Chapter XXV: Book X: The Argument (5)

The translator has not been able to discover the slightest vestige of this chivalrous adventure in any memoirs of the English history. It is probable, nevertheless, that however adorned with romantic ornament, it is not entirely without foundation in truth. Castera, who unhappily does not cite his authority, gives the names of the twelve Portuguese champions: Alvaro Vaz d'Almada, afterwards Count d'Avranches in Normandy; another Alvaro d'Almada, surnamed the Juster, from his dexterity at that warlike exercise; Lopez Fernando Pacheco; Pedro Homen d'Acosta; Juan Augustin Pereyra; Luis Gonfalez de Malafay; the two brothers Alvaro and Rodrigo Mendez de Cerveyra; Ruy Gomex de Sylva; Soueyro d'Acosta, who gave his name to the river Acosta in Africa; Martin Lopez d'Azevedo; and Alvaro Gonfalez de Coutigno, surnamed Magricio. The names of the English champions, and of the ladies, he confesses are unknown, nor does history positively explain the injury of which the dames complained. It must, however, he adds, have been such as required the atonement of blood; _il falloit qu'elle fût sanglante_, since two sovereigns allowed to determine it by the sword. "Some critics," says Castera, "may perhaps condemn this episode of Camoëns; but for my part," he continues, "I think the adventure of Olindo and Sophronia, in Tasso, is much more to be blamed. The episode of the Italian poet is totally exuberant, whereas that of the Portuguese has a direct relation to his proposed subject: the wars of his country, a vast field, in which he has admirably succeeded, without prejudice to the first rule of the epopea, the unity of the action." The severest critic must allow that the episode related by Veloso, is happily introduced. To one who has ever been at sea, the scene must be particularly pleasing. The fleet is under sail, they plough the smooth deep--

"And o'er the decks cold breath'd the midnight wind."

All but the second watch are asleep in their warm pavilions; the second watch sit by the mast, sheltered from the chilly gale by a broad sail-cloth; sleep begins to overpower them, and they tell stories to entertain one another. For beautiful, picturesque simplicity there is no sea-scene equal to this in the Odyssey, or Æneid.

[425] _What time he claim'd the proud Castilian throne._--John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, claimed the crown of Castile in the right of his wife, Donna Constantia, daughter of Don Pedro, the late king. Assisted by his son-in-law, John I. of Portugal, he entered Galicia, and was proclaimed king of Castile at the city of St. Jago de Compostella. He afterwards relinquished his pretensions, on the marriage of his daughter, Catalina, with the infant, Don Henry of Castile.

[426] _The dames by lot their gallant champions choose._--The ten champions, who in the fifth book of Tasso's Jerusalem are sent by Godfrey for the assistance of Armida, are chosen by lot. Tasso, who had read the Lusiad, and admired its author, undoubtedly had the Portuguese poet in his eye.

[427]

_In that proud port half circled by the wave,
Which Portugallia to the nation gave,
A deathless name.--_

Oporto, called by the Romans _Calle_. Hence Portugal.

[428]

_Yet something more than human warms my breast,
And sudden whispers--_

In the Portuguese--

_Mas, se a verdade o espirito me adevinha._

Literally, "But, if my spirit truly divine." Thus rendered by Fanshaw--

_But, in my aug'ring ear a bird doth sing._

[429] _As Rome's Corvinus._--Valerius Maximus, a Roman tribune, who fought and slew a Gaul of enormous stature, in single combat. During the duel a raven perched on the helmet of his antagonist, sometimes pecked his face and hand, and sometimes blinded him with the flapping of his wings. The victor was thence named Corvinus, from Corvus. Vid. Livy, l. 7, c. 26.

[430] _The Flandrian countess on her hero smil'd._--The princess, for whom Magricio signalized his valour, was Isabella of Portugal, and spouse to Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, and earl of Flanders. Some Spanish chronicles relate that Charles VII. of France, having assembled the states of his kingdom, cited Philip to appear with his other vassals. Isabella, who was present, solemnly protested that the earls of Flanders were not obliged to do homage. A dispute arose, on which she offered, according to the custom of that age, to appeal to the fate of arms. The proposal was accepted, and Magricio the champion of Isabella, vanquished a French chevalier, appointed by Charles. Though our authors do not mention this adventure, and though Emmanuel de Faria, and the best Portuguese writers treat it with doubt, nothing to the disadvantage of Camoëns is thence to be inferred. A poet is not obliged always to follow the truth of history.

[431] _The Rhine another pass'd, and prov'd his might._--This was Alvaro Vaz d'Almada. The chronicle of Garibay relates, that at Basle he received from a German a challenge to measure swords, on condition that each should fight with the right side unarmed; the German by this hoping to be victorious, for he was left-handed. The Portuguese, suspecting no fraud, accepted. When the combat began he perceived the inequality. His right side unarmed was exposed to the enemy, whose left side, which was nearest to him was defended with half a cuirass. Notwithstanding all this, the brave Alvaro obtained the victory. He sprang upon the German, seized him, and, grasping him forcibly in his arms, stifled and crushed him to death; imitating the conduct of Hercules, who in the same manner slew the cruel Anteus. Here we ought to remark the address of our author; he describes at length the injury and grief of the English ladies, the voyage of the twelve champions to England, and the prowess they there displayed. When Veloso relates these, the sea is calm; but no sooner does it begin to be troubled, than the soldier abridges his recital: we see him follow by degrees the preludes of the storm, we perceive the anxiety of his mind on the view of the approaching danger, hastening his narration to an end. Behold the strokes of a master!--_This note, and the one preceding, are from Castera._

[432] _The halcyons, mindful of their fate, deplore._--Ceyx, king of Trachinia, son of Lucifer, married Alcyone, the daughter of Eolus. On a voyage to consult the Delphic Oracle, he was shipwrecked. His corpse was thrown ashore in the view of his spouse, who, in the agonies of her love and despair, threw herself into the sea. The gods, in pity of her pious fidelity, metamorphosed them into the birds which bear her name. The halcyon is a little bird about the size of a thrush, its plumage of a beautiful sky blue, mixed with some traits of white and carnation. It is vulgarly called the kingfisher. The halcyons very seldom appear but in the finest weather, whence they are fabled to build their nests on the waves. The female is no less remarkable than the turtle, for her conjugal affection. She nourishes and attends the male when sick, and survives his death but a few days. When the halcyons are surprised in a tempest, they fly about as in the utmost terror, with the most lamentable and doleful cries. To introduce them, therefore, in the picture of a storm is a proof, both of the taste and judgment of Camoëns.

