis.
Non satis hoc Phæbo est: is enim fuit auctor honoris.
Ipse suos gemitus foliis inscribit; et Ai, Ai,
Flos habet inscriptum: funestaque littera ducta est."
Ovid, Met.

[583] The second Argonauts.—The expedition of the Golden Fleece was esteemed, in ancient poetry, one of the most daring adventures, the success of which was accounted miraculous. The allusions of Camoëns to this voyage, though in the spirit of his age, are by no means improper.

[584] Wide o'er the beauteous isle the lovely fair.—We now come to the passage condemned by Voltaire as so lascivious, that no nation in Europe, except the Portuguese and Italians, could bear it. The fate of Camoëns has hitherto been very peculiar. The mixture of Pagan and Christian mythology in his machinery has been anathematized, and his island of love represented as a brothel. Yet both accusations are the arrogant assertions of the most superficial acquaintance with his works. His poem itself, and a comparison of its parts with the similar conduct of the greatest modern poets, will clearly evince, that in both instances no modern epic writer of note has given less offence to true criticism.

Not to mention Ariosto, whose descriptions will often admit of no palliation, Tasso, Spenser, and Milton, have always been esteemed among the chastest of poets, yet in that delicacy of warm description, which Milton has so finely exemplified in the nuptials of our first parents, none of them can boast the continued uniformity of the Portuguese poet. Though there is a warmth in the colouring of Camoëns which even the genius of Tasso has not reached: and though the island of Armida is evidently copied from the Lusiad, yet those who are possessed of the finer feelings, will easily discover an essential difference between the love-scenes of the two poets, a difference greatly in favour of the delicacy of the former. Though the nymphs in Camoëns are detected naked in the woods, and in the stream, and though desirous to captivate, still their behaviour is that of the virgin who hopes to be the spouse. They act the part of offended modesty; even when they yield they are silent, and behave in every respect like Milton's Eve in the state of innocence, who—

"What was honour knew,"

And who displayed—

"Her virtue, and the conscience of her worth,
That would be wooed, and not unsought be won."

To sum up all, the nuptial sanctity draws its hallowed curtains, and a masterly allegory shuts up the love-scenes of Camoëns.

How different from all this is the island of Armida in Tasso, and its translation, the bower of Acrasia in Spenser! In these virtue is seduced; the scene therefore is less delicate. The nymphs, while they are bathing, in place of the modesty of the bride as in Camoëns, employ all the arts of the lascivious wanton. They stay not to be wooed; but, as Spenser gives it—

The amorous sweet spoils to greedy eyes reveal.

One stanza from our English poet, which, however, is rather fuller than the original, shall here suffice:—

"Withal she laughed and she blush'd withal,
That blushing to her laughter gave more grace,
And laughter to her blushing, as did fall.
Now when they spy'd the knight to slack his pace,
Them to behold, and in his sparkling face
The secret signs of kindled lust appear,
Their wanton merriments they did increase,
And to him beckon'd to approach more near,
And show'd him many sights, that courage cold could rear.

This and other descriptions—

"Upon a bed of roses she was laid
As faint through heat, or dight to pleasant sin"—

present every idea of lascivious voluptuousness. The allurements of speech are also added. Songs, which breathe every persuasive, are heard; and the nymphs boldly call to the beholder:—

E' dolce campo di battaglia il letto
Fiavi, e l'herbetta morbida de' prati.—Tasso.
"Our field of battle is the downy bed,
Or flow'ry turf amid the smiling mead."—Hoole.

These, and the whole scenes in the domains of Armida and Acrasia, are in a turn of manner the reverse of the island of Venus. In these the expression and idea are meretricious. In Camoëns, though the colouring is even warmer, yet the modesty of the Venus de Medicis is still preserved. In everything he describes there is still something strongly similar to the modest attitude of the arms of that celebrated statue. Though prudery, that usual mask of the impurest minds, may condemn him, yet those of the most chaste, though less gloomy turn, will allow, that in comparison with others, he might say,—Virginibus puerisque canto.

Spenser also, where he does not follow Tasso, is often gross; and even in some instances, where the expression is most delicate, the picture is nevertheless indecently lascivious.

[585] The hunter.—Acteon.

[586] Madd'ning as he said.—At the end of his Homer Mr. Pope has given an index of the instances of imitative and sentimental harmony contained in his translations. He has also often even in his notes pointed out the adaptation of sound to sense. The translator of the Lusiad hopes he may for once say, that he has not been inattentive to this great essential of good versification: how he has succeeded the judicious only must determine. The speech of Leonard to the cursory reader may perhaps sometimes appear careless, and sometimes turgid and stiff. That speech, however, is an attempt at the imitative and sentimental harmony, and with the judicious he rests its fate. As the translation in this instance exceeds the original in length, the objection of a foreign critic requires attention. An old pursy Abbé, (and critics are apt to judge by themselves) may indeed be surprised that a man out of breath with running should be able to talk so long. But, had he consulted the experiences of others, he would have found it was no wonderful matter for a stout and young cavalier to talk twice as much, though fatigued with the chase of a couple of miles, provided the supposition be allowed, that he treads on the last steps of his flying mistress.

[587] Hence, ye profane.—We have already observed, that in every other poet the love scenes are generally described as those of guilt and remorse. The contrary character of those of Camoëns not only gives them a delicacy unknown to other moderns, but, by the fiction of the spousal rites, the allegory and machinery of the poem are most happily conducted.

[588] Spread o'er the eastern world the dread alarms.—This admonition places the whole design of the poem before us. To extirpate Mohammedanism, and propagate Christianity, were professed as the principal purpose of the discoveries of Prince Henry and King Emmanuel. In the beginning of the seventh Lusiad, the nations of Europe are upbraided for permitting the Saracens to erect and possess an empire, which alike threatened Europe and Christianity. The Portuguese, however, the patriot poet concludes, will themselves overthrow their enormous power: an event which is the proposed subject of the Lusiad, and which is represented as, in effect, completed in the last book. On this system, adopted by the poet, and which on every occasion was avowed by their kings, the Portuguese made immense conquests in the East. Yet, let it be remembered, to the honour of Gama, and the first commanders who followed his route, that the plots of the Moors, and their various breaches of treaty, gave rise to the first wars which the Portuguese waged in Asia. On finding that all the colonies of the Moors were combined for their destruction, the Portuguese declared war against the eastern Moors, and their allies, wherever they found them. The course of human things, however, soon took place, and the sword of victory and power soon became the sword of tyranny and rapine.

[589] Far o'er the silver lake of Mexic.—The city of Mexico is environed with an extensive lake; or, according to Cortez, in his second narration to Charles V., with two lakes, one of fresh, the other of salt water, in circuit about fifty leagues. This situation, said the Mexicans, was appointed by their God Vitzliputzli, who, according to the explanation of their picture-histories, led their forefathers a journey of fourscore years, in search of the promised land. Four of the principal priests carried the idol in a coffer of reeds. Whenever they halted they built a tabernacle for their god in the midst of their camp, where they placed the coffer and the altar. They then sowed the land, and their stay or departure, without regard to the harvest, was directed by the orders received from their idol, till at last, by his command, they fixed their abode on the site of Mexico.

[590] Before the love-sick Roman.—Mark Antony.

[591] The beverage—the fountain's cooling aid confess'd.—It was a custom of the ancients in warm climates to mix the coolest spring water with their wine, immediately before drinking; not, we may suppose, to render it less intoxicating, but on account of the cooling flavour it thereby received. Homer tells us that the wine which Ulysses gave to Polyphemus would bear twenty measures of water. Modern luxury has substituted preserved ice, in place of the more ancient mixture.

[592] Music, such as erst subdued the horrid frown of hell, etc.—Alluding to the fable of Orpheus. Fanshaw's translation, as already observed, was published fourteen years before the Paradise Lost. These lines of Milton—

"What could it less, when spirits immortal sung?
Their song was partial, but the harmony
Suspended hell, and took with ravishment
The thronging audience,"

bear a resemblance to these of Fanshaw—

"Musical instruments not wanting, such
As to the damn'd spirits once gave ease
In the dark vaults of the infernal hall."

To slumber amid their punishment, though omitted by Fanshaw, is literal:—

"Fizerao descançar da eterna pena."

[593] No more the summer of my life remains.—It is not certain when Camoëns wrote this. It seems, however, not long to have preceded the publication of his poem, at which time he was in his fifty-fifth year. This apostrophe to his muse may, perhaps, by some be blamed as another digression; but, so little does it require defence, that one need not hesitate to affirm that, had Homer, who often talks to his muse, introduced, on these favourable opportunities, any little picture or history of himself, these digressions would have been the most interesting parts of his works. Had any history of Homer complained, like this of Camoëns, it would have been bedewed with the tears of ages.

[594] Thy faith repent not, nor lament thy wrong.—P. Alvarez Cabral, the second Portuguese commander who sailed to India, entered into a treaty of alliance with Trimumpara, king of Cochin, and high priest of Malabar. The zamorim raised powerful armies to dethrone him. His fidelity to the Portuguese was unalterable, though his affairs were brought to the lowest ebb.—See the history in the Preface.

[595]

His ship's strong sides shall groan beneath his weight,
And deeper waves receive the sacred freight.—

Thus Virgil:—

"Simul accipit alveo
Ingentem Æneam. Gemuit sub pondere cymba
Sutilis, et multam accepit rimosa paludem."—ÆN. vi. 412.

That the visionary boat of Charon groaned under the weight of Æneas is a fine poetical stroke; but that the crazy rents let in the water is certainly lowering the image. The thought, however, as managed in Camoëns is much grander than in Virgil, and affords a happy instance where the hyperbole is truly poetical.

The Lusiad affords many instances which must be highly pleasing to the Portuguese, but dry to those who are unacquainted with their history. Nor need one hesitate to assert that, were we not acquainted with the Roman history from our childhood, a great part of the Æneid would appear to us intolerably uninteresting. Sensible of this disadvantage which every version of historical poetry must suffer, the translator has not only in the notes added every incident which might elucidate the subject, but has also, all along, in the episode in the third and fourth books, in the description of the painted ensigns in the eighth, and in the allusions in the present book, endeavoured to throw every historical incident into that universal language, the picturesque of poetry. When Hector storms the Grecian camp, when Achilles marches to battle, every reader understands and is affected with the bold painting. But when Nestor talks of his exploits at the funeral games of Amarynces (Iliad xxiii.) the critics themselves cannot comprehend him, and have vied with each other in inventing explanations.

[596] Proas, or paraos, Indian vessels which lie low on the water, are worked with oars, and carry 100 men and upwards apiece.

