[367] Briareus.
[368] Doris, the sister and spouse of Nereus, and mother of the
Nereides. By Nereus, in the physical sense of the fable, is understood
the water of the sea, and by Doris, the bitterness or salt, the supposed
cause of its prolific quality in the generation of fishes.
[369] _And give our wearied minds a lively glow._--Variety is no less
delightful to the reader than to the traveller, and the imagination of
Camoëns gave an abundant supply. The insertion of this pastoral
landscape, between the terrific scenes which precede and follow, has a
fine effect. "Variety," says Pope, in one of his notes on the Odyssey,
"gives life and delight; and it is much more necessary in epic, than in
comic or tragic, poetry, sometimes to shift the scenes, to diversify and
embellish the story."
The Portuguese, sailing upon the Atlantic Ocean, discovered the most
southern point of Africa: here they found an immense sea, which carried
them to the East Indies. The dangers they encountered in the voyage, the
discovery of Mozambique, of Melinda, and of Calecut, have been sung by
Camoëns, whose poem recalls to our minds the charms of the Odyssey, and
the magnificence of the Æneid.--MONTESQUIEU, Spirit of Laws, bk. xxi. c.
21.
[370] Virgil.
[371] A small island, named _Santa Cruz_ by Bartholomew Diaz, who
discovered it. According to Faria y Sousa, he went twenty-five leagues
further, to the river Del Infante, which, till passed by GAMA, was the
utmost extent of the Portuguese discoveries.
[372] It was the force of this rushing current which retarded the
further discoveries of Diaz. GAMA got over it by the assistance of a
tempest. The seasons when these seas are safely navigable, are now
perfectly known.
[373] The wise men of the East, or magi, whom the Roman Catholic writers
will have to have been kings.--_Ed._
[374] The Epiphany.--_Ed._
[375] Dos Reis, _i.e._, of the kings.--_Ed._
[376] The frequent disappointments of the Portuguese, when they expect
to hear some account of India, is a judicious imitation of several parts
of Virgil; who, in the same manner, magnifies the distresses of the
Trojans in their search for the fated seat of Empire:--
----_O gens
Infelix! cui to exitio fortuna reservat?
Septima post Trojæ excidium jam vertitur æstas;
Cum freta, cum terras omnes, tot inhospita saxa
Sideraque emensæ ferimur: dum per mare magnum
Italiam sequimur fugientem, et volvimur undis._ ÆN. v. 625.
[377] Hop.
[378] It had been extremely impolitic in GAMA to mention the mutiny of
his followers to the King of Melinda. The boast of their loyalty,
besides, has a good effect in the poem, as it elevates the heroes, and
gives uniformity to the character of bravery, which the dignity of the
epopea required to be ascribed to them. History relates the matter
differently. In standing for the Cape of Good Hope, GAMA gave the
highest proofs of his resolution. The fleet seemed now tossed to the
clouds, _ut modo nubes contingere_, and now sunk to the lowest
whirlpools of the abyss. The winds were insufferably cold, and, to the
rage of the tempest was added the horror of an almost continual
darkness. The crew expected every moment to be swallowed up in the deep.
At every interval of the storm, they came round GAMA, asserting the
impossibility to proceed further, and imploring him to return. This he
resolutely refused. A conspiracy against his life was formed, but was
discovered by his brother. He guarded against it with the greatest
courage and prudence; put all the pilots in chains, and he himself, with
some others, took the management of the helms. At last, after having
many days withstood the tempest, and a perfidious conspiracy, _invicto
animo_, with an unconquered mind, a favourable change of weather revived
the spirits of the fleet, and allowed them to double the Cape of Good
Hope.--_Extr. from_ Osorius's Historia.
[379] GAMA and his followers were, from the darkness of the Portuguese
complexion, thought to be Moors. When GAMA arrived in the East, a
considerable commerce was carried on between the Indies and the Red Sea
by the Moorish traders, by whom the gold mines of Sofala, and the riches
of East Africa were enjoyed. The traffic was brought by land to Cairo,
from whence Europe was supplied by the Venetian and Antwerpian
merchants.
[380] "O nome lhe ficou dos Bons-Signais."
[381] Raphael. See Tobit, ch. v. and xii.--_Ed._
[382] It was the custom of the Portuguese navigators to erect crosses on
the shores of new-discovered countries. GAMA carried materials for
pillars of stone with him, and erected six crosses during his
expedition. They bore the name and arms of the king of Portugal, and
were intended as proofs of the title which accrues from first discovery.
[383] This poetical description of the scurvy is by no means
exaggerated. It is what sometimes really happens in the course of a long
voyage.
[384] King of Ithaca.
[385] Æneas.
[386] Homer.
[387] Virgil.
[388] The Muses.
