Chapter D: Gonçalo Coutinho Ordered

THIS STONE TO BE PLACED HERE, UNDER WHICH NO OTHER PERSON SHOULD BE BURIED.[157]

We are told that Camoens was handsome in person; and Faria y Sousa speaks of him as elegant and prepossessing in person before he went to India. Hardships and disappointments on his return bowed him down, destroyed his cheerfulness, and made him old before his time.

Camoens was a great man, not only as poet, but in the qualities of his mind and heart. He entered life full of aspiration after the good and beautiful. He loved tenderly and fondly one who was as pure and good as she was lovely; and in absence, and through hardship and sorrow, still he worshipped her idea and mourned her fate. He was gallant and brave in doing, as well as in the harder task of bearing. No mean, no servile, no even dubious act is recorded of him, during the course of many misfortunes, when spirits less high might have bowed before the rich and powerful. He was naturally cheerful, friendly, and fond of society, which he enlivened and adorned by his wit and genius. Fortune warred with him long in vain, but she conquered at last, when poor, and sick, and friendless, he grew melancholy and despairing. At the commencement we compared his fortunes with those of Cervantes; but the career of Camoens was the most disastrous. Every act of his life had an adverse termination. In the early season of youth he loved tenderly and ardently; and this feeling had not injured his fortunes, if his attachment had not been returned. A modern poet asks, "What makes it fatal in this world of ours, to be loved?" It was the love that Dona Catarina bore the poet, that awakened the enmity of her powerful relations, and cast his whole life into shadow. From the hour he was banished for her sake, he succeeded in nothing. He fought for his country in Africa, only to be maimed and deformed for life. He visited India only to encounter the same hardships in a worse climate; he amassed a fortune, and lost it in shipwreck; he trusted to the kind feelings of the powerful, and found himself reduced to absolute want. The most adverse period of Cervantes' life was his captivity at Algiers[158], when he had the spirit of early manhood, the love and admiration of his companions, his own conscience, and stirring hopes and fears to animate him. The happiest portion of Camoens' existence, we are told, were the years he spent at Macao, away from every friend, with hope only to cheer him, and his imagination, while he looked over the wide distant sea that separated him from the dearest objects of life. In his last moments, Cervantes had wife and relation near; and, when dying, he said farewell, to joy; farewell to his friends. In Camoens' last hour his spirit was broken: want and penury, in their most loathsome guise, were his death-bed companions, in a wretched hospital. Southey justly remarks, however, that he is not to be considered a martyr to literature; for he in no way depended on that for bread. He was a martyr to that political system which created a body of men, (the younger sons of the nobility), who, if they inherited no property, could acquire a livelihood only by court favour; and that is never bestowed upon the worthiest. He sought advancement, as well as the "bubble, honour, at the cannon's mouth." He gained the latter only; and unless his spirit now enjoys the fame which he desired during life, it was a bubble indeed, without substance to support him in his necessity. Had he lived a little longer, we are told Philip II. desired to see him when at Lisbon; and he would have found assistance in him. Many is the reprieve fate sends to the suffering after they are dead, as if to show her power, and to impress us with the idea that all depends on her fiat. Wherefore Heaven has established a law, that the best men are to suffer most in this life, is a mystery. All we know is, that so it is, and so learn at least to revere those cast in adversity, and to glory rather than feel shame in the frowns of fortune.[159]

It seems strange that men should let a fellow-creature die as Camoens died; a man, too, who possessed the much-coveted advantage of birth, who had fought for his country, and celebrated her glories in his verse. Long did these very verses--the "Lusiad," and the reputation it promised--bear him up; yet some hope he lost as he concluded it, and at last he breaks off impatiently,--

"No more, my Muse, no more; my harp's ill strung, Heavy and out of tune, and my voice hoarse-- And not with singing, but to see I've sung To a deaf people, and without remorse. Favour that wont t'inspire the poet's tongue, Our country yields not: she minds the purse Too much; exhaling from her gilded mud Nothing but dross and melancholy blood.

