Had in it an air of prophecy; and fate, in effect, seemed careful to

accomplish it, in making the presaged woes to fall upon Don Sebastian.

If he did not fall a prey to his pack of hounds, we may, however, say

that he was devoured by his favourites, who misled his youth and his

great soul. But at any rate our poet has carried the similitude too far.

It was certainly injurious to Don Sebastian, who nevertheless had the

bounty not only not to punish this audacity, but to reward the just

eulogies which the author had bestowed on him in other places. As much

as the indiscretion of Camoëns ought to surprise us, as much ought we to

admire the generosity of his master."

This foppery, this slavery in thinking, cannot fail to rouse the

indignation of every manly breast, when the facts are fairly stated. Don

Sebastian, who ascended the throne when a child, was a prince of great

abilities and great spirit, but his youth was poisoned with the most

romantic ideas of military glory. The affairs of state were left to his

ministers (for whose character see the next note), his other studies

were neglected, and military exercises, of which he not unjustly

esteemed the chase a principal, were almost his sole employ. Camoëns

beheld this romantic turn, and in a genteel allegorical satire foreboded

its consequences. The wish, that his prince might not fall the prey of

his favourite passion, was in vain. In a rash, ill-concerted expedition

into Africa, Don Sebastian lost his crown in his twenty-fifth year, an

event which soon after produced the fall of the Portuguese empire. Had

the nobility possessed the spirit of Camoëns, had they, like him,

endeavoured to check the quixotism of a young generous prince, that

prince might have reigned long and happy, and Portugal might have

escaped the Spanish yoke, which soon followed his defeat at Alcazar; a

yoke which sunk Portugal into an abyss of misery, from which, in all

probability, she will never emerge into her former splendour.

[567]

_Enraged, he sees a venal herd, the shame

Of human race, assume the titled name.--_

"After having ridiculed all the pleasures of Don Sebastian, the author

now proceeds to his courtiers, to whom he has done no injustice. Those

who are acquainted with the Portuguese history, will readily acknowledge

this."--CASTERA.

[568] _On the hard bosoms of the stubborn crowd._--There in an elegance

in the original of this line, which the English language will not

admit:--

"Nos duros coraçoens de plebe dura,"--

_i.e._, In the hard hearts of the hard vulgar.

[569] Cupid.

[570]

_Thus from my native waves a hero line

Shall rise, and o'er the East illustrious shine._--

"By the line of heroes to be produced by the union of the Portuguese

with the Nereids, is to be understood the other Portuguese, who,

following the steps of GAMA, established illustrious colonies in

India."--CASTERA.

[571] _And Fame--a giant goddess._--This passage affords a striking

instance of the judgment of Camoëns. Virgil's celebrated description of

Fame is in his eye, but he copies it, as Virgil, in his best imitations,

copies after Homer. He adopts some circumstances, but, by adding others,

he makes a new picture, which justly may be called his own.

[572] _The wat'ry gods._--To mention the gods in the masculine gender,

and immediately to apply to them--

"O peito feminil, que levemente

Muda quaysquer propositos tomados."--

The ease with which the female breast changes its resolutions, may to

the hypercritical appear reprehensible. The expression, however, is

classical, and therefore retained. Virgil uses it, where Æneas is

conducted by Venus through the flames of Troy:--

"Descendo, ac ducente _Deo_, flammam inter et hostes

Expedior."

This is in the manner of the Greek poets, who use the word [Greek:

Theos] for god or goddess.

[573] _White as her swans._--A distant fleet compared to swans on a lake

is certainly a happy thought. The allusion to the pomp of Venus, whose

agency is immediately concerned, gives it besides a peculiar propriety.

This simile, however, is not in the original. It is adopted from an

uncommon liberty taken by Fanshaw:--

"The pregnant _sails_ on Neptune's surface creep,

Like her own _swans_, in _gate_, _out-chest_, and _fether_."