[597]

His robes are sprinkled o'er,
And his proud face dash'd, with his menials' gore.—

See the history in the Preface.

[598] Round Lusus' fleet to pour their sulph'rous entrails.—How Pacheco avoided this formidable danger, see the history in the preface.

[599] Nor Tiber's bridge.—When Porsenna besieged Rome, Horatius Cocles defended the pass of a bridge till the Romans destroyed it behind him. Having thus saved the pass, heavy armed as he was, he swam across the Tiber to his companions. Roman history, however, at this period, is often mixed with fable. Miltiades obtained a great victory over Darius at Marathon. The stand made by Leonidas at Thermopylæ is well known. The battles of Pacheco were in defence of the fords by which alone the city of Cochin could be entered. The numbers he withstood by land and sea, and the victories he obtained, are much more astonishing than the defence of Thermopylæ.

[600] Bound to the mast the godlike hero stands.—English history affords an instance of similar resolution in Admiral Bembo, who was supported in a wooden frame, and continued the engagement after his legs and thighs were shivered in splinters. Contrary to the advice of his officers, the young Almeyda refused to bear off, though almost certain to be overpowered, and though both wind and tide were against him. His father had sharply upbraided him for a former retreat, where victory was thought impossible. He now fell the victim of his father's ideas of military glory.

[601] The fleets of India fly.—After having cleared the Indian seas, the viceroy, Almeyda, attacked the combined fleets of Egypt, Cambaya, and the zamorim, in the entrance and harbour of Diu, or Dio. The fleet of the zamorim almost immediately fled. That of Melique Yaz, Lord of Diu, suffered much; but the greatest slaughter fell upon the Egyptians and Turks, commanded by Mir-Hocem, who had defeated and killed the young Almeyda. Of 800 Mamelukes, or Turks, who fought under Mir-Hocem, only 22, says Osorius, survived this engagement. Melique Yaz, says Faria y Sousa, was born in slavery, and descended of the Christians of Roxia. The road to preferment is often a dirty one; but Melique's was much less so than that of many. As the King of Cambaya was one day riding in state, an unlucky kite dunged upon his royal head. His majesty in great wrath swore he would give all he was worth to have the offender killed. Melique, who was an expert archer, immediately despatched an arrow, which brought the audacious hawk to the ground. For the merit of this eminent service he was made Lord of Diu, or Dio, a considerable city, the strongest and the most important fortress at that time in all India.—See Faria, 1. 2, c. 2.

[602] Great Cunia.—Tristan da Cunha, or d'Acugna.

[603] Heav'n indignant showers their arrows backward.—Some writers related that, when Albuquerque besieged Ormuz, a violent wind drove the arrows of the enemy backward upon their own ranks. Osorius says, that many of the dead Persians and Moors were found to have died by arrows. But as that weapon was not used by the Portuguese he conjectures that, in their despair of victory, many of the enemy had thus killed themselves, rather than survive the defeat.

[604] Muscat.

[605] Bahrein, in the Persian Gulf.

[606] What glorious palms on Goa's isle I see.—This important place was made an archbishopric, the capital of the Portuguese empire in the east, and the seat of their viceroys; for which purposes it is advantageously situated on the coast of Dekhan. It still remains in the possession of the Portuguese.

[607] Malacca.—The conquest of this place was one of the greatest actions of Albuquerque. It became the chief port of the eastern part of Portuguese India, and second only to Goa. Besides a great many pieces of ordnance which were carried away by the Moors who escaped, 3000 large cannon remained the prize of the victors. When Albuquerque was on the way to Malacca, he attacked a large ship; but, just as his men were going to board her, she suddenly appeared all in flames, which obliged the Portuguese to bear off. Three days afterwards the same vessel sent a boat to Albuquerque, offering an alliance, which was accepted. The flames, says Osorius, were only artificial, and did not the least damage. Another wonderful adventure immediately happened. The admiral soon after sent his long-boats to attack a ship commanded by one Nehoada Beeguea. The enemy made an obstinate resistance. Nehoada himself was pierced with several mortal wounds, but lost not one drop of blood till a bracelet was taken off his arm, when immediately the blood gushed out. According to Osorius, this was said to be occasioned by the virtue of a stone in the bracelet, taken out of an animal called Cabrisia, which, when worn on the body, could prevent the effusion of blood from the most grievous wounds.

[608] Yet art thou stain'd.—A detail of all the grant actions of Albuquerque would have been tedious and unpoetical. Camoëns has chosen the most brilliant, and has happily suppressed the rest by a display of indignation. The French translator has the following note on this passage: "Behold another instance of our author's prejudice! The action which he condemns had nothing in it blameable: but, as he was of a most amorous constitution, he thought every fault which could plead an amour in its excuse ought to be pardoned; but true heroes, such as Albuquerque, follow other maxims. This great man had in his palace a beautiful Indian slave. He viewed her with the eyes of a father, and the care of her education was his pleasure. A Portuguese soldier, named Ruy Diaz, had the boldness to enter the general's apartment, where he succeeded so well with the girl that he obtained his desire. When Albuquerque heard of it, he immediately ordered him to the gallows."

Camoëns, however, was no such undistinguishing libertine as this would represent him. In a few pages we find him praising the continence of Don Henry de Meneses, whose victory over his passions he calls the highest excellence of youth. Nor does it appear by what authority the Frenchman assures us of the chaste paternal affection which Albuquerque bore to this Indian girl. It was the great aim of Albuquerque to establish colonies in India, and, for that purpose, he encouraged his soldiers to marry with the natives. The most sightly girls were selected, and educated in the religion and household arts of Portugal, and portioned at the expense of the general. These he called his daughters, and with great pleasure he used to attend their weddings, several couples being usually joined together at one time. At one of these nuptials, says Faria, the festivity having continued late, and the brides being mixed together, several of the bridegrooms committed a blunder. The mistakes of the night, however, as they were all equal in point of honour, were mutually forgiven in the morning, and each man took his proper wife whom he had received at the altar. This delicate anecdote of Albuquerque's sons and daughters is as bad a commentary on the note of Castera as it is on the severity which the commander showed to poor Diaz. Nor does Camoëns stand alone in the condemnation of the general. The historian agrees with the poet. Mentioning the death of D. Antonio Noronha, "This gentleman," says Faria, "used to moderate the violent temper of his uncle, Albuquerque, which soon after showed itself in rigid severity. He ordered a soldier to be hanged for an amour with one of the slaves whom he called daughters, and whom he used to give in marriage. When some of his officers asked him what authority he had to take the poor man's life, he drew his sword, told them that was his commission, and instantly broke them." To marry his soldiers with the natives was the plan of Albuquerque: his severity, therefore, seems unaccountable, unless we admit the 'perhaps' of Camoëns, ou de cioso, perhaps it was jealousy.—But, whatever incensed the general, the execution of the soldier was contrary to the laws of every nation;{*} and the honest indignation of Camoëns against one of the greatest of his countrymen, one who was the grand architect of the Portuguese empire in the East, affords a noble instance of that manly freedom of sentiment which knows no right by which king or peer may do injustice to the meanest subject. Nor can we omit the observation, that the above note of Castera is of a piece with the French devotion we have already seen him pay to the name of king, a devotion which breathes the true spirit of the blessed advice given by Father Paul to the republic of Venice: "When a nobleman commits an offence against a subject," says the Jesuit, "let every means be tried to justify him. But, if a subject has offended a nobleman, let him be punished with the utmost severity."

{*} Osorius relates the affair of Diaz with some other circumstances; but with no difference that affects this assertion.

[609] Not Ammon.—Campaspe, the most beautiful concubine of Alexander the Great, was given by that monarch to Apelles, whom he perceived in love with her. Araspas had strict charge of the fair captive, Panthea. His attempt on her virtue was forgiven by Cyrus.

[610] And Flandria's earldom on the knight bestow'd.—"Baldwin, surnamed Iron-arm, Grand Forester of Flanders, being in love with Judith, the daughter of Charles the Bald, and widow of Ethelwolf, king of England, obtained his desire by force. Charles, though at first he highly resented, afterwards pardoned his crime, and consented to his marriage with the princess."—Castera.

This digression in the song of the nymph bears, in manner, a striking resemblance to the histories which often, even in the heat of battle, the heroes of Homer relate to each other. That these little episodes have their beauty and propriety in an epic poem will strongly appear from a view of M. de la Motte's translation of the Iliad into French verse. The four and twenty books of Homer he has contracted into twelve, and these contain no more lines than about four books of the original. A thousand embellishments which the warm poetical feelings of Homer suggested to him are thus thrown out by the Frenchman. But what is the consequence of this improvement? The work of La Motte is unread, even by his own countrymen, and despised by every foreigner who has the least relish for poetry and Homer.

[611] And midnight horror shakes Medina's shrine.—Medina, the city where Mohammed is buried. About six years after Gama's discovery of India, the Sultan of Egypt sent Maurus, the abbot of the monks at Jerusalem, who inhabit Mount Sion, on an embassy to Pope Julius II. The sultan, with severe threats to the Christians of the East in case of refusal, entreated the Pope to desire Emmanuel, king of Portugal, to send no more fleets to the Indian seas. The Pope sent Maurus to Emmanuel, who returned a very spirited answer to his holiness, assuring him that no threats, no dangers, could make him alter his resolutions, and lamenting that it had not yet been in his power to fulfil his purpose of demolishing the sepulchre and erasing the memorials of Mohammed from the earth. This, he says was the first purpose of sending his fleets to India. It is with great art that Camoëns so often reminds us of the grand design of the expedition of his heroes to subvert Mohammedanism, and found a Christian empire in the East. But the dignity which this gives to his poem has already been observed in the preface.

[612] Where Sheba's sapient queen the sceptre bore.—The Abyssinians contend that their country is the Sheba mentioned in the Scripture, and that the queen who visited Solomon bore a son to that monarch, from whom their royal family, to the present time, is descended.

[613] Snatch'd from thy golden throne.—Gama only reigned three months viceroy of India. During his second voyage, the third which the Portuguese made to India, he gave the zamorim some considerable defeats by sea, besides his victories over the Moors. These, however, are judiciously omitted by Camoëns, as the less striking part of his character.

The French translator is highly pleased with the prediction of Gama's death, delivered to himself at the feast. "The siren," says he, "persuaded that Gama is a hero exempt from weakness, does not hesitate to mention the end of his life. Gama listens without any mark of emotion; the feast and the song continue. If I am not deceived, this is truly great."

[614] Victorious Henry.—Don Henry de Menezes. He was only twenty-eight when appointed to the government of India. He died in his thirtieth year, a noble example of the most disinterested heroism.