[389] Homer's Odyssey, bk. x. 460.
[390] See the Odyssey, bk. ix.
[391] See Æn. v. 833
[392] The Lotophagi, so named from the lotus, are thus described by
Homer:--
"Not prone to ill, nor strange to foreign guest,
They eat, they drink, and Nature gives the feast;
The trees around them all their fruit produce;
Lotos the name; divine, nectareous juice;
(Thence call'd Lotophagi) which whoso tastes,
Insatiate, riots in the sweet repasts,
Nor other home, nor other care intends,
But quits his home, his country, and his friends:
The three we sent, from off th' enchanting ground
We dragg'd reluctant, and by force we bound:
The rest in haste forsook the pleasing shore,
Or, the charm tasted, had return'd no more."
POPE, Odyss. ix. 103.
The Libyan lotus is a shrub like a bramble, the berries like the myrtle,
purple when ripe, and about the size of an olive. Mixed with bread-corn,
it was used as food for slaves. They also made an agreeable wine of it,
but which would not keep above ten days. See Pope's note _in loco_.
[393] _In skins confin'd the blust'ring winds control._--The gift of
Æolus to Ulysses.
"The adverse winds in leathern bags he brac'd,
Compress'd their force, and lock'd each struggling blast:
For him the mighty sire of gods assign'd,
The tempest's lord, the tyrant of the wind;
His word alone the list'ning storms obey,
To smooth the deep, or swell the foamy sea.
These, in my hollow ship the monarch hung,
Securely fetter'd by a silver thong;
But Zephyrus exempt, with friendly gales }
He charg'd to fill, and guide the swelling sails: }
Rare gift! but oh, what gift to fools avails?" }
POPE, Odyss. x. 20.
The companions of Ulysses imagined that these bags contained some
valuable treasure, and opened them while their leader slept. The
tempests bursting out, drove the fleet from Ithaca, which was then in
sight, and was the cause of a new train of miseries.
[394] See the third Æneid.
[395] See the sixth Æneid, and the eleventh Odyssey.
[396] Alexander the Great.--_Ed._
[397] Achilles, son of Peleus.--_Ed._
[398] Virgil, born at Mantua.--_Ed._
[399] Don Francisco de Gama, grandson of Vasco de Gama, the hero of the
Lusiad.--_Ed._
[400] Cleopatra.
[401] Every display of eastern luxury and magnificence was lavished in
the fishing parties on the Nile, with which Cleopatra amused Mark
Antony, when at any time he showed symptoms of uneasiness, or seemed
inclined to abandon the effeminate life which he led with his mistress.
At one of these parties, Mark Antony, having procured divers to put
fishes upon his hooks while under the water, he very gallantly boasted
to his mistress of his great dexterity in angling. Cleopatra perceived
his art, and as gallantly outwitted him. Some other divers received her
orders, and in a little while Mark Antony's line brought up a fried fish
in place of a live one, to the vast entertainment of the queen, and all
the convivial company. Octavius was at this time on his march to decide
who should be master of the world.
[402] The friendship of the Portuguese and Melindians was of long
continuance. Alvaro Cabral, the second admiral who made the voyage to
India, in an engagement with the Moors off the coast of Sofala, took two
ships richly freighted from the mines of that country. On finding that
Xeques Fonteyma, the commander, was uncle to the King of Melinda, he
restored the valuable prize, and treated him with the utmost courtesy.
Their good offices were reciprocal. By the information of the King of
Melinda, Cabral escaped the treachery of the King of Calicut. The Kings
of Mombaz and Quiloa, irritated at the alliance with Portugal, made
several depredations on the subjects of Melinda, who in return were
effectually revenged by their European allies.
[403] A giant.
[404] _Two gods contending._--According to the fable, Neptune and
Minerva disputed the honour of giving a name to the city of Athens. They
agreed to determine the contest by a display of their wisdom and power,
in conferring the most beneficial gift on mankind. Neptune struck the
earth with his trident and produced the horse, whose bounding motions
are emblematical of the agitation of the sea. Pallas commanded the
olive-tree, the symbol of peace, and of riches, to spring forth. The
victory was adjudged to the goddess, from whom the city was named
Athens. The taste of the ancient Grecians clothed almost every
occurrence in mythological allegory. The founders of Athens, it is most
probable, disputed whether their new city should be named from the
fertility of the soil or from the marine situation of Attica. The former
opinion prevailed, and the town received its name in honour of the
goddess of the olive-tree--_Ath{=e}n{=e}_.
[405] _While Pallas here appears to wave her hand._--As Neptune struck
the earth with his trident, Minerva, says the fable, struck the earth
with her lance. That she waved her hand while the olive boughs spread,
is a fine poetical attitude, and varies the picture from that of
Neptune, which follows.