[433] _With shrill, faint voice, th' untimely ghost complains._--It may not perhaps be unentertaining to cite Madame Dacier and Mr. Pope on the voices of the dead. It will, at least, afford a critical observation which appears to have escaped them both. "The shades of the suitors," observes Dacier, "when they are summoned by Mercury out of the palace of Ulysses, emit a feeble, plaintive, inarticulate sound, [Greek: trizousi], strident: whereas Agamemnon, and the shades that have been long in the state of the dead, speak articulately. I doubt not but Homer intended to show, by the former description, that when the soul is separated from the organs of the body, it ceases to act after the same manner as while it was joined to it; but how the dead recover their voices afterwards is not easy to understand. In other respects Virgil paints after Homer:--

_Pars tollere vocem
Exiguam: inceptus clamor frustratur hiantes."_

To this Mr. Pope replies, "But why should we suppose, with Dacier, that these shades of the suitors (of Penelope) have lost the faculty of speaking? I rather imagine that the sounds they uttered were signs of complaint and discontent, and proceeded not from an inability to speak. After Patroclus was slain he appears to Achilles, and speaks very articulately to him; yet, to express his sorrow at his departure, he acts like these suitors: for Achilles--

'Like a thin smoke beholds the spirit fly,
And hears a feeble, lamentable cry.'

Dacier conjectures that the power of speech ceases in the dead, till they are admitted into a state of rest; but Patroclus is an instance to the contrary in the Iliad, and Elpenor in the Odyssey, for they both speak before their funereal rites are performed, and consequently before they enter into a state of repose amongst the shades of the happy."

The critic, in his search for distant proofs, often omits the most material one immediately at hand. Had Madame Dacier attended to the episode of the souls of the suitors, the world had never seen her ingenuity in these mythological conjectures; nor had Mr. Pope any need to bring the case of Patroclus or Elpenor to overthrow her system. Amphimedon, one of the suitors, in the very episode which gave birth to Dacier's conjecture, tells his story very articulately to the shade of Agamemnon, though he had not received the funereal rites:--

"Our mangled bodies, now deform'd with gore,
Cold and neglected spread the marble floor:
No friend to bathe our wounds! or tears to shed
O'er the pale corse! the honours of the dead."

ODYS. XXIV.

On the whole, the defence of Pope is almost as idle as the conjectures of Dacier. The plain truth is, poetry delights in personification; everything in it, as Aristotle says of the Iliad, has manners; poetry must therefore personify according to our ideas. Thus in Milton:--

"Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth."

And thus in Homer, while the suitors are conducted to hell:--

"Trembling, the spectres glide, and plaintive vent
Thin, hollow screams, along the deep descent:"

and, unfettered with mythological distinctions, either shriek or articulately talk, according to the most poetical view of their supposed circumstances.

[434] Exod. xiv. 29.

[435] Noah.

[436] Venus.

[437] For the fable of Eolus see the tenth Odyssey.

[438]

_And vow, that henceforth her Armada's sails
Should gently swell with fair propitious gales._

In innumerable instances Camoëns discovers himself a judicious imitator of the ancients. In the two great masters of the epic are several prophecies oracular of the fate of different heroes, which give an air of solemn importance to the poem. The fate of the Armada thus obscurely anticipated, resembles in particular the prophecy of the safe return of Ulysses to Ithaca, foretold by the shade of Tiresias, which was afterwards fulfilled by the Phæacians. It remains now to make some observations on the machinery used by Camoëns in this book. The necessity of machinery in the epopea, and the, perhaps, insurmountable difficulty of finding one unexceptionably adapted to a poem where the heroes are Christians, or, in other words, to a poem whose subject is modern, have already been observed in the preface. The machinery of Camoëns has also been proved, in every respect, to be less exceptionable than that of Tasso in his Jerusalem, or that of Voltaire in his Henriade. The descent of Bacchus to the palace of Neptune, in the depths of the sea, and his address to the watery gods, are noble imitations of Virgil's Juno in the first Æneid. The description of the storm is also masterly. In both instances the conduct of the Æneid is joined with the descriptive exuberance of the Odyssey. The appearance of the star of Venus through the storm is finely imagined; the influence of the nymphs of that goddess over the winds, and their subsequent nuptials, are in the spirit of the promise of Juno to Eolus:--

_Sunt mihi bis septum præstanti corpore nymphæ:
Quarum, quæ forma pulcherrima; Deïopeiam_
_Connubio jungam stabili, propriamque dicabo:
Omnes ut tecum meritis pro talibus annos
Exigat, et pulchra faciat te prole párentem._--VIRGIL, Æn. bk. i.

And the fiction itself is an allegory, exactly in the manner of Homer. Orithia, the daughter of Erecteus, and queen of the Amazons, was ravished and carried away by Boreas.

[439] Vasco de Gama.

[440] This refers to the Catholic persecutions of Protestants whom they had previously condemned at the Diet of Spires. War was declared against the Protestants in 1546. It lasted for six years, when a treaty of peace was signed at Passau on the Danube, in 1552.--_Ed._

[441] _Some blindly wand'ring, holy faith disclaim._--At the time when Camoëns wrote, the German empire was plunged into all the miseries of a religious war, the Catholics using every endeavour to rivet the chains of Popery, the adherents of Luther as strenuously endeavouring to shake them off.