[615] Great Mascarine.—Pedro de Mascarenhas. The injustice done to this brave officer, and the usurpation of his government by Lopez Vaz de Sampayo, afford one of the most interesting periods of the history of the Portuguese in India.

[616] Great Nunio.—Nunio de Cunha, one of the most worthy of the Portuguese governors.

[617] Awed by his fame.—That brave, generous spirit, which prompted Camoëns to condemn the great Albuquerque for injustice to a common soldier, has here deserted him. In place of poetical compliment, on the terrors of his name, Noronha deserved infamy. The siege of Dio, it is true, was raised on the report of his approach, but that report was the stratagem of Coje Zofar, one of the general officers of the assailants. The delays of Noronha were as highly blamable as his treatment of his predecessor, the excellent Nunio, was unworthy of a gentleman.

[618] A son of thine, O Gama.—Stephen de Gama.

[619] A vet'ran, fam'd on Brazil's shore.—Martin Alonzo de Souza. He was celebrated for clearing the coast of Brazil of several pirates, who were formidable to that infant colony.

[620] O'er blood-stain'd ground.—This is as near the original as elegance will allow—de sangue cheyo—which Fanshaw has thus punned:—

"With no little loss,
Sending him home again by Weeping-Cross"—

a place near Banbury in Oxfordshire.

[621] Cape Comorin, the southernmost point of India.—Ed.

[622] The Rumien fierce, who boasts the name of Rome.—When the victories of the Portuguese began to overspread the East, several Indian princes, by the counsels of the Moors, applied for assistance to the Sultan of Egypt, and the Grand Signior. The troops of these Mohammedan princes were in the highest reputation for bravery, and though, composed of many different nations, were known among the orientals by one common name. Ignorance delights in the marvellous. The history of ancient Rome made the same figure among the easterns, as that of the fabulous, or heroic, ages does with us, with this difference, it was better believed. The Turks of Roumania pretended to be the descendants of the Roman conquerors, and the Indians gave them and their auxiliaries the name of Rumēs, or Romans. In the same manner, the fame of Godfrey in the East conferred the name of Franks on all the western Christians, who, on their part, gave the name of Moors to all the Mohammedans of the East.

[623] No hope, bold Mascarene.—The commander of Diu, or Dio, during this siege, one of the most memorable in the Portuguese history.

[624] Fierce Hydal-Kan.—The title of the lords or princes of Decan, who in their wars with the Portuguese have sometimes brought 400,000 men into the field. The prince here mentioned, after many revolts, was at last finally subdued by Don John de Castro, the fourth viceroy of India, with whose reign our poet judiciously ends the prophetic song. Albuquerque laid the plan, and Castro completed the system of the Portuguese empire in the East. It is with propriety, therefore, that the prophecy given to Gama is here summed up. Nor is the discretion of Camoëns in this instance inferior to his judgment. He is now within a few years of his own times, when he himself was upon the scene in India. But whatever he had said of his contemporaries would have been liable to misconstruction, and every sentence would have been branded with the epithets of flattery or malice. A little poet would have been happy in such an opportunity to resent his wrongs. But the silent contempt of Camoëns does him true honour.

In this historical song, as already hinted, the translator has been attentive, as much as he could, to throw it into these universal languages, the picturesque and characteristic. To convey the sublimest instruction to princes, is, according to Aristotle, the peculiar province of the epic muse. The striking points of view in which the different characters of the governors of India are here placed, are in the most happy conformity to this ingenious canon of the Stagyrite.

[625]

In whirling circles now they fell, now rose,
Yet never rose nor fell.—

The motions of the heavenly bodies, in every system, bear at all times the same uniform relation to each other; these expressions, therefore, are strictly just. The first relates to the appearance, the second to the reality. Thus, while to us the sun appears to go down, to more western inhabitants of the globe he appears to rise, and while he rises to us, he is going down to the more eastern; the difference being entirely relative to the various parts of the earth. And in this the expressions of our poet are equally applicable to the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems. The ancient hypothesis which made our earth the centre of the universe, is the system adopted by Camoëns, a happiness, in the opinion of the translator, to the English Lusiad. The new system is so well known, that a poetical description of it would have been no novelty to the English reader. The other has not only that advantage in its favour: but this description is perhaps the finest and fullest that ever was given of it in poetry, that of Lucretius, l. v. being chiefly argumentative, and therefore less picturesque.

Our author studied at the university of Coimbra, where the ancient system and other doctrines of the Aristotelians then, and long afterward, prevailed.

[626] He holds His loftiest state.—Called by the old philosophers and school divines the sensorium of the Deity.

[627] These spheres behold.—According to the Peripatetics, the universe consisted of eleven spheres inclosed within each other; as Fanshaw has familiarly expressed it by a simile which he has lent our author. The first of these spheres, he says—

"Doth (as in a nest
Of boxes) all the other orbs comprise."

In their accounts of this first-mentioned, but eleventh, sphere, which they called the Empyrean, or heaven of the blest, the disciples of Aristotle, and the Arab Moors, gave loose to all the warmth of imagination. And several of the Christian fathers applied to it the descriptions of heaven which are found in the Holy Scripture.

[628] Hence motion darts its force.—This is the tenth sphere, the Primum Mobile of the ancient system. To account for the appearances of the heavens, the Peripatetics ascribed a double motion to it. While its influence drew the other orbs from east to west, they supposed it had a motion of its own from west to east. To effect this, the ponderous weight and interposition of the ninth sphere, or crystalline heaven, was necessary. The ancient astronomers observed that the stars shifted their places. This they called the motion of the crystalline heaven, expressed by our poet at the rate of one pace during two hundred solar years. The famous Arab astronomer, Abulhasan, in his Meadows of Gold, calculates the revolution of this sphere to consist of 49,000 of our years. But modern discoveries have not only corrected the calculation,{*} but have also ascertained the reason of the apparent motion of the fixed stars. The earth is not a perfect sphere; the quantity of matter is greater at the equator; hence the earth turns on her axis in a rocking motion, revolving round the axis of the ecliptic, which is called the procession of the equinoxes, and makes the stars seem to shift their places at about the rate of a degree in 72 years; according to which all the stars seem to perform one revolution in the space of 25,920 years, after which they return exactly to the same situation as at the beginning of this period. However imperfect in their calculations, the Chaldean astronomers perceived that the motions of the heavens composed one great revolution. This they called the annus magnus, which those who did not understand them mistook for a restoration of all things to their first originals.

{*} However deficient the astronomy of Abulhasan may be, it is nothing to the calculation of his prophet Mohammed, who tells his disciples, that the stars were each about the bigness of a house, and hung from the sky on chains of gold.

[629] And binds the starry sphere.—This was called the firmament, or eighth heaven. Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, Venus, Mercury, and Diana, were the planets which gave name to, and whose orbits composed, the other spheres or heavens.

[630] In shining frost the Northern Chariot rides.—Commonly called Charles' Wain. Andromeda was the daughter of Cepheus, king of Ethiopia, and of Cassiope. Cassiope boasted that she and her daughter were more beautiful than Juno and the Nereids. Andromeda, to appease the goddess, was, at her father's command, chained to a rock to be devoured by a sea monster, but was saved by Perseus, who obtained of Jupiter that all the family should be placed among the stars. Orion was a hunter, who, for an attempt on Diana, was stung to death by a serpent. The star of his name portends tempests. The Dogs; fable gives this honour to those of different hunters. The faithful dog of Erigone, however, that died mad with grief for the death of his mistress, has the best title to preside over the dog-days. The Swan; whose form Jupiter borrowed to enjoy Leda. The Hare, when pursued by Orion, was saved by Mercury, and placed in heaven, to signify that Mercury presides over melancholy dispositions. The Lyre, with which Orpheus charmed Pluto. The Dragon which guarded the golden apples of the Hesperides, and the ship Argo complete the number of the constellations mentioned by Camoëns. If our author has blended the appearances of heaven with those of the painted artificial sphere, it is in the manner of the classics. Ovid, in particular, thus describes the heavens, in the second book of his Metamorphoses.

[631] Such are their laws impress'd by God's dread will.—Though a modern narrative of gallant adventures by no means requires the supposition of a particular Providence, that supposition, however, is absolutely necessary to the grandeur of an epic poem. The great examples of Homer and Virgil prove it; and Camoëns understood and felt its force. While his fleet combat all the horrors of unploughed oceans, we do not view his heroes as idle wanderers; the care of heaven gives their voyage the greatest importance. When Gama falls on his knees and spreads his hands to heaven on the discovery of India, we are presented with a figure infinitely more noble than that of the most successful conqueror who is supposed to act under the influence of fatalism or chance. The human mind is conscious of its own weakness. It expects an elevation in poetry, and demands a degree of importance superior to the caprices of unmeaning accident. The poetical reader cannot admire the hero who is subject to such blind fortuity. He appears to us with an abject, uninteresting littleness. Our poetical ideas of permanent greatness demand a Gama, a hero whose enterprises and whose person interest the care of Heaven and the happiness of his people. Nor must this supposition be confined merely to the machinery. The reason why it pleases, also requires, that the supposition should be uniform throughout the whole poem. Virgil, by dismissing Eneas through the ivory gate of Elysium, has hinted that all his pictures of a future state were merely dreams, and has thus destroyed the highest merit of the compliment to his patron Augustus. But Camoëns has certainly been more happy. A fair opportunity offered itself to indulge the opinions of Lucretius and the Academic Grove; but Camoëns, in ascribing the government of the universe to the will of God, has not only preserved the philosophy of his poem perfectly uniform, but has also shown that the Peripatetic system is, in this instance, exactly conformable to the Newtonian.

Though the Author of nature has placed man in a state of moral agency, and made his happiness and misery to depend upon it, and though every page of human history is stained with the tears of injured innocence and the triumphs of guilt, with miseries which must affect a moral, or thinking being, yet we have been told, that God perceiveth it not, and that what mortals call moral evil vanishes from before His more perfect sight. Thus the appeal of injured innocence, and the tear of bleeding virtue fall unregarded, unworthy of the attention of the Deity.{*} Yet, with what raptures do these philosophers behold the infinite wisdom and care of Beelzebub, their god of flies, in the admirable and various provision he has made for the preservation of the eggs of vermin, and the generation of maggots.{**}

Much more might be said in proof that our poet's philosophy does not altogether deserve ridicule. And those who allow a general, but deny a particular providence, will, it is hoped, excuse Camoëns, on the consideration, that if we estimate a general moral providence by analogy of that providence which presides over vegetable and animal nature, a more particular one cannot possibly be wanted. If a particular providence, however, is still denied, another consideration obtrudes itself; if one pang of a moral agent is unregarded, one tear of injured innocence left to fall unpitied by the Deity, if Ludit in humanis Divina potentia rebus, the consequence is, that the human conception can form an idea of a much better God. And it may modestly be presumed we may hazard the laugh of the wisest philosopher, and without scruple assert, that it is impossible that a created mind should conceive an idea of perfection superior to that which is possessed by the Creator and Author of existence.