[574] _Soon as the floating verdure caught their sight._--As the

departure of GAMA from India was abrupt, he put into one of the

beautiful islands of Anchediva for fresh water. "While he was here

careening his ships," says Faria, "a pirate named Timoja, attacked him

with eight small vessels, so linked together and covered with boughs,

that they formed the appearance of a floating island." This, says

Castera, afforded the fiction of the floating island of Venus. "The

fictions of Camoëns," says he, "are the more marvellous, because they

are all founded in history. It is not difficult to find why he makes his

island of Anchediva to wander on the waves; it is an allusion to a

singular event related by Barros." He then proceeds to the story of

Timoja, as if the genius of Camoëns stood in need of so weak an

assistance.

[575] _In friendly pity of Latona's woes._--Latona, pregnant by Jupiter,

was persecuted by Juno, who sent the serpent Python in pursuit of her.

Neptune, in pity of her distress, raised the island of Delos for her

refuge, where she was delivered of Apollo and Diana.--OVID, Met.

[576] _Form'd in a crystal lake the waters blend._--Castera also

attributes this to history. "The Portuguese actually found in this

island," says he, "a fine piece of water ornamented with hewn stones and

magnificent aqueducts; an ancient and superb work, of which nobody knew

the author."

In 1505 Don Francisco Almeyda built a fort in this island. In digging

among some ancient ruins he found many crucifixes of black and red

colour, from whence the Portuguese conjectured, says Osorius, that the

Anchedivian islands had in former ages been inhabited by

Christians.--Vid. Osor. 1. iv.

[577]

_The orange here perfumes the buxom air.

And boasts the golden hue of Daphne's hair.--_

Frequent allusions to the fables of the ancients form a characteristic

feature of the poetry of the 16th and 17th centuries. A profusion of it

is pedantry; a moderate use of it, however, in a poem of those times

pleases, because it discovers the stages of composition, and has in

itself a fine effect, as it illustrates its subject by presenting the

classical reader with some little landscapes of that country through

which he has travelled. The description of forests is a favourite topic

in poetry. Chaucer, Tasso, and Spenser, have been happy in it, but both

have copied an admired passage in Statius:--

"Cadit ardua fagus,

Chaoniumque nemus, brumæque illæsa cupressus;

Procumbunt piceæ, flammis alimenta supremis,

Ornique, iliceæque trabes, metuandaque sulco

Taxus, et infandos belli potura cruores

Fraxinus, atque situ non expugnabile robur:

Hinc audax abies, et odoro vulnere pinus

Scinditur, acclinant intonsa cacumina terræ

Alnus amica fretis, nec inhospita vitibus ulmus."

In rural descriptions three things are necessary to render them

poetical: the happiness of epithet, of picturesque arrangement, and of

little landscape views. Without these, all the names of trees and

flowers, though strung together in tolerable numbers, contain no more

poetry than a nurseryman or a florist's catalogue. In Statius, in Tasso

and Spenser's admired forests (Ger. Liber. c. 3. st. 75, 76, and F.

Queen, b. 1 c. 1. st. 8, 9), the poetry consists entirely in the

happiness of the epithets. In Camoëns, all the three requisites are

admirably attained and blended together.

[578] _And stain'd with lover's blood._--Pyramus and Thisbe:--

"Arborei foetus aspergine cædis in atram

Vertuntur faciem: madefactaque sanguine radix

Puniceo tingit pendentia mora colore.....

At tu quo ramis arbor miserabile corpus

Nunc tegis unius, mox es tectura duorum;

Signa tene cædis: pullosque et lectibus aptos

Semper habe foetus gemini monumenta cruoris."

OVID, Met.

[579] _The shadowy vale._--Literal from the original,--_O sombrio

valle_--which Fanshaw, however, has translated, "the gloomy valley," and

thus has given us a funereal, where the author intended a festive,

landscape. It must be confessed, however, that the description of the

island of Venus, is infinitely the best part of all of Fanshaw's

translation. And indeed the dullest prose translation might obscure, but

could not possibly throw a total eclipse over, so admirable an original.

