Prolong’d its tuneful echoes.—[III. p. 27.]
Diogo Bernardes, one of the best of the Portugueze poets, was born on the banks of the Lima, and passionately fond of its scenery. Some of his sonnets will bear comparison with the best poems of their kind. There is a charge of plagiarism against him for having printed several of Camoens’s sonnets as his own; to obtain any proofs upon this subject would be very difficult; this, however, is certain, that his own undisputed productions resemble them so closely in unaffected tenderness, and in sweetness of diction, that the whole appear like the works of one author.
Auria itself is now but one wide tomb
For all its habitants.—[III. p. 29.]
The present Orense. The Moors entirely destroyed it; depopulavit usque ad solum, are the words of one of the old brief chronicles. In 832, Alonzo el Casto found it too completely ruined to be restored.—Espana Sagrada, xvii. p. 48.
That consecrated pile amid the wild,
Which sainted Fructuoso in his zeal
Rear’d to St. Felix, on Visonia’s banks.—[IV. p. 38.]