{*} Perhaps, like Lucretius, some philosophers think this would be too much trouble to the Deity. But the idea of trouble to the Divine Nature, is much the same as another argument of the same philosopher, who having asserted, that before the creation the gods could not know what seed would produce, from thence wisely concludes that the world was made by chance.

{**} Ray, in his Wisdom of God in the Creation (though he did not deny a Providence), has carried this extravagance to the highest pitch. "To give life," says he, "is the intention of the creation; and how wonderful does the goodness of God appear in this, that the death and putrefaction of one animal is the life of thousands." So, the misery of a family on the death of a parent is nothing, for ten thousand maggots are made happy by it.—O Philosophy, when wilt thou forget the dreams of thy slumbers in Bedlam!

[632] Here Christian Europe.—Vès Europa Christian.—As Europe is already described in the third Lusiad, this short account of it has as great propriety, as the manner of it contains dignity.

[633] Afric behold.—This just and strongly picturesque description of Africa is finely contrasted with the character of Europe. It contains also a masterly compliment to the expedition of Gama, which is all along represented as the harbinger and diffuser of the blessings of civilization.

[634] Gonsalo's zeal shall glow.—Gonsalo de Sylveyra, a Portuguese Jesuit, in 1555, sailed from Lisbon on a mission to Monomotapa. His labours were at first successful; but ere he effected any regular establishment he was murdered by the barbarians.—Castera.

[635] Great Naya, too.—Don Pedro de Naya.... In 1505 he erected a fort in the kingdom of Sofala, which is subject to Monomotapa. Six thousand Moors and Caffres laid siege to this garrison, which he defended with only thirty-five men. After having several times suffered by unexpected sallies, the barbarians fled, exclaiming to their king that he had led them to fight against God.—Castera.

[636] In Abyssinia Heav'n's own altars blaze.—Christianity was planted here in the first century, but mixed with many Jewish rites unused by other Christians of the East. This appears to give some countenance to the pretensions of their emperors, who claim their descent from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and at least reminds us of Acts viii. 27, where we are told, that the treasurer of the Queen of Ethiopia came to worship at Jerusalem. Numerous monasteries, we are told, are in this country. But the clergy are very ignorant, and the laity gross barbarians. Much has been said of the hill Amara—

"Where Abyssin kings their issue guard ...
... by some suppos'd,
True Paradise, under the Ethiop line
By Nilus head, inclos'd with shining rock,
A whole day's journey high"—Milton;

and where, according to Urreta (a Spanish Jesuit), is the library founded by the Queen of Sheba, and enriched with all those writings of which we have either possession or only the names. The works of Noah, and the lectures on the mathematics which Abraham read in the plains of Mamre, are here. And so many are the volumes, that 200 monks are employed as librarians. It is needless to add, that Father Urreta is a second Sir John Mandevylle.

[637] Thy son, brave Gama.—When Don Stephen de Gama was governor of India, the Christian Emperor and Empress-mother of Ethiopia solicited the assistance of the Portuguese against the usurpations of the pagan King of Zeyla. Don Stephen sent his brother, Don Christoval with 500 men. The prodigies of their valour astonished the Ethiopians. But after having twice defeated the tyrant, and reduced his great army to the last extremity, Don Christoval, urged too far by the impetuosity of his youthful valour, was taken prisoner. He was brought before the usurper, and put to death in the most cruel manner. Waxed threads were twisted with his beard and afterwards set on fire. He was then dipped in boiling wax, and at last beheaded by the hand of the tyrant. The Portuguese esteem him a martyr, and say that his torments and death were inflicted because he would not renounce the faith.—See Faria y Sousa.

[638] Infidel, pagan.

[639] Before the virgin-martyr's tomb.—He must be a dull reader indeed who cannot perceive and relish the amazing variety which prevails in our poet. In the historical narrative of wars, where it is most necessary, yet from the sameness of the subject, most difficult, to attain, our author always attains it with the most graceful ease. In the description of countries he not only follows the manner of Homer and Virgil, not only distinguishes each region by its most striking characteristic, but also diversifies his geography with other incidents introduced by the mention of the place. St. Catherine, virgin and martyr, according to Romish histories, was buried on Mount Sinai, and a chapel was erected over her grave. It is now the Monastery of St. Catherine.—Ed.

[640] The crescent, the sign of Turkish supremacy.—Ed.

[641] De Branco's sword.—Don Pedro de Castel-Branco. He obtained a great victory, near Ormuz, over the combined fleets of the Moors, Turks, and Persians.

[642] There Barem's isle.—The island of Bahrein is situated in the Persian Gulf. It is celebrated for the plenty, variety, and fineness of its diamonds.

[643] Her warrior sons disdain the arms of fire.—This was the character of the Persians when Gama arrived in the East. Yet, though they thought it dishonourable to use the musket, they esteemed it no disgrace to rush from a thicket on an unarmed foe. This reminds one of the spirit of the old romance. Orlando having taken the first invented cannon from the King of Friza, throws it into the sea with the most heroic execrations. Yet the heroes of chivalry think it no disgrace to take every advantage afforded by invulnerable hides and enchanted armour.

[644]

There Gerum's isle the hoary ruin wears
Where Time has trod.—

Presuming on the ruins which are found on this island, the natives pretend that the Armuzia of Pliny and Strabo was here situated. But this is a mistake, for that city stood on the continent. The Moors, however, have built a city in this isle, which they call by the ancient name.

[645] He who first shall crown thy labours, Gama.—Pedro de Cabral, of whom see the preface.

[646] Ceylon.

[647] Some Macon's orgies.—Macon, a name of Mecca, the birthplace of Mohammed.

[648] The tomb where Thomas sleeps.—There is (to talk in the Indian style) a caste of gentlemen, whose hearts are all impartiality and candour to every religion, except one, the most moral which ever the world heard of. A tale of a Brahmin, or a priest of Jupiter, would to them appear worthy of poetry. But to introduce an apostle—— Common sense, however, will prevail; and the episode of St. Thomas will appear to the true critic equal in dignity and propriety.

To renew and complete the labours of the apostle, the messenger of Heaven, is the great design of the hero of the poem, and of the future missions, in consequence of the discoveries which are the subject of it.

The Christians of St. Thomas, found in Malabar on the arrival of Gama, we have already mentioned. The Jesuit missionaries have given most pompous accounts of the Christian antiquities of India and China. When the Portuguese arrived in India, the head of the Malabar Christians, named Jacob, styled himself Metropolitan of India and China. And a Syriac breviary{*} of the Indian Christians offers praise to God for sending St. Thomas to India and China. In 1625, in digging for a foundation near Sigansu, metropolis of the province of Xensi, was found a stone with a cross on it, full of Chinese, and some Syriac characters, containing the names of bishops, and an account of the Christian religion, "that it was brought from Judea; that having been weakened, it was renewed under the reign of the great Tam" (cir. A.D. 630). But the Christians, say the Jesuits, siding with the Tartars, cir. A.D. 1200, were extirpated by the Chinese. In 1543, Fernand Pinto, observing some ruins near Peking, was told by the people, that 200 years before, a holy man who worshipped Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, lived there; and being murdered, was thrown into a river, but his body would not sink; and soon after the city was destroyed by an earthquake. The same Jesuit found people at Caminam who knew the doctrines of Christianity, which they said were preached to their fathers, by John, the disciple of Thomas. In 1635, some heathens, by night passing through a village in the province of Fokien, saw some stones which emitted light, under which were found the figure of crosses. From China, St. Thomas returned to Meliapore in Malabar, at a time when a prodigious beam of timber floated on the sea near the coast. The king endeavoured to bring it ashore, but all the force of men and elephants was in vain. St. Thomas desired leave to build a church with it, and immediately dragged it to shore with a single thread. A church was built, and the king baptized. This enraged the Brahmins, the chief of whom killed his own son, and accused Thomas of the murder. But the saint, by restoring the youth to life, discovered the wickedness of his enemies. He was afterwards killed by a lance while kneeling at the altar; after, according to tradition, he had built 3300 stately churches, many of which were rebuilt, cir. 800, by an Armenian named Thomas Cananeus. In 1533, the body of the apostle, with the head of the lance beside him, was found in his church by D. Duarte de Meneses; and in 1558 was, by D. Constantine de Braganza, removed to Goa. To these accounts, selected from Faria y Sousa, let two from Osorius be added. When Martin Alonzo de Souza was viceroy, some brazen tables were brought to him, inscribed with unusual characters, which were explained by a learned Jew, and imported that St. Thomas had built a church at Meliapore. And by an account sent to Cardinal Henrico, by the Bishop of Cochin, in 1562, when the Portuguese repaired the ancient chapel of St. Thomas,{**} there was found a stone cross with several characters on it, which the best antiquarians could not interpret, till at last a Brahmin translated it, "That in the reign of Sagam, Thomas was sent by the Son of God, whose disciple he was, to teach the law of heaven in India; that he built a church, and was killed by a Brahmin at the altar."

{*} The existence of this breviary is a certain fact. These Christians had the Scripture also in the Syriac language.

{**} This was a very ancient building, in the very first style of Christian churches. The Portuguese have now disfigured it with their repairs and new buildings.

A view of Portuguese Asia, which must include the labours of the Jesuits, forms a necessary part in the comment on the Lusiad: this note, therefore, and some obvious reflections upon it, are in place. It is as easy to bury an inscription and find it again, as it is to invent a silly tale; but, though suspicion of fraud on the one hand, and silly absurdity on the other, lead us to despise the authority of the Jesuits, yet one fact remains indisputable. Christianity had been much better known in the East, several centuries before, than it was at the arrival of Gama. Where the name was unknown, and where the Jesuits were unconcerned, crosses were found. The long existence of the Christians of St. Thomas in the midst of a vast pagan empire, proves that the learned of that kingdom must have some knowledge of their doctrines. And these facts give countenance to some material conjectures concerning the religion of the Brahmins.