[580] _The woe-mark'd flower of slain Adonis--water'd by the tears of

love._--The Anemone. "This," says Castera, "is applicable to the

celestial Venus, for, according to my theology, her amour with Adonis

had nothing in it impure, but was only the love which nature bears to

the sun." The fables of antiquity have generally a threefold

interpretation, an historical allusion, a physical and a metaphysical

allegory. In the latter view, the fable of Adonis is only applicable to

the celestial Venus. A divine youth is outrageously slain, but shall

revive again at the restoration of the golden age. Several nations, it

is well known, under different names, celebrated the Mysteries, or the

death and resurrection of Adonis; among whom were the British Druids, as

we are told by Dr. Stukely. In the same manner Cupid, in the fable of

Psyche, is interpreted by mythologists, to signify the Divine Love

weeping over the degeneracy of human nature.

[581]

_At strife appear the lawns and purpled skies,

Who from each other stole the beauteous dyes.--_

On this passage Castera has the following sensible, though turgid, note:

"This thought," says he, "is taken from the idyllium of Ausonius on the

rose:--

'Ambigeres raperetne rosis Aurora ruborem,

An daret, et flores tingere torta dies.'

Camoëns who had a genius rich of itself, still further enriched it at

the expense of the ancients. Behold what makes great authors! Those who

pretend to give us nothing but the fruits of their own growth, soon

fail, like the little rivulets which dry up in the summer, very

different from the floods, who receive in their course the tribute of a

hundred and a hundred rivers, and which even in the dog-days carry their

waves triumphant to the ocean."

[582] _The hyacinth bewrays the doleful_ Ai.--Hyacinthus, a youth

beloved of Apollo, by whom he was accidentally slain, and afterwards

turned into a flower:--

"Tyrioque nitentior ostro

Flos oritur, formamque capit, quam lilia: si non,

Purpureus color huic, argenteus esset in illis.

Non satis hoc Phæbo est: is enim fuit auctor honoris.

Ipse suos gemitus foliis inscribit; et Ai, Ai,

Flos habet inscriptum: funestaque littera ducta est."

OVID, Met.

[583] _The second Argonauts._--The expedition of the Golden Fleece was

esteemed, in ancient poetry, one of the most daring adventures, the

success of which was accounted miraculous. The allusions of Camoëns to

this voyage, though in the spirit of his age, are by no means improper.

[584] _Wide o'er the beauteous isle the lovely fair._--We now come to

the passage condemned by Voltaire as so lascivious, that no nation in

Europe, except the Portuguese and Italians, could bear it. The fate of

Camoëns has hitherto been very peculiar. The mixture of Pagan and

Christian mythology in his machinery has been anathematized, and his

island of love represented as a brothel. Yet both accusations are the

arrogant assertions of the most superficial acquaintance with his works.

His poem itself, and a comparison of its parts with the similar conduct

of the greatest modern poets, will clearly evince, that in both

instances no modern epic writer of note has given less offence to true

criticism.

Not to mention Ariosto, whose descriptions will often admit of no

palliation, Tasso, Spenser, and Milton, have always been esteemed among

the chastest of poets, yet in that delicacy of warm description, which

Milton has so finely exemplified in the nuptials of our first parents,

none of them can boast the continued uniformity of the Portuguese poet.

Though there is a warmth in the colouring of Camoëns which even the

genius of Tasso has not reached: and though the island of Armida is

evidently copied from the Lusiad, yet those who are possessed of the

finer feelings, will easily discover an essential difference between the

love-scenes of the two poets, a difference greatly in favour of the

delicacy of the former. Though the nymphs in Camoëns are detected naked

in the woods, and in the stream, and though desirous to captivate, still

their behaviour is that of the virgin who hopes to be the spouse. They

act the part of offended modesty; even when they yield they are silent,

and behave in every respect like Milton's Eve in the state of innocence,

who--

"What was honour knew,"

And who displayed--

"Her virtue, and the conscience of her worth,

That would be wooed, and not unsought be won."