[442]

_High sound the titles of the English crown,
King of Jerusalem.--_

The title of "King of Jerusalem" was never assumed by the kings of England. Robert, duke of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror, was elected King of Jerusalem by the army in Syria, but declined it in hope of ascending the throne of England. Henry VIII. filled the throne of England when our author wrote: his luxury and conjugal brutality amply deserved the censure of the honest poet.

[443] France.

[444] _What impious lust of empire steels thy breast._--The French translator very cordially agrees with the Portuguese poet in the strictures upon Germany, England, and Italy.

[445] The Mohammedans.

[446] _Where Cynifio flows._--A river in Africa, near Tripoli.--VIRGIL, Georg. iii. 311.--_Ed._

[447] _O Italy! how fall'n, how low, how lost!_--However these severe reflections on modern Italy may displease the admirers of Italian manners, the picture on the whole is too just to admit of confutation. Never did the history of any court afford such instances of villainy and all the baseness of intrigue as that of the pope's. That this view of the lower ranks in the pope's dominions is just, we have the indubitable testimony of Addison. Our poet is justifiable in his censures, for he only follows the severe reflections of the greatest of the Italian poets. It were easy to give fifty instances; two or three, however, shall suffice. Dante, in his sixth canto, del Purg.--

_Ahi, serva Italia, di dolore ostello,
Nave senza nocchiero in gran tempesta,
Non donna di provincie, bordello._

"Ah, slavish Italy, the inn of dolour, a ship without a pilot in a horrid tempest:--not the mistress of provinces, but a brothel!"

Ariosto, canto 17:--

_O d' ogni vitio fetida sentina
Dormi Italia imbríaco._

"O inebriated Italy, thou sleepest the sink of every filthy vice!"

And Petrarch:--

_Del'empia Babilonia, ond'è fuggita
Ogni vergogna, ond'ogni bene è fuori,
Albergo di dolor, madre d'errori
Son fuggit'io per allungar la vita._

"From the impious Babylon (the Papal Court) from whence all shame and all good are fled, the inn of dolour, the mother of errors, have I hastened away to prolong my life."

[448] _The fables old of Cadmus_.--Cadmus having slain the dragon which guarded the fountain of Dirce, in Boeotia, sowed the teeth of the monster. A number of armed men immediately sprang up, and surrounded Cadmus, in order to kill him. By the counsel of Minerva he threw a precious stone among them, in striving for which they slew one another. Only five survived, who afterwards assisted him to build the city of Thebes.--Vid. Ovid. Met. iv.

_Terrigenæ pereunt per mutua vulnera fratres._

[449]

_So fall the bravest of the Christian name,
While dogs unclean.--_

Imitated from a fine passage in Lucan, beginning--

_Quis furor, O Cives! quæ tanta licentia ferri,
Gentibus invisis_ Latium _præbere cruorem?_

[450] The Mohammedans.

[451] Constantinople.

[452] _Beyond the Wolgian Lake._--The Caspian Sea, so called from the large river Volga, or Wolga, which empties itself into it.

[453]

_Their fairest offspring from their bosoms torn,
(A dreadful tribute !)--_

By this barbarous policy the tyranny of the Ottomans was long sustained. The troops of the Turkish infantry and cavalry, known by the name of Janissaries and Spahis, were thus supported. "The sons of Christians--and those the most completely furnished by nature--were taken in their childhood from their parents by a levy made every five years, or oftener, as occasion required."--SANDYS.

[454] Mohammedans.

[455]

_O'er Afric's shores
The sacred shrines the Lusian heroes rear'd.--_

See the note on book v. p. 137.

[456] _Of deepest west._--Alludes to the discovery and conquest of the Brazils by the Portuguese.

[457] The poet, having brought his heroes to the shore of India, indulges himself with a review of the state of the western and eastern worlds; the latter of which is now, by the labour of his heroes, rendered accessible to the former. The purpose of his poem is also strictly kept in view. The west and the east he considers as two great empires; the one of the true religion, the other of a false. The professors of the true, disunited and destroying one another; the professors of the false one, all combined to extirpate the other. He upbraids the professors of the true religion for their vices, particularly for their disunion, and for deserting the interests of holy faith. His countrymen, however, he boasts, have been its defenders and planters, and, without the assistance of their brother powers, will plant it in Asia.

"The Crusaders," according to Voltaire, "were a band of vagabond thieves, who had agreed to ramble from the heart of Europe in order to desolate a country they had no right to, and massacre, in cold blood, a venerable prince, more than fourscore years old, and his whole people, against whom they had no pretence of complaint."

To prove that the Crusades were neither so unjustifiable, so impolitic, nor so unhappy in their consequences as superficial readers of history are accustomed to regard them, would not be difficult.

Upon the whole, it will be found that the Portuguese poet talks of the political reasons of a Crusade with an accuracy in the philosophy of history as superior to that of Voltaire, as the poetical merit of the Lusiad surpasses that of the Henriade. And the critic in poetry must allow, that, to suppose the discovery of GAMA the completion of all the endeavours to overthrow the great enemies of the true religion, gives a dignity to the poem, and an importance to the hero, similar to that which Voltaire, on the same supposition, allows to the subject of the Jerusalem of Tasso.

[458] Calicut is the name of a famous sea-port town in the province of Malabar.

[459]

_The herald hears
Castilia's manly tongue salute his ears.--_

This in according to the truth of history. While the messenger sent ashore by GAMA was borne here and there, and carried off his feet by the throng, who understood not a word of his language, he was accosted in Spanish by a Moorish merchant, a native of Tunis, who, according to Osorius, had been the chief person with whom King Ferdinand had formerly contracted for military stores. He proved himself an honest agent, and of infinite service to GAMA; he returned to Portugal, where, according to Faria, he died in the Christian communion. He was named Monzaida.