Nor know I by what fate or duller chance, Men have not now the life or general gust, Which made them with a cheerful countenance, Themselves into perpetual action thrust. * * * * * While I, who speak in rude and humble rhyme, Nor known, or dreamt of by my king at all, Know yet from mouths of little ones sometime The praise of great ones does completely fall I want not honest studies for my prime, Nor long experience, since to mix withal; I want not wit, such as in this you see, Three things which rarely in conjunction be."

An arm to serve you, trained in war have I, A soul, to sing you, to the Muses bent; Only I want acceptance in your eye, Who owe to virtue fair encouragement

We have dwelt so long on the various and melancholy circumstances of Camoens' lot, that small space is left to speak of his works. Of his lesser poems, his lyrics, and sonnets, such mention has been made in the foregoing pages as have informed the reader of their high merit. Impassioned yet tender, earnest, yet soft--full of heart, and all the better feelings of the soul, they are the type of Camoens, and deserve the same praise as he himself merits.

Patriotism, warmed by the heroic deeds of the discoverers of the passage to India, inspired him with the idea of the Lusiad. He named it "Os Lusitanos," that is to say, the Lusitanians or Portuguese. It opens with the arrival of Vasco de Gama in the Mozambique; it carries him thence, after many dangers, to Calicut, and brings him thence home. Episodical narrations vary the poem. It has faults.[160] Its mythology is clumsy. While bringing forward Christians as Moslems in contention, the introduction of the heathen deities, of Bacchus and Venus, is ridiculous; yet the description of Venus presenting herself to Jupiter, in the second canto, may make any lover of the beautiful pardon the incongruity. The Lusiad is full of beauties: stanzas that rise to sublimity, touch the heart by their pathos, or charm it by descriptive beauties, abound. Above all, there is fire, a heart, a soul--flesh and blood, enthusiasm, and the poet's best spirit, to adorn it with magnanimous sentiments, patriotism, and piety.

As such, the Lusiad is an immortal poem, and Camoens a poet that the world may be proud to have brought forth. He has been considered such, and his poem translated into many languages. In English Mickles' is the modern and popular one; but it has no pretension to fidelity; and, though Mickle was a man of taste and a poet, we turn impatiently from his paraphrase to the truer, though uncouth version of Fanshaw.[161]

[Footnote 127: Experimentou-se alguã hora Da Ave que chamaõ Camaõ, Que, se da Casa, onde mora, Ve adultera a Senhora, Morre de pura paixaõ.]

[Footnote 128: Lord Strangford dates the migration of this family from the time of this Ancestor Ruy de Camoens--and speaks of him as a follower of king Fernando. Ferreira is his authority, but other commentators give a different account See Vida del Poeta por Faria y Sousa, III. IV.]

[Footnote 129: Faria y Sousa, in his second life of Camoens appended to his "Rimas," mentions having found, in the registers of the Portuguese India House, a list of all the chief persons who sailed to India. In the list for 1550, there is this entry: "Luis de Camoens, son of Simon Vaz and Ana de Sa," inhabitants of Lisbon, in the quarter of la Monraria, escudeiro (a name equivalent to our esquire), with a red beard; he gave his father as surety--and sails in the ship San Pedro los Burgalezes.]

[Footnote 130: Lusiad, Canto VII. 78. Further mention will be made hereafter of this passage.]

[Footnote 131: It is curious to compare the smooth, even, and (so to speak) _unindividualized_ verses of Mickle with the rugged and even uncouth stanza of Fanshaw. Both are unlike Camoens. He wrote with fire, and each word bore stamp of the man; but his style is elevated and truly poetic--different from the Pope--like flow of Mickle, and the almost vulgar idiom that Fanshaw too often adopts. This is the stanza in the original Portuguese:

Fez primeiro em Coimbra exercitarse O valeroso officio de Minerva; E de Helicona as Musas fez passar se, A pizar de Mondego a fertil herva. Quanto pode de Athenas desejarse Tudo o soberbo Apollo aqui reserva: Aqui as capellas dá tecidas de ouro, Do baccharo, e do sempre verde louro.

_Canto_ III. 97.

