[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.