[460] _The sacred pledge of eastern faith._--To eat together was, and still is, in the east looked upon as the inviolable pledge of protection. As a Persian nobleman was one day walking in his garden, a wretch in the utmost terror prostrated himself before him, and implored to be protected from the rage of a multitude who were in pursuit of him, to take his life. The nobleman took a peach, eat part of it, and gave the rest to the fugitive, assuring him of safety. As they approached the house, they met a crowd who carried the murdered corpse of the nobleman's beloved son. The incensed populace demanded the murderer, who stood beside him, to be delivered to their fury. The father, though overwhelmed with grief and anger, replied, "We have eaten together, and I will not betray him." He protected the murderer of his son from the fury of his domestics and neighbours, and in the night facilitated his escape.

[461] _i.e._ crescent-shaped.--_Ed._

[462] _In Rhodope._--The beautiful fable of the descent of Orpheus to hell, for the recovery of his beloved wife, Eurydice, will be found in Virgil's Georgics, bk. iv., lines 460-80.--_Ed._

[463]

(_For now the banquet on the tented plain,
And sylvan chase his careless hours employ_).--

The great Mogul, and other eastern sovereigns, attended by their courtiers, spend annually some months of the finest season in encampments in the field, in hunting parties, and military amusements.

[464] _Th' enormous mountain._--The Himalaya range, which is a continuation of an immense chain of mountains girdling the northern regions of the earth and known by various names, as Caucasus, Homodus, Paropamissus, Imaus, etc., and from Imaus extended through Tartary to the sea of Kamschatka. Not the range of mountains so called in Asia Minor.--_Ed._

[465] _As wild traditions tell._--Pliny, imposed upon by some Greeks, who pretended to have been in India, relates this fable.--Vide Nat. Hist. lib. 12.

[466] _Is fondly plac'd in Ganges' holy wave._--Almost all the Indian nations attribute to the Ganges the virtue of cleansing the soul from the stains of sin. They have such veneration for this river, that if any one in their presence were to throw any filth into the stream, an instant death would punish his audacity.

[467] Cambaya, the ancient Camanes of Ptolemy, gives name to the gulf of that name at the head of which it is situated. It is the principal seaport of Guzerat.--_Ed._

[468] Porus was king of part of the Punjaub, and was conquered by Alexander the Great.--_Ed._

[469] _Narsinga._--The laws of Narsing oblige the women to throw themselves into the funeral pile, to be burnt with their deceased husbands. An infallible secret to prevent the desire of widowhood.--CASTERA from Barros, Dec. 4.

[470] The Canarese, who inhabit Canara, on the west coast of India.--_Ed._

[471] Medina, a city of Arabia, famous as being the burial-place of Mohammed, and hence esteemed sacred.--_Ed._

[472] According to tradition, Perimal, a sovereign of India, embraced Islamism about 800 years before GAMA'S voyage, divided his dominions into different kingdoms, and ended his days as a hermit at Mecca.--_Ed._

[473] _i.e._ pariahs, outcasts.

[474] _Brahma their founder as a god they boast._--Antiquity has talked much, but knew little with certainty of the Brahmins, and their philosophy. Porphyry and others esteem them the same as the Gymnosophists of the Greeks, and divide them into several sects, the Samanæi, the Germanes, the Pramnæ, the Gymnetæ, etc. Brahma is the head of the Hindu triad which consists of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva.--_Ed._

[475] Almost innumerable, and sometimes as whimsically absurd as the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments," are the holy legends of India. The accounts of the god Brahma, or Brimha, are more various than those of any fable in the Grecian mythology. According to Father Bohours, in his life of Xavier, the Brahmins hold, that the Great God having a desire to become visible, became man. In this state he produced three sons, Mayso, Visnu, and Brahma; the first, born of his mouth, the second, of his breast, the third, of his belly. Being about to return to his invisibility, he assigned various departments to his three sons. To Brahma he gave the third heaven, with the superintendence of the rites of religion. Brahma having a desire for children, begat the Brahmins, who are the priests of India, and who are believed by the other tribes to be a race of demi-gods, who have the blood of heaven running in their veins. Other accounts say, that Brahma produced the priests from his head, the more ignoble tribes from his breast, thighs, and feet.

According to the learned Kircher's account of the theology of the Brahmins, the sole and supreme god Vishnu, formed the secondary god Brahma, out of a flower that floated on the surface of the great deep before the creation. And afterwards, in reward of the virtue, fidelity, and gratitude of Brahma, gave him power to create the universe.

Hesiod's genealogy of the gods, though refined upon by the schools of Plato, is of the same class with the divine genealogies of the Brahmins. The Jewish fables, foolish questions and genealogies, reproved by Saint Paul (epist. Tit.), were probably of this kind, for the Talmudical legends were not then sprung up. _Binah_, or Understanding, said the cabalists, begat _Kochmah_, or Wisdom, etc., till at last comes _Milcah_, the Kingdom, who begat _Shekinah_, the Divine Presence. In the same manner the Christian Gnostics, of the sect of Valentinus, held their [Greek: Plêrôma], and their thirty Æons. _Ampsiu_ and _Auraan_, they tell us, _i.e._ Profundity and Silence, begat _Bacua_ and _Tharthuu_, Mind and Truth; these begat _Ubucua_ and _Thardeadie_, Word and Life, and these _Merexa_ and _Atarbarba_, Man and Church. The other conjunctions of their thirty Æons are of similar ingenuity. The prevalence of the same spirit of mythological allegory in such different nations, affords the philosopher a worthy field for speculation.

Almost as innumerable as their legends are the dreadful penances to which the Hindus submit themselves for the expiation of sins. Some hold the transmigration of souls, and of consequence abstain from all animal food.{*} Yet, however austere in other respects, they freely abandon themselves to every species of debauchery, some of them esteeming the most unnatural abominations as the privilege of their sanctity. The cow they venerate as sacred. If a dying man can lay hold of a cow's tail, and expire with it in his hands, his soul is sure to be purified, and perhaps will enjoy the signal favour to transmigrate into the body of one of those animals. The temples of India, which are numerous, are filled with innumerable idols of the most horrid figures. The Brahmins are allowed to eat nothing but what is cooked by themselves. Astrology is their principal study; yet, though they are mostly a despicable set of fortune-tellers, some of them are excellent moralists, and particularly inculcate the comprehensive virtue of humanity, which is enforced by the opinion, that Divine beings often assume the habit of mendicants, in order to distinguish the charitable from the inhuman. They have several traditions of the virtuous, on these happy trials, being translated into heaven; the best designed incitement to virtue, perhaps, which their religion contains. Besides the Brahmins, the principal sect of that vast region called India, there are several others, who are divided and subdivided, according to innumerable variations, in every province. In Cambaya, the Banians, a sect who strictly abstain from all animal food, are numerous.

