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."
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,