[406] _Though wide, and various, o'er the sculptur'd stone._--The
description of palaces is a favourite topic several times touched upon
by the two great masters of epic poetry, in which they have been happily
imitated by their three greatest disciples among the moderns, Camoëns,
Tasso, and Milton. The description of the palace of Neptune has great
merit. Nothing can be more in place than the picture of chaos and the
four elements. The war of the gods, and the contest of Neptune and
Minerva are touched with the true boldness of poetical colouring. To
show to the English reader that the Portuguese poet is, in his manner,
truly classical, is the intention of many of these notes.
[407] Bacchus.
[408] The description of Triton, who, as Fanshaw says--
"Was a great nasty clown,"
is in the style of the classics. His parentage is differently related.
Hesiod makes him the son of Neptune and Amphitrité. By Triton, in the
physical sense of the fable, is meant the noise, and by Salacé, the
mother by some ascribed to him, the salt of the ocean. The origin of the
fable of Triton, it is probable, was founded on the appearance of a sea
animal, which, according to some ancient naturalists, in the upward
parts resembles the human figure. Pausanias relates a wonderful story of
a monstrously large one, which often came ashore on the meadows of
Boeotia. Over his head was a kind of finny cartilage, which, at a
distance, appeared like hair; the body covered with brown scales; the
nose and ears like the human; the mouth of a dreadful width, jagged with
the teeth of a panther; the eyes of a greenish hue; the hands divided
into fingers, the nails of which were crooked, and of a shelly
substance. This monster, whose extremities ended in a tail like a
dolphin's, devoured both men and beasts as they chanced in his way. The
citizens of Tanagra, at last, contrived his destruction. They set a
large vessel full of wine on the sea shore. Triton got drunk with it,
and fell into a profound sleep, in which condition the Tanagrians
beheaded him, and afterwards, with great propriety, hung up his body in
the temple of Bacchus; where, says Pausanias, it continued a long time.
[409] _A shell of purple on his head he bore._--In the Portuguese--
_Na cabeça por gorra tinha posta
Huma mui grandé casco de lagosta._
Thus rendered by Fanshaw--
"He had (for a montera[413]) on his crown
The shell of a red lobster overgrown."
[410] Neptune.
[411] _And changeful Proteus, whose prophetic mind._--The fullest and
best account of the fable of Proteus is in the fourth Odyssey.
[412] Thetis.
[413] Montera, the Spanish word for a huntsman's cap.
[414] _She who the rage of Athamas to shun._--Ino, the daughter of
Cadmus and Hermione, and second spouse of Athamas, king of Thebes. The
fables of her fate are various. That which Camoëns follows is the most
common. Athamas, seized with madness, imagined that his spouse was a
lioness, and her two sons young lions. In this frenzy he slew Learchus,
and drove the mother and her other son, Melicertus, into the sea. The
corpse of the mother was thrown ashore on Megara and that of the son at
Corinth. They were afterwards deified, the one as a sea goddess, the
other as the god of harbours.
[415] _And Glaucus lost to joy._--A fisherman, says the fable, who, on
eating a certain herb, was turned into a sea god. Circé was enamoured of
him, and in revenge of her slighted love, poisoned the fountain where
his mistress usually bathed. By the force of the enchantment the
favoured Scylla was changed into a hideous monster, whose loins were
surrounded with the ever-barking heads of dogs and wolves. Scylla, on
this, threw herself into the sea, and was metamorphosed into the rock
which bears her name. The rock Scylla at a distance appears like the
statue of a woman. The furious dashing of the waves in the cavities,
which are level with the water, resembles the barking of wolves and
dogs.
[416] Thyoneus, a name of Bacchus.
[417] _High from the roof the living amber glows.--_
"From the arched roof,
Pendent by subtle magic, many a row
Of starry lamps, and blazing cressets, fed
With naptha and asphaltus, yielded light
As from a sky."
MILTON.
[418] The Titans.
[419] The north wind.
[420] _And rent the Mynian sails._--The sails of the Argonauts,
inhabitants of Mynia.
[421] See the first note on the first book of the Lusiad.
[422]
_In haughty England, where the winter spreads
His snowy mantle o'er the shining meads.--_
In the original--
_Là na grande Inglaterra, que de neve
Boreal sempre abunda;_
that is, "In illustrious England, always covered with northern snow."
Though the translator was willing to retain the manner of Homer, he
thought it proper to correct the error in natural history fallen into by
Camoëns. Fanshaw seems to have been sensible of the mistake of his
author, and has given the following (uncountenanced by the Portuguese)
in place of the eternal snows ascribed to his country:--
"In merry England, which (from cliffs that stand
Like hills of snow) once Albion's name did git."
[423] Eris, or Discordia, the goddess of contention.--VIRGIL, Æneid ii.