[649] When now the chief who wore the triple thread.—Of this, thus Osorius: "Terna fila ab humero dextero in latus finistrum gerunt, ut designent trinam in natura divina rationem.—They (the Brahmins) wear three threads, which reach from the right shoulder to the left side, as significant of the trinal distinction in the Divine Nature." That some sects of the Brahmins wear a symbolical tessera of three threads is acknowledged on all hands; but, from whatever the custom arose, it is not to be supposed that the Brahmins, who have thousands of ridiculous contradictory legends, should agree in their accounts or explanations of it. They have various accounts of a Divine Person having assumed human nature. And the god Brahma, as observed by Cudworth, is generally mentioned as united in the government of the universe with two others, sometimes of different names. They have also images with three heads rising out of one body, which they say represent the Divine Nature.{*} But are there any traces of these opinions in the accounts which the Greek and Roman writers have given us of the Brahmins? And will the wise pay any credit to the authority of those books which the public never saw, and which, by the obligation of their keepers, they are never to see; and some of which, by the confession of their keepers, since the appearance of Mohammed, have been rejected? The Platonic idea of a trinity of divine attributes was well known to the ancients, yet perhaps the Athanasian controversy offers a fairer field to the conjecturist. That controversy for several ages engrossed the conversation of the East. All the subtilty of the Greeks was called forth, and no speculative contest was ever more universally or warmly disputed; so warmly, that it is a certain fact that Mohammed, by inserting into his Koran some declarations in favour of the Arians, gained innumerable proselytes to his new religion. Abyssinia, Egypt, Syria, Persia, and Armenia were perplexed with this unhappy dispute, and from the earliest times these countries have had a commercial intercourse with India. The number, blasphemy, and absurdity of the Jewish legends of the Talmud and Targums, bear a striking resemblance to the holy legends of the Brahmins. The Jews also assert the great antiquity of their Talmudical legends. Adam, Enoch, and Noah are named among their authors; but we know their date; Jerusalem, ere their birth, was destroyed by Titus. We also know, that the accounts which the Greek writers give of the Brahmins fall infinitely short of those extravagances which are confessed even by their modern admirers. And Mohammedanism does not differ from Christianity, more than the account which even these gentlemen give, does from that of Porphyry. That laborious philosopher, though possessed of all the knowledge of his age, though he mentions their metempsychosis and penances, has not a word of any of their idols, or the legends of Brahma or his brothers. On the contrary, he represents their worship as extremely pure and simple. Strabo's account of them is similar. And Eusebius has assured us they worshipped no images.{**} Yet, on the arrival of the modern Europeans in India, innumerable were their idols; and all the superstition of ancient Egypt, in the adoration of animals and vegetables, seemed more than revived by the Brahmins. Who that considers this striking alteration in their features, can withhold his contempt when he is told of the religious care with which these philosophers have these four thousand years preserved their sacred rites.

{*} To these undoubted facts the author will not add the authority of a Xavier, who tells us, that he prevailed upon a Brahmin to explain to him some part of their hidden religion; when to his surprise, the Indian, in a low voice, repeated the Ten Commandments.

{**} ... χιλιάδες πολλὰι τῶν λεγομένων Βραχμάνων, ὅιτινες κατὰ παραδισόν τῶν προγόνων καὶ νόμων, οὐτε φονεύουσιν, ΟΥΤΕ ΞΟΑΝΑ ΣΕΒΟΝΤΑΙ.—Euseb. Prep. Evan. lib. 6, c. 10, p. 275. Ed. Paris, 1628.

[650] Thee, Thomas, thee, the plaintive Ganges mourn'd.—The versification of the original is here exceedingly fine. Even those who are unacquainted with the Portuguese may perceive it.

"Choraraóte Thomé, o Gange, o Indo,
Choroute toda a terra, que pizaste;
Mas mais te choráo as almas, que vestindo
Se hiáo dà Santa Fê, que lhe ensinaste;
Mas os anjos do ceo cantando, & rindo,
Te recebem na gloria que ganhaste."

[651] Like him, ye Lusians, simplest Truth pursue.—It is now time to sum up what has been said of the labours of the Jesuits. Diametrically opposite to this advice was their conduct in every Asiatic country where they pretended to propagate the gospel. Sometimes we find an individual sincere and pious, but the great principle which always actuated them as a united body was the lust of power and secular emolument, the possession of which they thought could not be better secured than by rendering themselves of the utmost importance to the see of Rome. In consequence of these principles, wherever they came their first care was to find what were the great objects of the fear and adoration of the people. If the sun was esteemed the giver of life, Jesus Christ was the Son of that luminary, and they were his younger brethren, sent to instruct the ignorant. If the barbarians were in dread of evil spirits, Jesus Christ came on purpose to banish them from the world, had driven them from Europe,{*} and the Jesuits were sent to the East to complete his unfinished mission. If the Indian converts still retained a veneration for the powder of burned cow-dung, the Jesuits made the sign of the cross over it, and the Indian besmeared himself with it as usual. Heaven, or universal matter, they told the Chinese, was the God of the Christians, and the sacrifices of Confucius were solemnized in the churches of the Jesuits. This worship of Confucius, Voltaire, with his wonted accuracy, denies. But he ought to have known that this, with the worship of tien, or heaven, had been long complained of at the court of Rome (see Dupin), and that after the strictest scrutiny the charge was fully proved, and Clement XI., in 1703, sent Cardinal Tournon to the small remains of the Jesuits in the East with a papal decree to reform these abuses. But the cardinal, soon after his arrival, was poisoned in Siam by the holy fathers. Xavier, and the other Jesuits who succeeded him, by the dexterous use of the great maxims of their master Loyola, Omnibus omnia, et omnia munda mundis, gained innumerable proselytes. They contradicted none of the favourite opinions of their converts, they only baptized, and gave them crucifixes to worship, and all was well. But their zeal in uniting to the see of Rome the Christians found in the East descended to the minutest particulars. And the native Christians of Malabar were so violently persecuted as heretics that the heathen princes took arms in their defence in 1570 (see Geddes, Hist. Malabar), and the Portuguese were almost driven from India. Abyssinia, by the same arts, was steeped in blood, and two or three Abyssinian emperors lost their lives in endeavouring to establish the pope's supremacy. An order at last was given from the throne to hang every missionary, without trial, wherever apprehended, the emperor himself complaining that he could not enjoy a day in quiet for the intrigues of the Romish friars. In China, also, they soon rendered themselves insufferable. Their skill in mathematics and the arts introduced them to great favour at court, but all their cunning could not conceal their villainy. Their unwillingness to ordain the natives raised suspicions against a profession thus monopolized by strangers; their earnest zeal in amassing riches, and their interference with, and deep designs on, secular power (the fatal rock on which they have so often been shipwrecked), appeared, and their churches were levelled with the ground. About 90,000 of the new converts, together with their teachers, were massacred, and their religion was prohibited. In Japan the rage of government even exceeded that of China, and in allusion to their chief object of adoration, the cross, several of the Jesuit fathers were crucified by the Japanese, and the revival of the Christian name was interdicted by the severest laws. Thus, in a great measure, ended in the East the labours of the society of Ignatius Loyola, a society which might have diffused the greatest blessings to mankind, could honesty have been added to their great learning and abilities. Had that indefatigable zeal which laboured to promote the interests of their own brotherhood and the Roman see been employed in the real interests of humanity and civilization, the great design of diffusing the law of Heaven, challenged by its author as the purpose of the Lusiad, would have been amply completed, and the remotest hordes of Tartary and Africa ere now had been happily civilized. But though the Jesuits have failed, they have afforded a noble lesson to mankind.

"Though fortified with all the brazen mounds
That art can rear, and watch'd by eagle eyes,
Still will some rotten part betray the structure
That is not bas'd on simple honesty."

{*} This trick, it is said, has been played in America within these twenty years, where the notion of evil spirits gives the poor Indians their greatest misery. The French Jesuits told the Six Nations, that Jesus Christ was a Frenchman, and had driven all evil demons from France; that he had a great love for the Indians, whom he intended also to deliver, but taking England in his way, he was crucified by the wicked Londoners.

[652] The dying.—The innumerable superstitions performed on the banks of the river Ganges, afford a pitiable picture of the weakness of humanity. The circumstances here mentioned are literally true. It is no uncommon scene for the English ships to be surrounded with the corpses which come floating down this hallowed stream.

[653]

Pegu, whose sons (so held old faith) confess'd
A dog their sire.—

The tradition of this country boasted this infamous and impossible original. While other nations pretend to be descended of demi-gods, the Peguans were contented to trace their pedigree from a Chinese woman and a dog; the only living creatures which survived a shipwreck on their coast.—See Faria.

[654] A pious queen their horrid rage restrain'd.—Thus in the original:

"Aqui soante arame no instrumento
Da géraçáo costumáo, o que usaráo
Por manha da Raynha, que inventando
Tal uso, deitou fóra o error nefando."

[655] And 'mid white whirlpools down the ocean driven.—See the same account of Sicily, Virg. Æn. iii.

[656] Ophir its Tyrian name.—Sumatra has been by some esteemed the Ophir of the Holy Scriptures; but the superior fineness of the gold of Sofala, and its situation, favour the claim of that Ethiopian isle.—See Bochart. Geog. Sacr.

[657] And thousands more.—The extensive countries between India and China, where Ptolemy places his man-eaters, and where Mandevylle found "men without heads, who saw and spoke through holes in their breasts," continues still very imperfectly known. The Jesuits have told many extravagant lies of the wealth of these provinces. By the most authentic accounts they seem to have been peopled by colonies from China. The religion and manufactures of the Siamese, in particular, confess the resemblance. In some districts, however, they have greatly degenerated from the civilization of the mother country.

