[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.