337.--_Ed._
[424]
_What knighthood asks, the proud accusers yield,
And, dare the damsels' champions to the field.--_
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,_
is also admirably connected with the conduct of the poem. The Hindoos
naturally desire to be informed of the country, the history, and power
of their foreign visitors, and Paulus sets it before their eyes. In
every progression of the scenery the business of the poem advances. The
regent and his attendants are struck with the warlike grandeur and power
of the strangers, and to accept of their friendship, or to prevent the
forerunners of so martial a nation from carrying home the tidings of the
discovery of India, becomes the great object of their consideration.
[534] _But ah, forlorn, what shame to barb'rous pride._--In the
original.--
_Mas faltamlhes pincel, faltamlhes cores,
Honra, premio, favor, que as artes criáo._
"But the pencil was wanting, colors were wanting, honour, reward,
favour, the nourishers of the arts." This seemed to the translator as in
impropriety, and contrary to the purpose of the whole speech of Paulus,
which was to give the catual a high idea of Portugal. In the fate of the
imaginary painter, the Lusian poet gives us the picture of his own,
resentment wrung this impropriety from him. The spirit of the complaint,
however, is preserved in the translation. The couplet--
"Immortal fame his deathless labours gave;
Poor man, he sunk neglected to the grave!"
is not in the original. It is the sigh of indignation over the unworthy
fate of the unhappy Camoëns.
[535] _The ghost-like aspect and the threat'ning look._--Mohammed, by
some historians described as of a pale livid complexion, and _trux
aspectus et vox terribilis_, of a fierce threatening aspect, voice, and
demeanour.
[536]
_When, softly usher'd by the milky dawn,
The sun first rises.--_
"I deceive myself greatly," says Castera, "if this simile is not the
most noble and the most natural that can be found in any poem. It has
been imitated by the Spanish comedian, the illustrious Lopez de Vega, in
his comedy of Orpheus and Eurydice, act i. sc. 1:--
"_Como mirar puede ser
El sol al amanecer,
I quando se enciende, no._"
Castera adds a very loose translation of these Spanish lines in French
verse. The literal English is, _As the sun may be beheld at its rising,
but, when illustriously kindled, cannot_. Naked, however, as this is,
the imitation of Camoëns is evident. As Castera is so very bold in his
encomium of this fine simile of the sun, it is but justice to add his
translation of it, together with the original Portuguese, and the
translation of Fanshaw. Thus the French translator:--
_Les yeux peuvent soûtenir la clarté du soleil naissant, mais lorsqu'il
s'est avancé dans sa carrière lumineuse, et que ses rayons répandent les
ardeurs du midi, on tacherait en vain de l'envisager; un prompt
aveuglement serait le prix de cette audace._
Thus elegantly in the original:--
"Em quanto he fraca a força desta gente,
Ordena como em tudo se resista,
Porque quando o Sol sahe, facilmente
Se pòde nelle por a aguda vista:
Porem despois que sobe claro, & ardente,
Se a agudeza dos olhos o conquista
Tao cega fica, quando ficareis,
Se raizes criar lhe nao tolheis."
And thus humbled by Fanshaw:--
"_Now_ whilst this people's strength is not yet knit,
Think how ye may resist them by all ways.
For when the _Sun_ is in his _nonage_ yit,
Upon his _morning beauty_ men may gaze;
But let him once up to his _zenith_ git,
He strikes them _blind_ with his _meridian rays_;
So _blind_ will ye be, if ye look not too't,
If ye permit these _cedars_ to take root."
[537]
_Around him stand,
With haggard looks, the hoary Magi band.--_
The Brahmins, the diviners of India. Ammianus Marcellinus, l. 23, says,
that the Persian Magi derived their knowledge from the Brachmanes of
India. And Arrianus, l. 7, expressly gives the Brahmins the name of
Magi. The Magi of India, says he, told Alexander, on his pretensions to
divinity, that in everything he was like other men, except that he took
less rest, and did more mischief. The Brahmins are never among modern
writers called Magi.
[538] _The hov'ring demon gives the dreadful sign._--This has an
allusion to the truth of history. Barros relates, that an anger being
brought before the Zamorim, "_Em hum vaso de agua l'he mostrara hunas
naos, que vin ham de muy longe para a India, e que a gente d'ellas seria
total destruiçam dos Mouros de aquellas partes._--In a vessel of water
he showed him some ships which from a great distance came to India, the
people of which would effect the utter subversion of the Moors." Camoëns
has certainly chosen a more poetical method of describing this
divination, a method in the spirit of Virgil; nor in this is he inferior
to his great master. The supernatural flame which seizes on Lavinia
while assisting at the sacrifice alone excepted, every other part of the
augury of Latinus, and his dream in the Albunean forest, whither he went
to consult his ancestor, the god Faunus, in dignity and poetical
colouring, cannot come in comparison with the divination of the Magi,
and the appearance of the demon in the dream of the Moorish priest.