"He was the first that made Coimbra shine With liberal sciences, which Pallas taught; By him from Helicon the Muses nine, To bruise Mondego's grassy brink were brought: Hither transferr'd Apollo that rich mine, Which the old Greeks in learned Athens wrought: There ivy wreaths with gold he interweaves, And the coy Daphne's never fading leaves."

_Fanshaw's Translation._]

[Footnote 132: Cancam, VII. See also Cancam, II.]

[Footnote 133: Soneto, VI.]

[Footnote 134: The translation is from Mr. Adamson's pages; it has the fault of being in longer measure than the original, and therefore losing some of its simplicity.]

[Footnote 135: Lord Strangford's translation, p. 94.]

[Footnote 136: Faria y Sousa, says 1542--other commentators give 1545. The latter seems the more likely date.]

[Footnote 137: Mr. Adamson says, that "The sonnet does not allude to any particular situation but certainly the line

Eu crendo que o lugar me defendia,

alludes to its being a church, which, as is well known, is in Catholic counties, where young ladies are so much shut up, a usual place for falling in love.--Lope de Vega alludes to this circumstance and the similarity between the loves of Petrarch and Camoens--

El culto celestial se celebrava Del mayor Viernes en la Iglesia pia, Quando por Laura Franco se encendia, y Liso por Natercia se inflamava.

Liso and Natercia were the anagrams which Camoens framed of his own and his lady's Christian name--his own, Luis, being frequently spelt Lois.]

[Footnote 138: Soneto 25.]

[Footnote 139: Lord Strangford's translation is not literal, but it retains all the feeling of the original, and is very beautiful:--

"Till lovers' tears at parting cease to flow, Nor sundered hearts by strong despair be torn, So long recorded be that April morn When gleams of joy were dashed with showers of woe. Scarce had the purpling east began to glow, Of mournful men, it saw me most forlorn; Saw those hard pangs by gentle bosom borne, (The hardest, sure, that gentle bosoms know!) But oh, it saw love's charming secret told By tears fast dropping from celestial eyes, By sobs of grief, and by such piteous sighs As e'en might turn th' infernal caverns cold And make the guilty deem their sufferings ease, Their torments luxury--compared to these!"]

[Footnote 140: These verses are peculiarly beautiful in the original. The translation, though flowing, does not embody the ideas of the Portuguese with exactitude, or with equal energy of expression.]

[Footnote 141: While Camoens was in Africa his father sailed to India, and died at Goa on his arrival. Is it not possible that Simon Vaz, instead of being in Africa, was in Lisbon, as indeed seems certain, as he was surety for his son; and that his projected voyage caused Luis to entertain the design of going to India also, though hopes of preferment induced him rather to wish to sail with the viceroy than on board his father's vessel. But the invitation of his youthful friend, the reluctance he felt to give up every hope of seeing dona Caterina again, made him prefer an expedition to Africa. Simon Vaz died on his arrival at Goa, but voyages in those days were long and uncertain: and when Luis actually sailed for India, he probably had not heard of his father's fate, and went out with the intention of joining him.]

[Footnote 142: Don Jose Maria de Sousa.]

[Footnote 143: There is a singular story told by Faria y Sousa, that he found among the old books on the stall of Pedro Coelho, at Madrid, a MS. copy of the first six cantos of the Lusiad, written before Camoens went to India. The copy at the conclusion contained this note: "These six cantos were purloined from Luis de Camoens, from the work which has commenced on the discovery and conquest of India by the Portuguese: they are all finished except the sixth;--the conclusion of that is here given, yet it wants the story of the history of his loves that Leonardo relates during his watch, which ought to follow at stanza 46., where the loss of it is felt, for the conversation of those on watch becomes in consequence shorter and duller, and the canto is shorter than the others." Faria y Sousa adds that he found several stanzas in this MS. wanting in the printed copies, but as the Lusiad was published under the inspection of Camoens, it is to be doubted, whether a late commentator (Sousa) is right in reproaching his predecessor for not preserving the new ones, since it would appear that they were expunged by Camoens himself.]

[Footnote 144: The sonnet has been translated by lord Strangford.]

