[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.
"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.