[539] _Th'eternal yoke._--This picture, it may perhaps be said, is but a
bad compliment to the heroes of the Lusiad, and the fruits of their
discovery. A little consideration, however, will vindicate Camoëns. It
is the demon and the enemies of the Portuguese who procure this
divination; everything in it is dreadful, on purpose to determine the
zamorim to destroy the fleet of GAMA. In a former prophecy of the
conquest of India (when the catual describes the sculpture of the royal
palace), our poet has been careful to ascribe the happiest effects to
the discovery of his heroes:--
"Beneath their sway majestic, wise, and mild,
Proud of her victors' laws, thrice happier India smil'd."
[540] _So let the tyrant plead._--In this short declamation, a seeming
excrescence, the business of the poem in reality is carried on. The
zamorim, and his prime minister, the catual, are artfully characterised
in it; and the assertion--
_Lur'd was the regent with the Moorish gold,_
is happily introduced by the declamatory reflections which immediately
precede it.
[541]
_The Moors----their ancient deeds relate,
Their ever-faithful service of the state.--_
An explanation of the word _Moor_ is here necessary. When the East
afforded no more field for the sword of the conqueror, the Saracens,
assisted by the Moors, who had embraced their religion, laid the finest
countries in Europe in blood and desolation. As their various
embarkations were from the empire of Morocco, the Europeans gave the
name of _Moors_ to all the professors of the Mohammedan religion. In the
same manner the eastern nations blended all the armies of the Crusaders
under one appellation, and the _Franks_, of whom the army of Godfrey was
mostly composed, became their common name for all the inhabitants of the
West. Before the arrival of GAMA, as already observed, all the traffic
of the East, from the Ethiopian side of Africa to China, was in the
hands of Arabian Mohammedans, who, without incorporating with the pagan
natives, had their colonies established in every country commodious for
commerce. These the Portuguese called Moors; and at present the
Mohammedans of India are called the Moors of Hindostan by our English
writers. The intelligence these Moors gave to one another, relative to
the actions of GAMA; the general terror with which they beheld the
appearance of Europeans, whose rivalship they dreaded as the destruction
of their power; the various frauds and arts they employed to prevent the
return of one man of GAMA'S fleet to Europe, and their threat to
withdraw from the dominions of the zamorim, are all according to the
truth of history. The speeches of the zamorim and of GAMA, which follow,
are also founded in truth.
[542] Troy.
[543] _No sumptuous gift thou bring'st._--"As the Portuguese did not
expect to find any people but savages beyond the Cape of Good Hope, they
only brought with them some preserves and confections, with trinkets of
coral, of glass, and other trifles. This opinion, however, deceived
them. In Melinda and in Calicut they found civilized nations, where the
arts flourished; who wanted nothing; who were possessed of all the
refinements and delicacies on which we value ourselves. The King of
Melinda had the generosity to be contented with the present which GAMA
made; but the zamorim, with a disdainful eye, beheld the gifts which
were offered to him. The present was this: Four mantles of scarlet, six
hats adorned with feathers, four chaplets of coral beads, twelve Turkey
carpets, seven drinking cups of brass, a chest of sugar, two barrels of
oil, and two of honey."--CASTERA.
[544] _Fair Acidalia, Love's celestial queen._--Castera derives Acidalia
from [Greek: akêdês], which, he says, implies to act without fear or
restraint. Acidalia is one of the names of Venus, in Virgil; derived
from Acidalus, a fountain sacred to her in Boeotia.
[545] _Sprung from the prince._--John I.
[546] _And from her raging tempests, nam'd the Cape._--Bartholomew Diaz,
was the first who discovered the southmost point of Africa. He was
driven back by the storms, which on these seas were thought always to
continue, and which the learned of former ages, says Osorius, thought
impassable. Diaz, when he related his voyage to John II. called the
southmost point the Cape of Tempests. The expectation of the king,
however, was kindled by the account, and with inexpressible joy, says
the same author, he immediately named it the Cape of Good Hope.
[547]
_The pillar thus of deathless fame, begun
By other chiefs_, etc.--
"Till I now ending what those did begin,
The furthest pillar in thy realm advance;
Breaking the element of molten tin,
Through horrid storms I lead to thee the dance."
FANSHAW.
[548]
_The regent's palace high o'erlook'd the bay,
Where Gama's black-ribb'd fleet at anchor lay._--
The resemblance of this couplet to many passages in Homer, must be
obvious to the intelligent critic.