[Footnote 145: These lines are quoted from the first eclogue of Garcilaso de la Vega. It is supposed that Camoens meant, that his enemies were angry to see the reputation they coveted, possessed by him. The language and style of this letter is so very obscure as to be almost untranslatable.]

[Footnote 146: A place a few miles from Lisbon, where bulls are bred for the bull-fights. He seems to use these expressions ironically.]

[Footnote 147: A discussion has arisen concerning the cause of Camoens' banishment. Fario y Sousa, who lived near the time of Camoens, (he was born in 1590,) says that Barreto took offence at this second satire, and adds with great candour and good feeling: "There is not anything reprehensible in all my master's actions, except his having written these satires, for in doing so he lost sight of prudence, independence, and the bearing of a cavalier; as not any of these qualities belong to a satirist. Barreto, likewise, who was a man possessing a great mind, did not appear to advantage in revenging himself so sternly upon a man of such abilities, and in treating him with such rigour." The late biographer Sousa resents this account. He says, "the satire was falsely attributed to Camoens, since no spark of his genius appears,--nor is he found either before, or after that time, indulging in that species of composition." Southey warmly takes Faria's part, (whom he names one of the most upright and high-minded men that ever ended his days in honourable poverty) and blames Camoens. Adamson is inclined to side with Sousa. We must remember that Barreto was a cruel, arbitrary, and extortionate man: and the sense Camoens evinces of his banishment, makes us willing to believe that he was supported by a lofty sense of innocence. He calls his banishment an unjust decree, in the Lusiad,--and in more energetic language in another poem, he wishes that the remembrance of his exile might, in punishment of those by whom it was obtained, be sculptured in rock or adamant.]

[Footnote 148: The description which he gives of the place where he spent the greater part of his exile, as doctor Southey justly remarks, applies decidedly to Macao and not to Ternate, as Mr. Adamson supposes.

Cercada esta de hum rio, De maritimas aguas saudosas, Das herbas que aqui nascem, Os gados juntamente, y es olhos passeml, Aqui minha ventura Quiz que huma grande parte, Da vida----se passasse.

"It is surrounded by an ocean-stream of salt water. On the herbage that it produces the flock and the eye jointly pasture. Here fortune willed that a considerable part of my life should be passed."]

[Footnote 149: That Camoens, banished by Barreto, held a profitable situation under him seems a contradiction; yet since he amassed a sum of money that seemed wealth to him, he must have been appointed during the governorship of Barreto. The Quarterly Review, bent on admiring the virtues of power, deduces arguments in favour of Barreto: but Camoens could not have denounced him as he did had he been under obligations to him, obligations too, which the whole world in India would have considered full compensation for his exile from Goa. Sousa considers that his stay was of longer duration at Ternate than we assign, and that he did not fill the place at Macao till a later period, when it was given him by Barreto's successor. But then he would not have had time to amass a fortune. Here therefore is an enigma, whose solution we cannot discover, unless it be (and it seems the probable conjecture) that the local governor of Macao preferred Camoens to this place, and Barreto had nothing at all to do with it.]

[Footnote 150: To this wreck, and to his escape he refers in the prophetic song in the tenth Lusiad when he speaks of the river Mecon--

"Upon his soft and charitable brim The wet and shipwrecked song receive shall he, Which in a lamentable plight shall swim From shoals and quicksands of tempestuous sea, The dire effect of exile,--when on _him_ Is executed the unjust decree, Whose repercussive lyre shall have the fate To be renowned more than fortunate."

_Lusiad_, canto X. stanza 128.--_Fanshaw's Translation._]

[Footnote 151: We cannot help preferring the faithful and nervous, though uncouth and even obsolete, translation of Fanshaw to the more diluted stream of Mickle's heroics. Southey speaks of "the elaborate and curious infidelity of Mickle's version;" at the same time that he praises it highly. Desirous of understanding the soul of Camoens, it is not from his smooth expressions, that the reader unacquainted with Portuguese can be informed.]