{*} Though from the extracts given by Mr. Dow, the philosopher Goutam appears to have been a very Duns Scotus or Aquinas in metaphysics, the Pythagorean reason why the Brahmins abstain from animal food, is a convincing proof of their ignorance in natural philosophy. Some will let vermin overrun them; some of the Banians cover their mouth with a cloth, lest they should suck in a gnat with their breath; and some carefully sweep the floor ere they tread upon it, lest they dislodge the soul of an insect. And yet they do not know that in the water they drink, and in every salad they eat, they cause the death of innumerable living creatures.

The sacred books of the Hindoos are written in a dead language, the Sanskrit, which none but the Brahmins are allowed to study. So strict in this are they, says Mr. Dow, that only one Mussulman was ever instructed in it, and his knowledge was obtained by fraud. Mahummud Akbar, emperor of India, though bred a Mohammedan, studied several religions. In the Christian he was instructed by a Portuguese. But, finding that of the Hindoos inaccessible, he had recourse to art. A boy named Feizi, was, as the orphan of a Brahmin, put under the care of one of the most eminent of these philosophers, and obtained full knowledge of their hidden religion. But the fraud being discovered, he was laid under the restraint of an oath, and it does not appear that he ever communicated the knowledge thus acquired.

[476] Kotwâl, the chief officer of police in a town.--FORBES' Hindustani Dictionary.

[477] _The monster forms, Chimera-like, and rude._--Chimera, a monster slain by Bellerophon.

"First, dire Chimera's conquest was enjoin'd,
A mingled monster of no mortal kind;
Behind, a dragon's fiery tail was spread,
A goat's rough body bore a lion's head;
Her pitchy nostrils flaky flames expire,
Her gaping throat emits infernal fire."

POPE'S II. vi.

[478] _So Titan's son._--Briareus.

[479] _Before these shrines the blinded Indians bow._--In this instance, Camoëns has, with great art, deviated from the truth of history. As it was the great purpose of his hero to propagate the law of heaven in the East, it would have been highly absurd to have represented GAMA and his attendants as on their knees in a pagan temple. This, however, was the case. "GAMA, who had been told," says Osorius, "that there were many Christians in India, conjectured that the temple, to which the catual led him, was a Christian church. At their entrance they were met by four priests, who seemed to make crosses on their foreheads. The walls were painted with many images. In the middle was it little round chapel, in the wall of which, opposite to the entrance, stood an image which could hardly be discovered. The four priests ascending, some entered the chapel by a little brass door, and pointing to the benighted image, cried aloud, 'Mary, Mary!' The catual and his attendants prostrated themselves an the ground, while the Lusians on their bended knees adored the blessed virgin." Thus Osorius. Another writer says, that a Portuguese, having some doubt, exclaimed, "If this be the devil's image, I however worship God."

[480] _Here India's fate._--The description of the palace of the zamorim, situated among aromatic groves, is according to history; the embellishment of the walls is in imitation of Virgil's description of the palace of King Latinus:--

_Tectum augustum, ingens, centum sublime columnis,
Urbe fuit summa, etc._

"The palace built by Picus, vast and proud, }
Supported by a hundred pillars stood, }
And round encompass'd with a rising wood. }
The pile o'erlook'd the town, and drew the sight,
Surprised, at once, with reverence and delight....
Above the portal, carv'd in cedar wood,
Placed in their ranks their godlike grandsires stood.
Old Saturn, with his crooked scythe on high;
And Italus, that led the colony:
And ancient Janus with his double face,
And bunch of keys, the porter of the place.
There stood Sabinus, planter of the vines, }
On a short pruning-hook his head reclines; }
And studiously surveys his gen'rous wines. }
Then warlike kings who for their country fought,
And honourable wounds from battle brought.
Around the posts hung helmets, darts, and spears; }
And captive chariots, axes, shields, and bars; }
And broken beaks of ships, the trophies of their wars. }
Above the rest, as chief of all the band
Was Picus plac'd, a buckler in his hand;
His other wav'd a long divining wand.
Girt in his Gabin gown the hero sate----"

DRYDEN, Æn. vii.

[481]

_Behind her founder Nysa's walls were rear'd----
----at distance far
The Ganges lav'd the wide-extended war.--_

This is in the perspective manner of the beautiful descriptions of the figures on the shield of Achilles.--IL. xviii.

[482] _Had Semele beheld the smiling boy._--The Theban Bacchus, to whom the Greek fabulists ascribed the Indian expedition of Sesostris, king of Egypt.

[483] Semiramis.

[484] _Call'd Jove his father._--The bon-mot of Olympias on this pretension of her son Alexander, was admired by the ancients. "This hot-headed youth, forsooth, cannot be at rest unless he embroil me in a quarrel with Juno."--QUINT. CURT.

[485]

_The tap'stried walls with gold were pictur'd o'er,
And flow'ry velvet spread the marble floor.--_

According to Osorius.

[486] _A leaf._--The Betel.

[487] _More now we add not._--The tenor of this first conversation between the zamorim and GAMA, is according to the truth of history.

[488] _What terrors oft have thrill'd my infant breast._--The enthusiasm with which Monzaida, a Moor, talks of the Portuguese, may perhaps to some appear unnatural. Camoëns seems to be aware of this by giving a reason for that enthusiasm in the first speech of Monzaida to Gama--

_Heav'n sent you here for some great work divine,
And Heav'n inspires my breast your sacred toils to join._

And, that this Moor did conceive a great affection to GAMA, whose religion he embraced, and to whom he proved of the utmost service, is according to the truth of history.