[549] _As in the sun's bright beam._--Imitated from Virgil, who, by the
same simile, describes the fluctuation of the thoughts of Æneas, on the
eve of the Latian war:--
"Laomedontius heros
Cuncta videns, magno curarum fluctuat æstu,
Atque animum nunc huc celerem, nunc dividit illuc,
In partesque rapit varias, perque omnia versat.
Sicut aquæ tremulum labris ubi lumen ahenis
Sole repercussum, aut radiantis imagine Lunæ,
Omnia pervolitat late loca: jamque sub auras
Erigitur, summique ferit laquearia tecti."
"This way and that he turns his anxious mind,
Thinks, and rejects the counsels he design'd;
Explores himself in vain, in ev'ry part,
And gives no rest to his distracted heart:
So when the sun by day or moon by night
Strike on the polish'd brass their trembling light,
The glitt'ring species here and there divide,
And cast their dubious beams from side to side;
Now on the walls, now on the pavement play,
And to the ceiling flash the glaring day."
Ariosto has also adopted this simile in the eighth book of his Orlando
Furioso:--
"Qual d'acqua chiara il tremolante lume
Dal Sol per percossa, o da' notturni rai,
Per gli ampli tetti và con lungo salto
A destra, ed a sinistra, e basso, ed alto."
"So from a water clear, the trembling light
Of Phoebus, or the silver ray of night,
Along the spacious rooms with splendour plays,
Now high, now low, and shifts a thousand ways."
HOOLE.
But the happiest circumstance belongs to Camoëns. The velocity and
various shiftings of the sun-beam, reflected from a piece of crystal or
polished steel in the hand of a boy, give a much stronger idea of the
violent agitation and sudden shiftings of thought than the image of the
trembling light of the sun or moon reflected from a vessel of water. The
brazen vessel, however, and not the water, is only mentioned by Dryden.
Nor must another inaccuracy pass unobserved. That the reflection of the
moon _flashed the glaring day_ is not countenanced by the original.
We have already seen the warm encomium paid by Tasso to his
contemporary, Camoëns. That great poet, the ornament of Italy, has also
testified his approbation by several imitations of the Lusiad. Virgil,
in no instance, has more closely copied Homer, than Tasso has imitated
the appearance of Bacchus, or the evil demon, in the dream of the
Moorish priest. The enchanter Ismeno thus appears to the sleeping
Solyman:--
"Soliman' Solimano, i tuoi silenti
Riposi à miglior tempo homai riserva:
Che sotto il giogo de straniere genti
La patria, ove regnasti, ancor' e serva.
In questa terra dormi, e non rammenti,
Ch'insepolte de' tuoi l'ossa conserva?
Ove si gran' vestigio e del tuo scorno,
Tu neghittoso aspetti il nuovo giorno?"
Thus elegantly translated by Mr. Hoole:--
"Oh! Solyman, regardless chief, awake!
In happier hours thy grateful slumber take:
Beneath a foreign yoke thy subjects bend,
And strangers o'er thy land their rule extend:
Here dost thou sleep? here close thy careless eyes,
While uninterr'd each lov'd associate lies?
Here where thy fame has felt the hostile scorn,
Canst thou, unthinking, wait the rising morn?"
The conclusion of this canto has been slightly altered by the
translator. Camoëns, adhering to history, makes GAMA (when his factors
are detained on shore) seize upon some of the native merchants as
hostages. At the intreaty of their wives and children the zamorim
liberates his captives; while GAMA, having recovered his men and the
merchandise, sailed away, carrying with him the unfortunate natives,
whom he had seized as hostages.
As there is nothing heroic in this dishonourable action of GAMA'S,
Mickle has omitted it, and has altered the conclusion of the
canto.--_Ed._
[550] Mickle, in place of the first seventeen stanzas of this canto, has
inserted about three hundred lines of his own composition; in this
respect availing himself of the licence he had claimed in his
preface.--_Ed._
[551] _Thy sails, and rudders too, my will demands._--According to
history.
[552] _My sov'reign's fleet I yield not to your sway._--The circumstance
of GAMA'S refusing to put his fleet into the power of the zamorim, is
thus rendered by Fanshaw:--
"The Malabar protests that he shall rot
In prison, if he send not for the _ships_.
_He_ (_constant_, and with noble _anger_ hot)
His haughty _menace_ weighs not at _two chips_."
[553] _Through Gata's hills._--The hills of Gata or Gate, mountains
which form a natural barrier on the eastern side of the kingdom of
Malabar.
"Nature's rude wall, against the fierce Canar
They guard the fertile walls of Malabar."
LUSIAD, vii.
[554] _Then, furious, rushing to the darken'd bay._--For the
circumstances of the battle, and the tempest which then happened, see
the Life of GAMA.
[555] _I left my fix'd command my navy's guard._--See the Life of GAMA.