[658] And gnaw the reeking limbs.—Much has been said on this subject, some denying and others asserting the existence of anthropophagi or man-eaters. Porphyry (de Abstin. i. 4 § 21{*}) says that the Massagetæ and Derbices (people of north-eastern Asia), esteeming those most miserable who died of sickness, when their parents and relations grew old, killed and ate them, holding it more honourable thus to consume them than that they should be destroyed by vermin. St. Jerome has adopted this word for word, and has added to it an authority of his own: "Quid loquar," says he, (Adv. Jov. l. 2, c. 6), "de cæteris nationibus; cum ipse adolescentulus in Gallia viderim Scotos, gentem Britannicam, humanis vesci carnibus, et cum per sylvas porcorum greges et armentorum, pecudumque reperiant, pastorum nates, et fæminarum papillas solere abscindere, et has solas ciborum delicias arbitrari?" Mandevylle ought next to be cited. "Aftirwarde men gon be many yles be see unto a yle that men clepen Milhe: there is a full cursed peple: thei delyten in ne thing more than to fighten and to fie men, and to drynken gladlyest mannes blood, which they clepen Dieu."—P. 235. Yet, whatever absurdity may appear on the face of these tales; and what can be more absurd than to suppose that a few wild Scots or Irish (for the name was then proper to Ireland), should so lord it in Gaul, as to eat the breasts of the women and the hips of the shepherds? Yet, whatever absurdities our Mandevylles may have obtruded on the public, the evidence of the fact is not thereby wholly destroyed. Though Dampier and other visitors of barbarous nations have assured us that they never met with any man-eaters, and though Voltaire has ridiculed the opinion, yet one may venture the assertion of their existence, without partaking of a credulity similar to that of those foreigners, who believed that the men of Kent were born with tails like sheep (see Lambert's Peramb.), the punishment inflicted upon them for the murder of Thomas à Becket. Many are the credible accounts, that different barbarous nations used to eat their prisoners of war. According to the authentic testimony of the best Portuguese writers, the natives of Brazil, on their high festivals, brought forth their captives, and after many barbarous ceremonies, at last roasted and greedily devoured their mangled limbs. During his torture the unhappy victim prided himself in his manly courage, upbraiding their want of skill in the art of tormenting, and telling his murderers that his belly had been the grave of many of their relations. Thus the fact was certain long before a late voyage discovered the horrid practice in New Zealand. To drink human blood has been more common. The Gauls and other ancient nations practised it. When Magalhaens proposed Christianity to the King of Subo, a north-eastern Asiatic island, and when Francis de Castro discovered Santigana and other islands, a hundred leagues north of the Moluccas, the conversion of their kings was confirmed by each party drinking of the blood of the other. Our poet Spenser tells us, in his View of the State of Ireland, that he has seen the Irish drink human blood, particularly, he adds, "at the execution of a notable traitor at Limerick, called Murrogh O'Brien, I saw an old woman, who was his foster-mother, take up his head whilst he was quartering and suck up all the blood that run thereout, saying, that the earth was not worthy to drink it, and therewith also steeped her face and breast and tore her hair, crying out and shrieking most terribly." It is worthy of regard that the custom of marking themselves with hot irons, and tattooing, is characteristic both of the Guios of Camoëns and of the present inhabitants of New Zealand. And if, as its animals indicate, the island of Otaheite was first peopled by a shipwreck, the friendship existing in a small society might easily obliterate the memory of one custom, while the less unfriendly one of tattooing was handed down, a memorial that they owed their origin to the north-eastern parts of Asia, where that custom particularly prevails.

{*} Ιστοροῦνται γοῦν Μασσαγέται καὶ Δέρβυκες ἁθλιωτάτους ἡγεῖσθαι τῶν οἱκείων τοὺς ἀυτομάτους τελευτήσαντας· διὸ καὶ φθάσαντες καταθύουσιν καὶ ἐστιῶνται τῶν φιλτάτων τοὺς γεγηρακότας.

[659] Other worlds the souls of beasts receive.—That Queen Elizabeth reigned in England, is not more certain than that the most ignorant nations in all ages have had the idea of a state after death. The same faculty which is conscious of existence whispers the wish for it; and, so little acquainted with the deductions of reasoning have some tribes been, that not only their animals, but even the ghosts of their domestic utensils have been believed to accompany them to the islands of the blessed. Long ere the voice of philosophy was heard, the opinion of an after state was popular in Greece. The works of Homer bear incontestable evidence of this. And there is not a feature in the history of the human mind better ascertained, than that no sooner did speculation seize upon the topic, than belief declined, and, as the great Bacon observes, the most learned, became the most atheistical ages. The reason of this is obvious. While the human mind is all simplicity, popular opinion is cordially received; but, when reasoning begins, proof is expected, and deficiency of demonstration being perceived, doubt and disbelief naturally follow. Yet, strange as it may appear, if the writer's memory does not greatly deceive him, these certain facts were denied by Hobbes. If he is not greatly mistaken, that gentleman, who gave a wretched, a most unpoetical translation of Homer, has so grossly misunderstood his author, as to assert that his mention of a future state was not in conformity to the popular opinion of his age, but only his own poetical fiction. He might as well have assured us, that the sacrifices of Homer had never any existence in Greece. But, as no absurdity is too gross for some geniuses, our murderer of Homer, our Hobbes, has likewise asserted, that the belief of the immortality of the human soul was the child of pride and speculation, unknown in Greece till long after the appearance of the Iliad.

[660] Oh gentle Mecon.—It was on the coast of Cochin-China, at the mouth of this river, the Maekhaun, or Camboja of modern writers, that Camoëns suffered the unhappy shipwreck which rendered him the sport of fortune during the remainder of his life. The literal rendering of the Portuguese, which Mickle claims the liberty of improving, is, "On his gentle, hospitable bosom shall he receive the song, wet from woful, unhappy shipwreck, escaped from destroying tempests, from ravenous dangers, the effect of the unjust sentence upon him whose lyre shall be more renowned than enriched."—Ed.

[661] Here ere the cannon's rage in Europe roar'd.—According to Le Comte's memoirs of China, and those of other travellers, the mariner's compass, fire-arms, and printing were known in that empire, long ere the invention of these arts in Europe. But the accounts of Du Halde, Le Comte, and the other Jesuits, are by no means to be depended on. It was their interest (in order to gain credit in Europe and at the court of Rome) to magnify the splendour of the empire where their mission lay, and they have magnified it into romance itself. It is pretended, that the Chinese used fire-arms in their wars with Zenghis Khan, and Tamerlane; but it is also said that the Sogdians used cannon against Alexander. The mention of any sulphurous composition in an old writer is, with some, immediately converted into a regular tire of artillery. The Chinese, indeed, on the first arrival of Europeans, had a kind of mortars, which they called fire-pans, but they were utter strangers to the smaller fire-arms. Verbiest, a Jesuit, was the first who taught them to make brass cannon, set upon wheels. And, even so late as the hostile menace which Anson gave them, they knew not how to level, or manage, their ordnance to any advantage. Their printing is, indeed, much more ancient than that of Europe, but it does not deserve the same name, the blocks of wood with which they stamp their sheets being as inferior to as they are different from the movable types of Europe. The Chinese have no idea of the graces of fine writing; here, most probably, the fault exists in their language; but the total want of nature in their painting, and of symmetry in their architecture, in both of which they have so long been experienced, afford a heavy accusation against their genius. But, in planning gardens, and in the art of beautifying the face of their country, they are unequalled. Yet, even in their boasted gardening their genius stands accused. The art of ingrafting, so long known to Europe, is still unknown to them. And hence their fruits are vastly inferior in flavour to those of the western world. The amazing wall of defence against the Tartars, though 1500 miles in extent, is a labour inferior to the canals, lined on the sides with hewn stone, which everywhere enrich, and adorn their country; some of which reach 1000 miles, and are of depth to carry vessels of burthen. These grand remains of antiquity prove that there was a time when the Chinese were a much more accomplished people than at present. Though their princes for many centuries have discovered no such efforts of genius as these, the industry of the people still remains, in which they rival, and resemble, the Dutch. In every other respect they are the most unamiable of mankind. Amazingly uninventive, for, though possessed of them, the arts have made no progress among the Chinese these many centuries: even what they were taught by the Jesuits is almost lost. So false in their dealings, they boast that none but a Chinese can cheat a Chinese. The crime which disgraces human nature, is in this nation of atheists, and most stupid of all idolaters, common as that charter'd libertine, the air. Destitute, even in idea, of that elevation of soul which is expressed by the best sense of the word piety, in the time of calamity whole provinces are desolated by self-murder; an end, as Hume says, of some of the admired names of antiquity, not unworthy of so detestable a character. And, as it is always found congenial to baseness of heart, the most dastardly cowardice completes the description of that of the Chinese.

Unimproved as their arts is their learning. Though their language consists of few words, it is almost impossible for a stranger to attain the art of speaking it. And what a European learns ere he is seven years old, to read, is the labour of the life of a Chinese. In place of our 24 letters, they have more than 60,000 marks, which compose their writings: and their paucity of words, all of which may be attained in a few hours, requires such an infinite variety of tone and action, that the slightest mistake in modulation renders the speaker unintelligible. And in addressing a great man, in place of "my Lord," you may call him a beast, the word being the some, all the difference consisting in the tone of it. A language like this must ever be a bar to the progress and accomplishments of literature. Of medicine they are very ignorant. The ginseng, which they pretended was a universal remedy, is found to be a root of no singular virtue. Their books consist of odes without poetry, and of moral maxims, excellent in themselves, but without investigation or reasoning. For, to philosophical discussion and metaphysics they seem utterly strangers; and, when taught mathematics by the Jesuits, their greatest men were lost in astonishment. Whatever their political wisdom has been, at present it is narrow and barbarous. Jealous lest strangers should steal their arts—arts which are excelled at Dresden, and other parts of Europe—they preclude themselves from the great advantages which arise from an intercourse with civilized nations. Yet, in the laws which they impose on every foreign ship which enters their ports for traffic, they even exceed the cunning and avarice of the Dutch. In their internal policy the military government of Rome under the emperors is revived, with accumulated barbarism. In every city and province the military are the constables and peace officers. What a picture is this! Nothing but Chinese or Dutch industry could preserve the traffic and population of a country under the control of armed ruffians. But, hence the emperor has leisure to cultivate his gardens, and to write despicable odes to his concubines.

Whatever was their most ancient doctrine, certain it is that the legislators who formed the present system of China presented to their people no other object of worship than Tien Kamti, the material heavens and their influencing power; by which an intelligent principle is excluded. Yet, finding that the human mind in the rudest breasts is conscious of its weakness, and prone to believe the occurrences of life under the power of lucky or unlucky observances, they permitted their people the use of sacrifices to those Lucretian gods of superstitious fear. Nor was the principle of devotion, imprinted by Heaven in the human heart, alone perverted; another unextinguishable passion was also misled. On tablets, in every family, are written the names of the last three of their ancestors, added to each, "Here rests his soul:" and before these tablets they burn incense, and pay adoration. Confucius, who, according to their histories, had been in the West about 500 years before the Christian era, appears to be only the confirmer of their old opinions; but the accounts of him and his doctrine are involved in uncertainty. In their places of worship, however, boards are act up, inscribed, "This is the seat of the soul of Confucius," and to these, and their ancestors, they celebrate solemn sacrifices, without seeming to possess any idea of the intellectual existence of the departed soul. The Jesuit Ricci, and his brethren of the Chinese mission, very honestly told their converts, that Tien was the God of the Christians, and that the label of Confucius was the term by which they expressed His divine majesty. But, after a long and severe scrutiny at the court of Rome, Tien was found to signify nothing more than heavenly or universal matter, and the Jesuits of China were ordered to renounce this heresy. Among all the sects who worship different idols in China, there is only one which has any tolerable idea of the immortality of the soul; and among these, says Leland, Christianity at present obtains some footing. But the most interesting particular of China yet remains to be mentioned. Conscious of the obvious tendency, Voltaire and others have triumphed in the great antiquity of the Chinese, and in the distant period they ascribe to the creation. But the bubble cannot bear the touch. If some Chinese accounts fix the era of creation 40000 years ago, others are contented with no less than 884953. But who knows not that every nation has its Geoffry of Monmouth? And we have already observed the legends which took their rise from the Annus Magnus of the Chaldean and Egyptian astronomers, an apparent revolution of the stars, which in reality has no existence. To the fanciful who held this Annus Magnus, it seemed hard to suppose that our world was in its first revolution of the great year, and to suppose that many were past was easy. And, that this was the case, we have absolute proof in the doctrines of the Brahmins, who, though they talk of hundreds of thousands of years which are past, yet confess, that this, the fourth world, has not yet attained its 6000th year. And much within this compass are all the credible proofs of Chinese antiquity comprehended. To three heads all three proofs are reduceable—their form of government, which, till the conquest of the Tartars in 1644, bore the marks of the highest antiquity; their astronomical observations; and their history.