[Footnote 152: Don Joze Faria y Souza, the latest Portuguese commentator, first suggested this as the probable epoch of dona Catarina's death, in contradistinction to all other biographers, who place it on his return from Ceuta. He founds his notion on the internal evidence of Camoens' lyrics and sonnets, and has made converts of Adamson and Southey, and will of all future biographers. There is this of agreeable also; that Camoens is rescued from the charge, that otherwise lies at his door (and is mentioned by Lord Strangford), of forgetting dona Catarina as soon as she was no more, and addressing another lady in the language of constant love. But these poems show by their context that they were addressed to his first love, who still lived.]

[Footnote 153: Perpetuo saudade da alma mia.

The word _saudade_ is peculiar to the Portuguese language--it includes much--a recollection accompanied by affection, and regret, and pleasure: friends when they write, send saudades instead of our remembrances to others, and it speaks of more tender and kind feeling.]

[Footnote 154: One of the most perfect and beautiful of Camoens' poems, is a sonnet which many have preferred to the one of Petrarch on the same subject, or even to his Trionfa, which also narrates the visionary visit of his lost love. The following is Mr. Hayley's translation:--

"While prest with woes from which it cannot flee, My fancy sinks, and slumber seals my eyes, Her spirit hastens in my dreams to rise, Who was in life but as a dream to me. O'er the drear waste, so wide no eye can see How far its sense-evading limit lies, I follow her quick step; but ah, she flies! Our distance wid'ning by fate's stern decree. 'Fly not from me, kind shadow,' I exclaim; She with fixed eyes, that her soft thoughts reveal, And seemed to say, 'Forbear thy fond design,'-- Still flies.--I call her, but her half-formed name Dies on my falt'ring tongue.--I wake and feel Not e'en one short delusion can be mine."]

[Footnote 155: Southey has given the following account of his rival:--"Diego Bernardes, one of the best of the Portuguese poets, was born on the banks of the Lima, and passionately fond of its scenery. Some of his poems will bear comparison with the best poems of their kind. There is a charge of plagiarism against him, for having printed several of Camoen's sonnets as his own: to obtain any proof on this subject would be very difficult: this, however, is certain, that his own undisputed productions resemble them so much in affecting tenderness and sweetness of diction, that the whole appear like the works of one author."--_Notes to Southey's Don Roderick._ Bernardes, however, had no reason to congratulate himself on the choice having fallen on him. He was taken prisoner in the battle in which Sebastian fell; and then he blamed the unfortunate king, and deplored his own fate--a captive doomed to labour and chains. He obtained his liberty, and died at Lisbon in 1596, and was buried in the same church a Camoens. Vide Adamson.]

[Footnote 156: Lord Holland possesses a copy of the first edition of the Lusiad, in which these words were written by the friar Josepe Judio, who left it in the convent of the barefooted Carmelites of Guadalaxara.]

[Footnote 157: This admirable inscription runs thus in its own native Portuguese on the stone itself--

AQUI JAZ LUIS DE CAMÕES,

PRINCIPE DOS POETAS DE SEU TEMPO, VIVEO POBRE E MISERAVELMENTE, E ASSI MORREO, ANNO DE MDLXXIX.

ESTA CAMPA LHE MANDA AQUI, POR D. GONÇALO COUTINHO, NA QUAL SE NAÕ ENTERRARA PESSOA ALGUMA.]

[Footnote 158: We may remark that Camoens died while Cervantes was still a captive at Algiers. He was dead when the Spaniard joined the army at Lisbon two or three years after.]

[Footnote 159: "The poet's life is one of want and suffering, and often of mortification--mortification, too, that comes terribly home; but far be it from me to say that it has not its own exceeding great reward. It may be late in coming, but the claim on universal sympathy is at last allowed. The future, glorious and calm, brightens over the grave; and then, for the present, the golden world of the imagination is around it Not one emotion of your own beating heart but is recorded in music."--_L. E. L._]