[489] _The ruddy juice by Noah found._--Gen. ix. 20. "And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard, and he drank of the wine," etc.

[490]

_His faith forbade with other tribe to join
The sacred meal, esteem'd a rite divine.--_

The opinion of the sacredness of the table is very ancient in the East. It is plainly to be discovered in the history of Abraham. When Melchizedek, a king and priest, blessed Abraham, it is said, "And he brought forth bread and wine and he blessed him."--Gen. xiv. 18. The patriarchs only drank wine, according to Dr. Stukely, on their more solemn festivals, when they were said _to rejoice before the Lord_. Other customs of the Hindoos are mentioned by Camoëns in this book. If a noble should touch a person of another tribe--

_A thousand rites, and washings o'er and o'er,
Can scarce his tainted purity restore._

Nothing, says Osorius, but the death of the unhappy commoner can wipe off the pollution. Yet we are told by the same author, that Hindoo nobility cannot be forfeited, or even tarnished by the basest and greatest of crimes; nor can one of mean birth become great or noble by the most illustrious actions. The noblemen, says the same writer, adopt the children of their sisters, esteeming there can be no other certainty of the relationship of their heirs.

[491] _The warlike song._--Though Camoëns began his Lusiad in Portugal, almost the whole of it was written while on the ocean, while in Africa, and in India.--See his Life.

[492] _As Canace._--Daughter of Eolus. Her father, having thrown her incestuous child to the dogs, sent her a sword, with which she slew herself. In Ovid she writes an epistle to her husband-brother, where she thus describes herself:--

_Dextra tenet calamum, strictum tenet altera ferrum._

[493]

_Soon I beheld that wealth beneath the wave
For ever lost.--_

See the Life of Camoëns.

[494] _My life, like Judah's Heaven-doom'd king of yore._--Hezekiah.--See Isaiah xxxviii.

[495] _And left me mourning in a dreary jail._--This, and the whole paragraph from--

_Degraded now, by poverty abhorr'd,_

alludes to his fortunes in India. The latter circumstance relates particularly to the base and inhuman treatment he received on his return to Goa, after his unhappy shipwreck.--See his Life.

[496] _Who spurns the muse._--Similarity of condition has produced similarity of sentiment in Camoëns and Spenser. Each was the ornament of his country and his age, and each was cruelly neglected by the men of power, who, in truth, were incapable to judge of their merit, or to relish their writings. We have seen several of the strictures of Camoëns on the barbarous nobility of Portugal. The similar complaints of Spenser will show, that neglect of genius, however, was not confined to the court of Lisbon:--

"O grief of griefs! O gall of all good hearts!
To see that virtue should despised be
Of such as first were raised for virtue's parts,
And now, broad spreading like an aged tree,
Let none shoot up that nigh them planted be.
O let not those of whom the muse is scorn'd,
Alive or dead be by the muse adorn'd."

RUINS OF TIME.

It is thought Lord Burleigh, who withheld the bounty intended by Queen Elizabeth, is here meant. But he is more clearly stigmatized in these remarkable lines, where the misery of dependence on court favour is painted in colours which must recall several strokes of the Lusiad to the mind of the reader:--

"Full little knowest thou that hast not tried,
What hell it is, in suing long to bide;
To lose good days, that might be better spent,
To waste long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow,
To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow;
To have thy princess' grace, yet want her peers';
To have thy asking, yet wait many years.
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares,
To eat thy heart thro' comfortless despairs;
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undone."

MOTHER HUBBERD'S TALE.

These lines exasperated still more the inelegant, illiberal Burleigh. So true is the observation of Mr. Hughes, that, "even the sighs of a miserable man are sometimes resented as an affront by him that is the occasion of them."

[497] Kotwâl, a sort of superintendent or inspector of police.--FORBES' Hindustani Dictionary.

[498] Lusus.

[499] _His cluster'd bough, the same which Bacchus bore._--Camoëns immediately before, and in the former book, calls the ensign of Lusus a bough; here he calls it the green thyrsus of Bacchus:--

_O verde Tyrso foi de Bacco usado._

The thyrsus, however, was a javelin twisted with ivy-leaves, used in the sacrifices of Bacchus.

[500] _In those fair lawns the bless'd Elysium feign'd._--In this assertion our author has the authority of Strabo. a foundation sufficient for a poet. Nor are there wanting several Spanish writers, particularly Barbosa, who seriously affirm that Homer drew the fine description of Elysium, in his fourth Odyssey, from the beautiful valleys of Spain, where, in one of his voyages, they say, he arrived. Egypt, however, seems to have a better title to this honour. The fable of Charon, and the judges of hell, are evidently borrowed from the Egyptian rites of burial, and are older than Homer. After a ferryman had conveyed the corpse over a lake, certain judges examined the life of the deceased, particularly his claim to the virtue of loyalty, and, according to the report, decreed or refused the honours of sepulture. The place of the catacombs, according to Diodorus Siculus, was surrounded with deep canals, beautiful meadows, and a wilderness of groves. It is universally known that the greatest part of the Grecian fables were fabricated from the customs and opinions of Egypt. Several other nations have also claimed the honour of affording the idea of the fields of the blessed. Even the Scotch challenge it. Many Grecian fables, says an author of that country, are evidently founded on the reports of the Phoenician sailors. That these navigators traded to the coasts of Britain is certain. In the middle of summer, the season when the ancients performed their voyages, for about six weeks there is no night over the Orkney Islands; the disk of the sun, during that time, scarcely sinking below the horizon. This appearance, together with the calm which usually prevails at that season, and the beautiful verdure of the islands, could not fail to excite the admiration of the Phoenicians; and their accounts of the place naturally afforded the idea that these islands were inhabited by the spirits of the just. This, says our author, is countenanced by Homer, who places his "islands of the happy" at the extremity of the ocean. That the fables of Scylla, the Gorgones, and several others, were founded on the accounts of navigators, seems probable; and, on this supposition, the Insulæ Fortunatæ, and Purpurariæ, now the Canary and Madeira islands, also claim the honour of giving colours to the description of Elysium. The truth, however, appears to be this: That a place of happiness is reserved for the spirits of the good is the natural suggestion of that anxiety and hope concerning the future which animates the human breast. All the barbarous nations of Africa and America agree in placing their heaven in beautiful islands, at an immense distance over the ocean. The idea is universal, and is natural to every nation in a state of barbarous simplicity.