Simply and purely patriarchal, every father was the magistrate in his own family; and the emperor, who acted by his substitutes, the Mandarins, was venerated and obeyed as the father of all. The most passive submission to authority thus branched out was inculcated by Confucius, and their other philosophers, as the greatest duty of morality. But, if there is an age in sacred or profane history where the manners of mankind are thus delineated, no superior antiquity is proved by the form of Chinese government. Their ignorance of the very ancient art of ingrafting fruit-trees, and the state of their language (like the Hebrew in its paucity of words), a paucity characteristic of the ages when the ideas of men required few syllables to clothe them, prove nothing farther than the early separation of the Chinese colony{*} from the rest of mankind; nothing farther, except that they have continued till very lately without any material intercourse with the other nations of the world.

{*} The Chinese colony! Yes, let philosophy smile; let her talk of the different species of men which are found in every country; let her brand as absurd the opinion of Montesquieu, which derives all the human race from one family. Let her enjoy her triumph. Peace to her insolence, peace to her dreams and her reveries. But let common sense be contented with the demonstration (See Whiston, Bentley, etc.) that a creation in every country is not wanted, and that one family is sufficient in every respect for the purpose. If philosophy will talk of black and white men as different in species, let common sense ask her for a demonstration, that climate and manner of life cannot produce this difference; and let her add, that there is the strongest presumptive experimental proof that the difference thus happens. If philosophy draw her inferences from the different passions of different tribes; let common sense reply, that stripped of every accident of brutalization and urbanity, the human mind in all its faculties, all its motives, hopes and fears, is most wonderfully the same in every age and country. If philosophy talk of the impossibility of peopling distant islands and continents from one family, let common sense tell her to read Bryant's Mythology. If philosophy asserts that the Kelts wherever they came found aborigines, let common sense reply, there were tyrants enough almost 2000 years before their emigrations, to drive the wretched survivors of slaughtered hosts to the remotest wilds. She may also add, that many islands have been found which bore not one trace of mankind, and that even Otaheite bears the evident marks of receiving its inhabitants from a shipwreck, its only animals being the hog, the dog, and the rat. In a word, let common sense say to philosophy, "I open my egg with a pen-knife, but you open yours with the blow of a sledge hammer."

A continued succession of astronomical observations, for 4000 years, was claimed by the Chinese, when they were first visited by the Europeans. Voltaire, that son of truth, has often with great triumph mentioned the indubitable proofs of Chinese antiquity; but at these times he must have received his information from the same dream which told him that Camoëns accompanied his friend Gama in the voyage which discovered the East Indies. If Voltaire and his disciples will talk of Chinese astronomy, and the 4000 years antiquity of its perfection, let them enjoy every consequence which may possibly result from it. But let them allow the same liberty to others. Let them allow others to draw their inferences from a few stubborn facts, facts which demonstrate the ignorance of the Chinese in astronomy. The earth, they imagined, was a great plain, of which their country was the midst; and so ignorant were they of the cause of eclipses, that they believed the sun and moon were assaulted, and in danger of being devoured by a huge dragon. The stars were considered as the directors of human affairs, and thus their boasted astronomy ends in that silly imposition, judicial astrology. Though they had made some observations on the revolutions of the planets, and though in the emperor's palace there was an observatory, the first apparatus of proper instruments ever known in China was introduced by Father Verbiest. After this it need scarcely be added, that their astronomical observations which pretend an antiquity of 4000 years, are as false as a Welch genealogy, and that the Chinese themselves, when instructed by the Jesuits, were obliged to own that their calculations were erroneous and impossible. The great credit and admiration which their astronomical and mathematical knowledge procured to the Jesuits, afford an indubitable confirmation of these facts.

Ridiculous as their astronomical, are their historical antiquities. After all Voltaire has said of it, the oldest date to which their history pretends is not much above 4000 years. During this period 236 kings have reigned, of 22 different families. The first king reigned 100 years, then we have the names of some others, but without any detail of actions, or that concatenation of events which distinguishes authentic history. That mark of truth does not begin to appear for upwards of 2000 years of the Chinese legends. Little more than the names of kings, and these often interrupted with wide chasms, compose all the annals of China, till about the period of the Christian era. Something like a history then commences, but that is again interrupted by a wide chasm, which the Chinese know not how to fill up otherwise, than by asserting that a century or two elapsed in the time, and that at such a period a new family mounted the throne. Such is the history of China, full brother in every family feature to those Monkish tales, which sent a daughter of Pharoah to be queen of Scotland, which sent Brutus to England, and a grandson of Noah to teach school among the mountains in Wales.

[662] Immense the northern wastes their horrors spread.—Tartary, Siberia, Samoyada, Kamtchatka, etc. A short account of the Grand Lama of Thibet Tartary shall complete our view of the superstitions of the East. While the other pagans of Asia worship the most ugly monstrous idols, the Tartars of Thibet adore a real living god. He sits cross-legged on his throne, in the great temple, adorned with gold and diamonds. He never speaks, but sometimes elevates his hand in token that he approves of the prayers of his worshippers. He is a ruddy well-looking young man, about 25 or 27, and is the most miserable wretch on earth, being the mere puppet of his priests, who dispatch him whenever age or sickness make any alteration in his features; and another, instructed to act his part, is put in his place. Princes of very distant provinces send tribute to this deity and implore his blessing, and, as Voltaire has merrily told us, think themselves secure of benediction if favoured with something from his godship, esteemed more sacred than the hallowed cow-dung of the Brahmins.

[663] How bright a silver mine.—By this beautiful metaphor (omitted by Castera) Camoëns alludes to the great success, which in his time attended the Jesuit missionaries in Japan. James I. sent an embassy to the sovereign, and opened a trade with this country, but it was soon suffered to decline. The Dutch are the only Europeans who now traffic with the Japanese, which it is said they obtain by trampling on the cross and by abjuring the Christian name. In religion the Japanese are much the same as their neighbours of China. And in the frequency of self-murder, says Voltaire, they vie with their brother islanders of England.

[664] The ground they touch not.—These are commonly called the birds of Paradise. It was the old erroneous opinion that they always soared in the air, and that the female hatched her young on the back of the male. Their feathers bear a mixture of the most beautiful azure, purple, and golden colours, which have a fine effect in the rays of the sun.

[665] From hence the pilgrim brings the wondrous tale.—Streams of this kind are common in many countries. Castera attributes this quality to the excessive coldness of the waters, but this is a mistake. The waters of some springs are impregnated with sparry particles, which adhering to the herbage, or the clay, on the banks of their channel, harden into stone, and incrust the original retainers.

[666] Here from the trees the gum.—Benzoin, a species of frankincense. The oil mentioned in the next line, is that called the rock oil, petroleum, a black fetid mineral oil, good for bruises and sprains.

[667] Wide forests there beneath Maldivia's tide.—A sea plant, resembling the palm, grows in great abundance in the bays about the Maldivian islands. The boughs rise to the top of the water, and bear a kind of apple, called the coco of Maldivia, which is esteemed an antidote against poison.

[668] The tread of sainted footstep.—The imprint of a human foot is found on the high mountain, called the Pic of Adam. Legendary tradition says, that Adam, after he was expelled from Paradise, did penance 300 years on this hill, on which he left the print of his footstep. This tale seems to be Jewish, or Mohammedan; for the natives, according to Captain Knox (who was twenty years a captive in Ceylon), pretend the impression was made by the god Budha, when he ascended to heaven, after having, for the salvation of mankind, appeared on the earth. His priests beg charity for the sake of Budha, whose worship they perform among groves of the Bogahah-tree, under which, when on earth, they say he usually sat and taught.

[669] And lo, the Island of the Moon.—Madagascar is thus named by the natives.

[670] The kingfishers.

[671] Now to the West, by thee, great chief, is given.—The sublimity of this eulogy on the expedition of the Lusiad has been already observed. What follows is a natural completion of the whole; and, the digressive exclamation at the end excepted, is exactly similar to the manner in which Homer has concluded the Iliad.

[672] Near either pole.—We are now presented with a beautiful view of the American world. Columbus discovered the West Indies before, but not the continent till 1498—the year after Gama sailed from Lisbon.

[673] The first bold hero.—Cabral, the first after Gama who sailed to India, was driven by tempest to the Brazils, a proof that more ancient voyagers might have met with the same fate. He named the country Santa Cruz, or Holy Cross; it was afterwards named Brazil, from the colour of the wood with which it abounds. It is one of the finest countries in the new world.

[674] To match thy deeds shall Magalhaens aspire.—Camoëns, though he boasts of the actions of Magalhaens as an honour to Portugal, yet condemns his defection to the King of Spain, and calls him—

O Magalhaens, no feito com verdade
Portuguez, porèm naó na lealdade.

"In deeds truly a Portuguese, but not in loyalty." And others have bestowed upon him the name of traitor, but perhaps undeservedly. Justice to the name of this great man requires an examination of the charge. Ere he entered into the service of the King of Spain by a solemn act, he unnaturalized himself. Osorius is very severe against this unavailing rite, and argues that no injury which a prince may possibly give, can authorize a subject to act the part of a traitor against his native country. This is certainly true, but it is not strictly applicable to the case of Magalhaens. Many eminent services performed in Africa and India entitled him to a certain allowance, which, though inconsiderable in itself, was esteemed as the reward of distinguished merit, and therefore highly valued. For this Magalhaens petitioned in vain. He found, says Faria, that the malicious accusations of some men had more weight with his sovereign than all his services. After this unworthy repulse, what patronage at the Court of Lisbon could he hope? And though no injury can vindicate the man who draws his sword against his native country, yet no moral duty requires that he who has some important discovery in meditation should stifle his design, if uncountenanced by his native prince. It has been alleged, that he embroiled his country in disputes with Spain. But neither is this strictly applicable to the neglected Magalhaens. The courts of Spain and Portugal had solemnly settled the limits within which they were to make discoveries and settlements, and within these did Magalhaens and the court of Spain propose that his discoveries should terminate. And allowing that his calculations might mislead him beyond the bounds prescribed to the Spaniards, still his apology is clear, for it would have been injurious to each court, had he supposed that the faith of the boundary treaty would be trampled upon by either power. If it is said that he aggrandized the enemies of his country, the Spaniards, and introduced them to a dangerous rivalship with the Portuguese settlements; let the sentence of Faria on this subject be remembered: "Let princes beware," says he, "how by neglect or injustice they force into desperate actions the men who have merited rewards."