[Footnote 160: Doctor Southey has, in his article on the 'life of Camoens', in the twenty-seventh volume of the "Quarterly Review," given an account of the attack made by Jose Agostinho de Macedon on the Lusiad, and the poem he wrote in rivalship on the same subject. Macedo was an acute critic: as such, he could more readily detect defects than beauties. He saw with discerning eye the faults of plan in the Lusiad;--but he was not warmed by its fire, nor elevated by its genius. The most entire vengeance a friend of Camoens could take, he himself achieved when he wrote his poem, whose machinery and plan are no better, and which possesses none of the transcendant merits of its predecessor. To subvert a national idol, is an invidious task--to set himself upon the same pedestal, a ridiculous pretension. A poet of the present day, whom the Portuguese, of whatever political creed, agree in admiring, Almeida Garrett, has written a poem, entitled "Camoens," worthy of his great countryman.]

[Footnote 161: Fanshaw's poem was published without his own corrections. Southey observes on this, that "though he might have sometimes improved the harmony of his verses, and sometimes have changed a word or expression for the better, the main fault is not one he was like to have corrected," that fault being the imitating the Italian poets in mingling familiar and burlesque expressions with the grave and ideal. This observation is singularly true: the copy of sir Richard Fanshaw's Lusiad which we have consulted, contains manuscript corrections in his own hand. In this he has frequently changed a word or transposed it; but not one of the faulty passages is amended.]

END OF THE THIRD VOLUME.

INDEX

A.

ABDORBHAMAN III., his efforts for the advancement of literature, III. 4.

Abreu, Duarte de, III. 324.

Acciajuolo, the seneschal, of Naples, I. 142.

Acquaviva, cardinal, III. 125.

Aga, Hassan, dey of Algiers, III. 138.

Aguirre, Lope de, III. 110.

Agyropylo, Giovanni, I. 163.

Alfieri, Vittorio, his birth and parentage, II. 250. His early education; placed at a public school at Turin, 252. System of education pursued at the academy, 253. Progress of his education, 255. Circumstances of his life greatly altered, 256. Anecdote characteristic of the obstinacy of his disposition, 258. Visits his mother at Genoa, 259. Admitted as ensign into the provincial regiment of Asti, 260. Visits Rome and Naples under the care of an English catholic, 261. Regards coldly those objects which render Rome a city of absolute enchantment, 262. Visits France and England, 263. Singularities of his character, 261. Circumstances of his entrance into Paris, 265. His enthusiasm on visiting London, 266. Becomes really in love, 267. Disappointed in a matrimonial project proposed to him by his brother-in-law, 268. Comes of age, according to the laws of his country, and sets out on his travels with an income of 1200_l_. a-year, and a large sum in ready money, 268. Visits England; his attachment to a lady of rank, 269. Is challenged by her husband, 270. Leaves his unworthy mistress, and pursues his travels, 271. Anecdote characteristic of the violence of his temper, 272. Becomes a cavalier servente to a lady of rank, 273. Determines to break off the disgraceful intercourse, 274. Gives the first token of the spirit of composition, in a sonnet in commemoration of the freedom he had acquired, 274. At the age of seven and twenty, enters into the difficult engagement with the public and himself, to become the writer of tragedies, 275. Difficulties which he had to overcome, 276. Resolves to pass six months in Tuscany, to learn, hear, and feel Tuscan only, 277. His labours in literature confined chiefly to formation of style, 278. Commencement of his friendship with Gori, 279. Commencement of his attachment to Louisa Stolberg, countess of Albany, 280. Energy and conciseness the distinguishing marks of his dramas, 282. Outline of his tragedy, entitled "Philip," 284. Takes up his residence at Rome, 286. Remarks on his sacred dramas, 287. His continued intimacy with the countess of Albany, 288. Goes into voluntary exile, to prevent any actual measures of prohibition and banishment, 290. Returns to Italy after two years, absence, 291. Outline of his tragedy, entitled "Myrrha," 292. Accompanies the countess of Albany to Paris, and establishes himself there, 293. Betakes himself to writing the memoirs of his life, 294. Remarks on his translation of the Æneid, 295. Driven from France by the revolution of 1791, 296. Returns to Florence with the countess of Albany, 297. His translation of "Sallust," an excellent specimen of style, 293. At the age of forty-six, applies himself with ardour to the study of the Greek language, 299. His melancholy increased by the irritation caused by political events, 300. His last illness and death, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, 301. Translation from a sonnet, in which he describes his own person, 302.