[501] The goddess Minerva.

[502] _The heav'n-built towers of Troy._--Alluding to the fable of Neptune, Apollo, and Laomedon.

[503]

_On Europe's strand, more grateful to the skies,
He bade th' eternal walls of Lisbon rise.--_

For some account of this tradition, see the note on Lusiad, bk. iii. p. 76. Ancient traditions, however fabulous, have a good effect in poetry. Virgil has not scrupled to insert one, which required an apology:--

_Prisca fides facto, sed fama perennis._

Spenser has given us the history of Brute and his descendants at full length in the Faerie Queene; and Milton, it is known, was so fond of that absurd legend, that he intended to write a poem on the subject; and by this fondness was induced to mention it as a truth in the introduction to his History of England.

[504] _The brother chief._--Paulus de Gama.

[505] _That gen'rous pride which Rome to Pyrrhus bore._--When Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, was at war with the Romans, his physician offered to poison him. The senate rejected the proposal, and acquainted Pyrrhus of the designed treason. Florus remarks on the infamous assassination of Viriatus, that the Roman senate did him great honour; _ut videretur aliter vinci non potuisse_; it was a confession that they could not otherwise conquer him,--Vid. Flor. l. 17. For a fuller account of this great man, see the note on Lusiad, bk. i. p. 9.

[506] _Some deem the warrior of Hungarian race._--See the note on the Lusiad, bk. iii p. 67.

[507] Jerusalem.

[508] _The first Alonzo._--King of Portugal.

[509] _On his young pupil's flight._--"Some, indeed most, writers say, that the queen advancing with her army towards Guimaraez, the king, without waiting till his governor joined him, engaged them and was routed: but that afterwards the remains of his army, being joined by the troops under the command of Egaz Munitz, engaged the army of the queen a second time, and gained a complete victory."--UNIV. HIST.

[510] _Egaz behold, a chief self-doom'd to death._--See the same story in bk. iii. p. 71. Though history affords no authentic document of this transaction, tradition, the poet's authority, is not silent. And the monument of Egaz in the monastery of Paço de Souza gives it countenance. Egaz and his family are there represented, in bas relief, in the attitude and garb, says Castera, as described by Camoëns.

[511] _Ah Rome! no more thy gen'rous consul boast._--Sc. Posthumus, who, overpowered by the Samnites, submitted to the indignity of passing under the yoke.

[512] _The Moorish king._--The Alcaydes, or tributary governors under the Miramolin{*} or Emperor of Morocco, are often by the Spanish and Portuguese writers styled kings. He who was surprised and taken prisoner by Don Fuaz Roupinho was named _Gama_. Fuaz, after having gained the first naval victory of the Portuguese, also experienced their first defeat. With one and twenty sail he attacked fifty-four large galleys of the Moors. "The sea," says Brandan, "which had lately furnished him with trophies, now supplied him with a tomb."

{*} This should be (and is evidently only a corruption of), _Emir-el-Mumenin_, _i.e._ in Arabic, Commander of the believers.--_Ed._

[513] _A foreign navy brings the pious aid._--A navy of crusaders, mostly English.

[514] _And from the leaves._--This legend is mentioned by some ancient Portuguese chronicles. Homer would have availed himself, as Camoëns has done, of a tradition so enthusiastic, and characteristic of the age. Henry was a native of Bonneville near Cologne. "His tomb," says Castera, "is still to be seen in the monastery of St. Vincent, but without the palm."

[515] _In robes of white behold a priest advance._--Thestonius, prior of the regulars of St. Augustine of Conymbra. Some ancient chronicles relate this circumstance as mentioned by Camoëns. Modern writers assert, that he never quitted his breviary.--CASTERA.

[516] _The son of Egas._--He was named Mem Moniz, and was son of Egas Moniz, celebrated for the surrender of himself and family to the King of Castile, as already mentioned.

[517] _The dauntless Gerald._--"He was a man of rank, who, in order to avoid the legal punishment to which several crimes rendered him obnoxious, put himself at the head of a party of freebooters. Tiring, however, of that life, he resolved to reconcile himself to his sovereign by some noble action. Full of this idea, one evening he entered Evora, which then belonged to the Moors. In the night he killed the sentinels of one of the gates, which he opened to his companions, who soon became masters of the place. This exploit had its desired effect. The king pardoned Gerald, and made him governor of Evora. A knight with a sword in one hand, and two heads in the other, from that time became the armorial bearing of the city."--CASTERA.

[518] _Wrong'd by his king._--Don Pedro Fernando de Castro, injured by the family of Lara, and denied redress by the King of Castile, took the infamous revenge of bearing arms against his native country. At the head of a Moorish army he committed several outrages in Spain; but was totally defeated in Portugal.

[519] _And lo, the skies unfold._--"According to some ancient Portuguese histories, Don Matthew, bishop of Lisbon, in the reign of Alonso I, attempted to reduce Alcazar, then in possession of the Moors. His troops, being suddenly surrounded by a numerous party of the enemy, were ready to fly, when, at the prayers of the bishop, a venerable old man, clothed in white, with a red cross on his breast, appeared in the air. The miracle dispelled the fears of the Portuguese; the Moors were defeated, and the conquest of Alcazar crowned the victory."--CASTERA.

[520]

_Her streets in blood deplore
The seven brave hunters murder'd by the Moor.--_

"During a truce with the Moors, six cavaliers of the order of St. James were, while on a hunting party, surrounded and killed, by a numerous body of the Moors. During the fight, in which the gentlemen sold their lives dear, a common carter, named Garcias Rodrigo, who chanced to pass that way, came generously to their assistance, and lost his life along with them. The poet, in giving all seven the same title, shows us that virtue constitutes true nobility. Don Payo de Correa, grand master of the order of St. James, revenged the death of these brave unfortunates by the sack of Tavila, where his just rage put the garrison to the sword."--CASTERA.