In the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries, the spirit of discovery broke forth in its greatest vigour. The East and the West had been visited by Gama and Columbus; and the bold idea of sailing to the East by the West was revived by Magalhaens. Revived, for misled by Strabo and Pliny, who place India near to the west of Spain, Columbus expecting to find the India of the ancients when he landed on Hispaniola, thought he had discovered the Ophir of Solomon. And hence the name of Indies was given to that and the neighbouring islands. Though America and the Moluccas were now found to be at a great distance, the genius of Magalhaens still suggested the possibility of a western passage. And accordingly, possessed of his great design, and neglected with contempt at home, he offered his service to the court of Spain, and was accepted. With five ships and 250 men he sailed from Spain in September, 1519, and after many difficulties, occasioned by mutiny and the extreme cold, he entered the great Pacific Ocean or South Seas by those straits which bear his Spanish name Magellan. From these straits, in the 52½ degree of southern latitude, he traversed that great ocean, till in the 10th degree of north latitude he landed on the island of Subo or Marten. The king of this country was then at war with a neighbouring prince, and Magalhaens, on condition of his conversion to Christianity, became his auxiliary. In two battles the Spaniards were victorious, but in the third, Magalhaens, together with one Martinho, a judicial astrologer, whom he usually consulted, was unfortunately killed. Chagrined with the disappointment of promised victory, the new baptised king of Subo made peace with his enemies, and having invited to an entertainment the Spaniards on shore, he treacherously poisoned them all. The wretched remains of the fleet arrived at the Portuguese settlements in the isles of Banda and Ternate, where they were received, says Faria, as friends, and not as intruding strangers; a proof that the boundary treaty was esteemed sufficiently sacred. Several of the adventurers were sent to India, and from thence to Spain, in Portuguese ships, one ship only being in a condition to return to Europe by the Cape of Good Hope. This vessel, named the Victoria, however, had the honour to be the first which ever surrounded the globe; an honour by some ignorantly attributed to the ship of Sir Francis Drake. Thus unhappily ended, says Osorius, the expedition of Magalhaens. But the good bishop was mistaken, for a few years after he wrote, and somewhat upwards of fifty after the return of the Victoria, Philip II. of Spain availed himself of the discoveries of Magalhaens. And the navigation of the South Seas between Spanish America and the Asian Archipelago, at this day forms the basis of the power of Spain: a basis, however, which is at the mercy of Great Britain, while her ministers are wise enough to preserve her great naval superiority. A Gibraltar in the South Seas is only wanting. But when this is mentioned, who can withhold his eyes from the isthmus of Darien—the rendezvous appointed by nature for the fleets which may one day give law to the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans: a settlement which to-day might have owned subjection to Great Britain, if justice and honour had always presided in the cabinet of William the Third?

[675] A land of giants.—The Patagonians. Various are the fables of navigators concerning these people. The Spaniards who went with Magalhaens affirmed they were about ten feet in height, since which voyage they have risen and fallen in their stature, according to the different humours of our sea wits.

[676] The goddess spake.—We are now come to the conclusion of the fiction of the island of Venus, a fiction which is divided into three principal parts. In each of these the poetical merit is obvious, nor need we fear to assert, that the happiness of our author, in uniting all these parts together in one great episode, would have excited the admiration of Longinus. The heroes of the Lusiad receive their reward in the Island of Love. They are led to the palace of Thetis, where, during a divine feast, they hear the glorious victories and conquests of the heroes who are to succeed them in their Indian expedition, sung by a siren; and the face of the globe itself, described by the goddess, discovers the universe, and particularly the extent of the eastern world, now given to Europe by the success of Gama. Neither in grandeur, nor in happiness of completion, may the Æneid or Odyssey be mentioned in comparison. The Iliad alone, in epic conduet (as already observed) bears a strong resemblance. But however great in other views of poetical merit, the games at the funeral of Patroclus, and the redemption of the body of Hector, considered as the interesting conclusion of a great whole, can never in propriety and grandeur be brought into competition with the admirable episode which concludes the poem on the discovery of India.

Soon after the appearance of the Lusiad, the language of Spain was also enriched with an heroic poem, the author of which has often imitated the Portuguese poet, particularly in the fiction of the globe of the world, which is shown to Gama. In the Araucana, a globe, surrounded with a radiant sphere, is also miraculously supported in the air; and on this an enchanter shows to the Spaniards the extent of their dominions in the new world. But Don Alonzo d'Arcilla is in this, as in every other part of his poem, greatly inferior to the poetical spirit of Camoëns. Milton, whose poetical conduct in concluding the action of his Paradise Lost, as already pointed out, seems formed upon the Lusiad, appears to have had this passage particularly in his eye. For, though the machinery of a visionary sphere was rather improper for the situation of his personages, he has, nevertheless, though at the expense of an impossible supposition, given Adam a view of the terrestrial globe. Michael sets the father of mankind on a mountain—

"From whose top
The hemisphere of earth in clearest ken
Stretch'd out to th' amplest reach of prospect lay....
His eye might there command wherever stood
City of old or modern fame, the seat
Of mightiest empire, from the destin'd walls
Of Cambalu ...
On Europe thence and where Rome was to sway
The world."

And even the mention of America seems copied by Milton:—

"In spirit perhaps he also saw
Rich Mexico, the seat of Montezume,
And Cusco in Peru, the richer seat
Of Atabalipa, and yet unspoil'd
Guiana, whose great city Geryon's sons
Call El Dorado."

It must also be owned by the warmest admirer of the Paradise Lost, that the description of America in Camoëns—

"Vedes a grande terra, que contina
Vai de Calisto ao sen contrario polo—
To farthest north that world enormous bends,
And cold beneath the southern pole-star ends,"

conveys a bolder and a grander idea than all the names enumerated by Milton.

Some short account of the writers whose authorities have been adduced in the course of these notes may not now be improper. Fernando Lopez de Castagneda went to India on purpose to do honour to his countrymen, by enabling himself to record their actions and conquests in the East. As he was one of the first writers on that subject, his geography is often imperfect. This defect is remedied in the writings of John de Barros, who was particularly attentive to this head. But the two most eminent, as well as fullest, writers on the transaction of the Portuguese in the East, are Manuel de Faria y Sousa, knight of the Order of Christ, and Hieronimus Osorius, bishop of Sylves. Faria, who wrote in Spanish, was a laborious inquirer, and is very full and circumstantial. With honest indignation he rebukes the rapine of commanders and the errors and unworthy resentments of kings. But he is often so drily particular, that he may rather be called a journalist than an historian. And by this uninteresting minuteness, his style, for the greatest part, is rendered inelegant. The Bishop of Sylves, however, claims a different character. His Latin is elegant, and his manly and sentimental manner entitles him to the name of historian, even where a Livy or a Tacitus are mentioned. But a sentence from himself, unexpected in a father of the communion of Rome, will characterize the liberality of his mind. Talking of the edict of King Emmanuel, which compelled the Jews to embrace Christianity under severe persecution: "Nec ex lege, nec ex religione factum ... tibi assumas," says he, "ut libertatem voluntatis impedias, et vincula mentibus effrenatis injicias? At id neque fleri potest, neque Christi sanctissimum numen approbat. Voluntarium enim sacrificium non vi malo coactum ab hominibus expetit: neque vim mentibus inferri, sed voluntates ad studium veræ religionis allici et invitari jubet."

It is said, in the preface to Osorius, that his writings were highly esteemed by Queen Mary of England, wife of Philip II. What a pity is it, that this manly indignation of the good bishop against the impiety of religious persecution, made no impression on the mind of that bigoted princess!

[677] And the wide East is doom'd to Lusian sway.—Thus, in all the force of ancient simplicity, and the true sublime, ends the poem of Camoëns. What follows is one of those exuberances we have already endeavoured to defend in our author, nor in the strictest sense is this concluding one without propriety. A part of the proposition of the poem is artfully addressed to King Sebastian, and he is now called upon in an address (which is an artful second part to the former), to behold and preserve the glories of his throne.

[678] And John's bold path and Pedro's course pursue.—John I. and Pedro the Just, two of the greatest of the Portuguese monarchs.

[679] Reviv'd, unenvied.—Thus imitated, or rather translated into Italian by Guarini:—

"Con si sublime stil' forse cantato
Havrei del mio Signor l'armi e l'honori,
Ch' or non havria de la Meonia tromba
Da invidiar Achille."

Similarity of condition, we have already observed, produced similarity of complaint and sentiment in Spenser and Camoëns. Each was unworthily neglected by the grandees of his age, yet both their names will live, when the remembrance of the courtiers who spurned them shall sink beneath their mountain tombs. These beautiful stanzas from Phinehas Fletcher on the memory of Spenser, may also serve as an epitaph for Camoëns. The unworthy neglect, which was the lot of the Portuguese bard, but too well appropriates to him the elegy of Spenser. And every reader of taste, who has perused the Lusiad, will think of the Cardinal Henrico, and feel the indignation of these manly lines:—

"Witness our Colin{*}, whom tho' all the Graces
And all the Muses nurst; whose well-taught song
Parnassus' self and Glorian{**} embraces,
And all the learn'd and all the shepherds throng;
Yet all his hopes were crost, all suits denied;
Discouraged, scorn'd, his writings vilified:
Poorly (poor man) he liv'd; poorly (poor man) he died.
"And had not that great hart (whose honoured head{***}
All lies full low) pitied thy woful plight,
There hadst thou lien unwept, unburied,
Unblest, nor graced with any common rite;
Yet shalt thou live, when thy great foe{****} shall sink
Beneath his mountain tombe, whose fame shall stink;
And time his blacker name shall blurre with blackest ink."

{*} Colin Clout, Spenser.
{**} Glorian, Elizabeth in the Faerie Queen.
{***} The Earl of Essex.
{****} Lord Burleigh.

[680] Achilles, son of Peleus.