Alfonso, duke of Ferrara, I. 207.

Allegri, Francesco, I. 145.

Alphonso X., his zeal for literature; his poetry, III. 11.

Alphonso XI., his poems, III. 12.

Amalasunta, the Gothic queen of Spain, III. 3.

Andrea, prince of Hungary, I. 91.

Angelo, Michael, I. 34.

Angulo, doctor Gregorio de, III. 201.

Antiquário, Jacopo, I. 165.

Aquinas, Thomas, I. 9.

Archimedes, II. 3.

Aretino, I. 11.

Ariosto, Ludovico, his birth, parentage, and early education, I. 196. Composes a drama on the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, 197. Becomes eminent among his contemporaries for the critical skill with which he elucidated obscure passages in Horace and Ovid, 198. The golden age of his life shortened by the death of his father, 199. Obliged, at the age of four and twenty, to turn from quiet to active duties, and exchange Homer for waste books and ledgers, 200. Remarks on his satires, 201. Courted, admired, applauded, and of course envied, in the first circle of Italian society, both for his conversation, his learning, and his poetry, 202. Remarks on his work, entitled "Astolpho's Journey to the Moon," 203. Remarks on his "Orlando Furioso," 204. Sent by the duke of Ferrara, as ambassador to Rome, to pacify the wrath of Julius II., 205. His second embassy to Rome, and uncourteous reception from the pontiff, 206. Singular manner in which the duke retaliates for the indignity shown to himself and his representative, 207. Causes for the principal interruptions in his literary labours, 208. Refuses to accompany the cardinal Hippolito to visit his archbishopric in Segovia, 209. His whimsical letter to his brother Alessandro on the subject, 212. Persuaded to enter into the service of the duke of Ferrara, 217. His literary pursuits retarded by his struggles against the solicitudes, discomforts, and mortifications of narrow and precarious circumstances, 218. His curious reasons for not taking priest's orders, 219. Is patronised by Leo X., 219. His own account of Leo's ingratitude, 220. Extracts from his satires, 222. His description of his visit to Rome, and his specious reception by Leo, 223. Further extracts from his satires, 224. Simple, yet facetious, style of his fables, 225. Appointed to the government of Graffagnana, a mountainous district, lying between Modena and Lucca, 226. Story of a rencontre with some of his uncouth neighbours, 227. Extract from his Fifth Satire, 229. Invited to accept a third embassy to Rome, 230. His reason for refusing, as given in the Seventh Satire, 231. After three years, being released from the cares of his government, he returns with entire devotion of his time and talents to the "Sacred College of the Muses," 232. Anecdote, characteristic at once of his phlegm and his acuteness in his art, 233. Critique on his Seven Satires, 233. His last illness and death, 234. His person and character, 236. No poet of any age has more inseparably identified his conception with his language, 238. Impossibility of translating them, 239. Anecdote of, 241. Whimsical peculiarities of his personal habits, 242. His last hours, 243. Monuments to his memory, 244. Remarks on his works in general, 245. Review of his "Orlando Furioso," 250. Immoral tendency of his writings, 254.

Aristotle, II. 5.

Attila the Hun, I. 2.

Audibert de Noves, I. 68.

Ayala, III. 12.

B.

Barbariccia, I. 15.

Barbato, the chancellor of the king of Naples, I. 120.

Bardi, cavalier de, I. 6.

Barlaam, Bernardo, I. 91.

Barreto, Pedro, governor of Sofala, III. 323.

Barrili, Giovanni, I. 120.

Basseville, Hugh, II. 314.

Bazan, Don Alvaro, III. 113.

Beatrice Portinari, I. 6.

Bella, the mother of Dante, I. 2.

Bellarmine, cardinal, II. 33.

Bembo, Bernardo, I. 35.

Bembo, cardinal, I. 204.

Benavides, don Diego de, III. 141.

Bene, Sennucio del, I. 90.