[521] _Those three bold knights how dread._--Nothing can give us a stronger picture of the romantic character of their age, than the manners of those champions, who were gentlemen of birth; and who, in the true spirit of knight-errantry, went about from court to court in quest of adventures. Their names were, Gonçalo Ribeiro; Fernando Martinez de Santarene; and Vasco Anez, foster-brother to Mary, queen of Castile, daughter of Alonzo IV. of Portugal.

[522] _And I, behold, am off'ring sacrifice._--This line, the simplicity which, I think, contains great dignity, is adopted from Fanshaw--

"And I, ye see, am off'ring sacrifice;"

who has here caught the spirit of the original--

_A quem lhe a dura nova estava dando,
Pois eu responde estou sacrificando;_

_i.e._ To whom when they told the dreadful tidings, "And I," he replies "am sacrificing." The piety of Numa was crowned with victory.--Vid. 'Plut. in vit. Numæ.

[523]

_The Lusian_ Scipio _well might speak his fame,
But nobler_ Nunio _shines a greater name_.--

Castera justly observes the happiness with which Camoëns introduces the name of this truly great man. "_Il va_," says he, "_le nommer tout à l'heure avec une adresse et une magnificence digne d'un si beau sujet_."

[524] _Two knights of Malta._--These knights were first named Knights Hospitalers of St. John of Jerusalem, afterwards Knights of Rhodes, from whence they were driven to Messina, ere Malta was assigned to them. By their oath of knighthood they were bound to protect the Holy Sepulchre from the profanation of infidels; immediately on taking this oath, they retired to their colleges, where they lived on their revenues in all the idleness of monkish luxury. Their original habit was black, with a white cross; their arms _gules_, a cross, _argent_.

[525] _His captive friend._--Before John I. mounted the throne of Portugal, one Vasco Porcallo was governor of Villaviciosa. Roderic de Landroal and his friend, Alvarez Cuytado, having discovered that he was in the interest of the King of Castile, drove him from his town and fortress. On the establishment of King John, Porcallo had the art to obtain the favour of that prince; but, no sooner was he re-instated in the garrison, than he delivered it up to the Castilians; and plundered the house of Cuytado, whom, with his wife, he made prisoner and, under a numerous party, ordered to be sent to Olivença. Roderic de Landroal, hearing of this, attacked and defeated the escort, and set his friend at liberty.--CASTERA.

[526] _Here treason's well-earn'd meed allures thine eyes._--While the kingdom of Portugal was divided, some holding with John the newly elected king, and others with the King of Castile, Roderic Marin, governor of Campo-Major, declared for the latter. Fernando d'Elvas endeavoured to gain him to the interest of his native prince, and a conference, with the usual assurances of safety, was agreed to. Marin, at this meeting, seized upon Elvas, and sent him prisoner to his castle. Elvas having recovered his liberty, a few days after met his enemy in the field, whom, in his turn, he made captive; and the traitorous Marin, notwithstanding the endeavours of their captain to save his life, met the reward of his treason from the soldiers of Elvas.--_Partly from_ Castera.

[527] _And safe the Lusian galleys speed away._--A numerous fleet of the Castilians being on their way to lay siege to Lisbon. Ruy Pereyra, the Portuguese commander, seeing no possibility of victory, boldly attacked the Spanish admiral. The fury of his onset put the Castilians in disorder, and allowed the Portuguese galleys a safe escape. In this brave piece of service the gallant Pereyra lost his life.--CASTERA.

[528] _The shepherd._--Viriatus.

[529] _Equal flame inspir'd these few._--The Castilians having laid siege to Almada, a fortress on a mountain near Lisbon, the garrison, in the utmost distress for water, were obliged at times to make sallies to the bottom of the hill in quest of it. Seventeen Portuguese thus employed were one day attacked by four hundred of the enemy. They made a brave defence, and effected a happy retreat into their fortress.--CASTERA.

[530] _Far from the succour of the Lusian host._--When Alonzo V. took Ceuta, Don Pedro de Menezes was the only officer in the army who was willing to become governor of that fortress; which, on account of the uncertainty of succour from Portugal, and the earnest desire of the Moors to regain it, was deemed untenable. He gallantly defended his post in two severe sieges.

[531] _That other earl._--He was the natural son of Don Pedro de Menezes. Alonzo V. one day, having ridden out from Ceuta with a few attendants, was attacked by a numerous party of the Moors, when De Vian, and some others under him, at the expense of their own lives, purchased the safe retreat of their sovereign.

[532] _Two brother-heroes shine._--The sons of John I. Don Pedro was called the Ulysses of his age, on account both of his eloquence and his voyages. He visited almost every court of Europe, but he principally distinguished himself in Germany, where, under the standards of the Emperor Sigismond, he signalized his valour in the war against the Turks.--CASTERA.

[533] _The glorious Henry._--In pursuance of the reasons assigned in the preface, the translator has here taken the liberty to make a transposition in the order of his author. In Camoëns, Don Pedro de Menezes, and his son De Vian, conclude the description of the pictured ensigns. Don Henry, the greatest man perhaps that ever Portugal produced, has certainly the best title to close this procession of the Lusian heroes. And, as he was the father of navigation, particularly of the voyage of GAMA, to sum up the narrative with his encomium has even some critical propriety.

These observations were suggested by the conduct of Camoëns, whose design, like that of Virgil, was to write a poem which might contain all the triumphs of his country. As the shield of Æneas supplies what could not be introduced in the vision of Elysium, so the ensigns of GAMA complete the purpose of the third and fourth Lusiads. The use of that long episode, the conversation with the King of Melinda, and its connection with the subject, have been already observed. The seeming episode of the pictures, while it fulfills the promise--

_And all my country's wars the song adorn,_