[556] _Unmindful of my fate on India's shore._--This most magnanimous
resolution, to sacrifice his own safety or his life for the safe return
of the fleet, is strictly true.--See the Life of GAMA.
[557] _Abrupt--the monarch cries_--"_What yet may save!_"--GAMA'S
declaration, that no message from him to the fleet could alter the
orders he had already left, and his rejection of any further treaty,
have a necessary effect in the conduct of the poem. They hasten the
catastrophe, and give a verisimilitude to the abrupt and full submission
of the zamorim.
[558] _The rollers_--_i.e._ the capstans.--The capstan is a cylindrical
windlass, worked with bars, which are moved from hole to hole as it
turns round. It is used on board ship to weigh the anchors, raise the
masts, etc. The versification of this passage in the original affords a
most noble example of imitative harmony:--
"Mas ja nas naos os bons trabalhadores
Volvem o cabrestante, & repartidos
Pello trabalho, huns puxao pella amarra,
Outros quebrao co peito duro a barra."
STANZA X.
[559]
_Mozaide, whose zealous care
To Gama's eyes reveal'd each treach'rous snare.--_
Had this been mentioned sooner, the interest of the catastrophe of the
poem must have languished. Though he is not a warrior, the unexpected
friend of GAMA bears a much more considerable part in the action of the
Lusiad than the faithful Achates, the friend of the hero, bears in the
business of the Æneid.
[560] _There wast thou call'd to thy celestial home._--This exclamatory
address to the Moor Monzaida, however it may appear digressive, has a
double propriety. The conversion of the Eastern world is the great
purpose of the expedition of GAMA, and Monzaida is the first fruits of
that conversion. The good characters of the victorious heroes, however
neglected by the great genius of Homer, have a fine effect in making an
epic poem interest us and please. It might have been said, that Monzaida
was a traitor to his friends, who crowned his villainy with apostacy.
Camoëns has, therefore, wisely drawn him with other features, worthy of
the friendship of GAMA. Had this been neglected, the hero of the Lusiad
might have shared the fate of the wise Ulysses of the Iliad, against
whom, as Voltaire justly observes, every reader bears a secret ill will.
Nor is the poetical character of Monzaida unsupported by history. He was
not an Arab Moor, so he did not desert his countrymen. These Moors had
determined on the destruction of GAMA; Monzaida admired and esteemed
him, and therefore generously revealed to him his danger. By his
attachment to GAMA he lost all his effects in India, a circumstance
which his prudence and knowledge of affairs must have certainly
foreseen. By the known dangers he encountered, by the loss he thus
voluntarily sustained, and by his after constancy, his sincerity is
undoubtedly proved.
[561] _The joy of the fleet on the homeward departure from India._--We
are now come to that part of the Lusiad, which, in the conduct of the
poem, is parallel to the great catastrophe of the Iliad, when, on the
death of Hector, Achilles thus addresses the Grecian army--
"Ye sons of Greece, in triumph bring
The corpse of Hector, and your pæons sing:
Be this the song, slow moving toward the shore,
'Hector is dead, and Ilion is no more.'"
Our Portuguese poet, who in his machinery, and many other instances, has
followed the manner of Virgil, now forsakes him. In a very bold and
masterly spirit he now models his poem by the steps of Homer. What of
the Lusiad yet remains, in poetical conduct (though not in an imitation
of circumstances), exactly resembles the latter part of the Iliad. The
games at the funeral of Patroclus, and the redemption of the body of
Hector, are the completion of the rage of Achilles. In the same manner,
the reward of the heroes, and the consequences of their expedition
complete the unity of the Lusiad. I cannot say it appears that Milton
ever read our poet (though Fanshaw's translation was published in his
time); yet no instance can be given of a more striking resemblance of
plan and conduct, than may be produced in two principal parts of the
poem of Camoëns, and of the Paradise Lost.--See the Dissertation which
follows this book.
[562] _Near where the bowers of Paradise were plac'd._--Between the
mouth of the Ganges and Euphrates.
[563] Swans.
[564] _His falling kingdom claim'd his earnest care._--This fiction, in
poetical conduct, bears a striking resemblance to the digressive
histories with which Homer enriches and adorns his poems, particularly
to the beautiful description of the feast of the gods with "the
blameless Ethiopians." It also contains a masterly commentary on the
machinery of the Lusiad. The Divine Love conducts GAMA to India. The
same Divine Love is represented as preparing to reform the corrupted
world, when its attention is particularly called to bestow a foretaste
of immortality on the heroes of the expedition which discovered the
eastern world. Nor do the wild fantastic loves, mentioned in this little
episode, afford any objection against this explanation, an explanation
which is expressly given in the episode itself. These wild fantastic
amours signify, in the allegory, the wild sects of different
enthusiasts, which spring up under the wings of the best and most
rational institutions; and which, however contrary to each other, all
agree in deriving their authority from the same source.