Benedict XII., pope, I. 89.

Bermudez, Geronimo, a monk of the order of St. Dominic, author of the first original tragedy published in Spain, III. 97.

Berni, Francesco, his birth and early life, I. 188. Notice of his writings, 189.

Bianchi, I. 18.

Bibbiena, cardinal, I. 188.

Boccaccio, Giovanni di, his birth and parentage, I. 116. His early education, 117. His sensations on visiting the tomb of Virgil, 119. His first meeting with Petrarch, 120. His own account of his attachment to the lady Mary, natural daughter of Robert, king of Naples, 121. Description of her person, 122. Outline of his poem, entitled "Filocopo," 123. The first to render the _ottava rima_ familiar to the Italians, 124. Obliged to return to Florence, 125. The "Decameron," a model of the Tuscan dialect, 125. Writes his "Ameto," a composition of mingled prose and verse, the first of the kind, 126. Returns to Naples on his father's second marriage, 126. His description of the plague in Florence, 129. His works preached against and prohibited by Salvanorola, 130. Returns to Florence on the death of his father. Commencement of his intimacy with Petrarch, 131. Sent on various embassies, 132. His political negotiations, 133. His letter to Petrarch, expressing his regret and disappointment on his having taken up his abode at Milan, under the protection of Giovanni Visconti, 133. Petrarch's moderate answer, 134. Popularity of the "Decameron," 134. His disinterested love of letters, and extraordinary efforts to create and diffuse a knowledge of the Greek language and writers, 135. Spends large sums of money in the acquisition of ancient manuscripts, 136. Anecdote illustrative of his anxiety for the possession of them, 136. His unwearied and successful labour in the cause of Hellenic literature, 137. Obtains a decree from the Florentine government for the erection of a Greek professorship in their university, 138. Beneficial change in moral habits brought about by the admonitions and example of Petrarch, 138. The work begun by Petrarch, achieved by a singular circumstance, 139. His letter to Petrarch on the subject, 140. Adopts the clerical dress, and endeavours to suppress those writings which scandalised the pious, 142. Retreats from Florence, and takes up his abode at the castle of Certaldo, 143. Brief review of his later works, 144. Appointed, on two occasions, ambassador to pope Urban V., 145. His letter to Petrarch, describing his visit to the daughter and son-in-law of that poet, 146. Retires to the quiet of Certaldo, where he busies himself in the publication of his work of the "Genealogy of the Gods," 147. Appointed by the Florentine government to the professorship for the public explanation of the "Divina Commedia," 148. His last illness and death, 149.

Bojardo, Matteo Maria, his birth, parentage, and early life, I. 181. His marriage and death, 182. Abstract of the story of his "Orlando Innamorato," 183.

Boniface, pepe, VIII., I. 66.

Borgia, Cæsar, his early life, I. 265. His remorseless cruelty, 267. His conversations with Machiavelli, 268. Anecdote characteristic of his system of government, 279. His downfal, 281. His imprisonment and death, 284.

Boscan Almogaver, Mosen Juan, the first Spanish poet who introduced the Italian style, III. 21. Outline of his life, 22. Circumstances which induced him to introduce the Italian style, 23. His translation of Castiglione's "Libro del Cortigiano," 24. Commencement of his friendship with Diego de Mendoza, 25. Translation of his epistles in imitation of Horace, 26. His death, 32. His person, 33. Review of his writings, 34.

Boutervek, III. 8.

Bowring, Dr. his translation of the Spanish Cancionero, III. 9.

Bozzole, Federigo da, II. 66.

Bracciolini, Poggio, I. 151.

Brossana, Francesco, I. 105.

Bruni, Leonardo, I. 18.

Bruno, Giordano, II. 4.

Bubwith, Nicholas, bishop of Bath, I. 8.

Bulgarelli, Marianna, the prima donna, II. 191. Her friendship for Metastasio, 192. Her death, 198.

Buondelmonte, Zanobi, I. 304

Burchiello, the word "burlesque" derived from his name and the style of his writings, I. 180.

Burney, Dr., his account of his visit to Metastasio in 1772, II. 210.