[565] _A young Actæon._--The French translator has the following
characteristic note: "This passage is an eternal monument of the
freedoms taken by Camoëns, and at the same time a proof of the
imprudence of poets; an authentic proof of that prejudice which
sometimes blinds them, notwithstanding all the light of their genius.
The modern Actæon of whom he speaks, was King Sebastian. He loved the
chase; but, that pleasure, which is one of the most innocent and one of
the most noble we can possibly taste, did not at all interrupt his
attention to the affairs of state, and did not render him savage, as our
author pretends. On this point the historians are rather to be believed.
And what would the lot of princes be, were they allowed no relaxation
from their toils, while they allow that privilege to their people?
Subjects as we are, let us venerate the amusements of our sovereigns;
let us believe that the august cares for our good, which employ them,
follow them often even to the very bosom of their pleasures."
Many are the strokes in the Lusiad which must endear the character of
Camoëns to every reader of sensibility. The noble freedom and manly
indignation with which he mentions the foible of his prince, and the
flatterers of his court, would do honour to the greatest names of Greece
or Rome. While the shadow of freedom remained in Portugal, the greatest
men of that nation, in the days of Lusian heroism, thought and conducted
themselves in the spirit of Camoëns. A noble anecdote of this brave
spirit offers itself. Alonzo IV., surnamed the Brave, ascended the
throne of Portugal in the vigour of his age. The pleasures of the chase
engrossed all his attention. His confidants and favourites encouraged,
and allured him to it. His time was spent in the forests of Cintra,
while the affairs of government were neglected or executed by those
whose interest it was to keep their sovereign in ignorance. His
presence, at last, being necessary at Lisbon, he entered the council
with all the brisk impetuosity of a young sportsman, and with great
familiarity and gaiety entertained his nobles with the history of a
whole month spent in hunting, in fishing, and shooting. When he had
finished his narrative, a nobleman of the first rank rose up: "Courts
and camps," said he, "were allotted for kings, not woods and deserts.
Even the affairs of private men suffer when recreation is preferred to
business. But when the whims of pleasure engross the thoughts of a king,
a whole nation is consigned to ruin. We came here for other purposes
than to hear the exploits of the chase, exploits which are only
intelligible to grooms and falconers. If your majesty will attend to the
wants, and remove the grievances of your people, you will find them
obedient subjects; if not----" The king, starting with rage, interrupted
him, "If not, what?" "If not," resumed the nobleman, in a firm tone,
"they will look for another and a better king." Alonzo, in the highest
transport of passion, expressed his resentment, and hasted out of the
room. In a little while, however, he returned, calm and reconciled: "I
perceive," said he, "the truth of what you say. He who will not execute
the duties of a king, cannot long have good subjects. Remember, from
this day, you have nothing more to do with Alonzo the sportsman, but
with Alonzo the king of Portugal." His majesty was as good as his
promise, and became, as a warrior and politician, one of the greatest of
the Portuguese monarchs.
[566] _With love's fierce flames his frozen heart shall burn._--"It is
said, that upon the faith of a portrait Don Sebastian fell in love with
Margaret of France, daughter of Henry II., and demanded her in marriage,
but was refused. The Spaniards treated him no less unfavourably, for
they also rejected his proposals for one of the daughters of Philip II.
Our author considers these refusals as the punishment of Don Sebastian's
excessive attachment to the chase; but this is only a consequence of the
prejudice with which he viewed the amusements of his prince. The truth
is, these princesses were refused for political reasons, and not with
any regard to the manner in which he filled up his moments of leisure."
Thus Castera, who, with the same spirit of sagacity, starts and answers
the following objections: "But here is a difficulty: Camoëns wrote
during the life of Don Sebastian, but the circumstance he relates (the
return of GAMA) happened several years before, under the reign of
Emmanuel. How, therefore, could he say that Cupid then saw Don Sebastian
at the chase, when that prince was not then born? The answer is easy:
Cupid, in the allegory of this work, represents the love of God, the
Holy Spirit, who is God himself. Now the Divinity admits of no
distinction of time; one glance of his eye beholds the past, the
present, and the future; everything is present before him."
This defence of the fiction of Actæon is not more absurd than useless.
The free and bold spirit of poetry, and in particular the nature of
allegory, defend it. The poet might easily have said, that Cupid
_foresaw_; but had he said so his satire had been much less genteel. As
the sentiments of Castera on this passage are extremely characteristic
of French ideas, another note from him will perhaps be agreeable.
"Several Portuguese writers have remarked," says he, "that the wish--
'Of these lov'd dogs that now his passions sway,
Ah! may he never fall the hapless prey!'