To sum up all, the nuptial sanctity draws its hallowed curtains, and a

masterly allegory shuts up the love-scenes of Camoëns.

How different from all this is the island of Armida in Tasso, and its

translation, the bower of Acrasia in Spenser! In these virtue is

seduced; the scene therefore is less delicate. The nymphs, while they

are bathing, in place of the modesty of the bride as in Camoëns, employ

all the arts of the lascivious wanton. They stay not to be wooed; but,

as Spenser gives it--

_The amorous sweet spoils to greedy eyes reveal._

One stanza from our English poet, which, however, is rather fuller than

the original, shall here suffice:--

"Withal she laughed and she blush'd withal,

That blushing to her laughter gave more grace,

And laughter to her blushing, as did fall.

Now when they spy'd the knight to slack his pace,

Them to behold, and _in his sparkling face

The secret signs of kindled lust appear_,

Their wanton merriments they did increase,

And to him beckon'd to approach more near,

_And show'd him many sights, that courage cold could rear_.

This and other descriptions--

"Upon a bed of roses she was laid

As faint through heat, or dight to pleasant sin"--

present every idea of lascivious voluptuousness. The allurements of

speech are also added. Songs, which breathe every persuasive, are heard;

and the nymphs boldly call to the beholder:--

_E' dolce campo di battaglia il letto

Fiavi, e l'herbetta morbida de' prati._--TASSO.

"Our field of battle is the downy bed,

Or flow'ry turf amid the smiling mead."--HOOLE.

These, and the whole scenes in the domains of Armida and Acrasia, are in

a turn of manner the reverse of the island of Venus. In these the

expression and idea are meretricious. In Camoëns, though the colouring

is even warmer, yet the modesty of the Venus de Medicis is still

preserved. In everything he describes there is still something strongly

similar to the modest attitude of the arms of that celebrated statue.

Though prudery, that usual mask of the impurest minds, may condemn him,

yet those of the most chaste, though less gloomy turn, will allow, that

in comparison with others, he might say,--_Virginibus puerisque canto_.

Spenser also, where he does not follow Tasso, is often gross; and even

in some instances, where the expression is most delicate, the picture is

nevertheless indecently lascivious.

[585] _The hunter._--Acteon.

[586] _Madd'ning as he said._--At the end of his Homer Mr. Pope has

given an index of the instances of imitative and sentimental harmony

contained in his translations. He has also often even in his notes

pointed out the adaptation of sound to sense. The translator of the

Lusiad hopes he may for once say, that he has not been inattentive to

this great essential of good versification: how he has succeeded the

judicious only must determine. The speech of Leonard to the cursory

reader may perhaps sometimes appear careless, and sometimes turgid and

stiff. That speech, however, is an attempt at the imitative and

sentimental harmony, and with the judicious he rests its fate. As the

translation in this instance exceeds the original in length, the

objection of a foreign critic requires attention. An old pursy Abbé,

(and critics are apt to judge by themselves) may indeed be surprised

that a man out of breath with running should be able to talk so long.

But, had he consulted the experiences of others, he would have found it

was no wonderful matter for a stout and young cavalier to talk twice as

much, though fatigued with the chase of a couple of miles, provided the

supposition be allowed, that he treads on the last steps of his flying

mistress.

[587] _Hence, ye profane._--We have already observed, that in every

other poet the love scenes are generally described as those of guilt and

remorse. The contrary character of those of Camoëns not only gives them

a delicacy unknown to other moderns, but, by the fiction of the spousal

rites, the allegory and machinery of the poem are most happily

conducted.

[588] _Spread o'er the eastern world the dread alarms._--This admonition

places the whole design of the poem before us. To extirpate

Mohammedanism, and propagate Christianity, were professed as the

principal purpose of the discoveries of Prince Henry and King Emmanuel.

In the beginning of the seventh Lusiad, the nations of Europe are

upbraided for permitting the Saracens to erect and possess an empire,

which alike threatened Europe and Christianity. The Portuguese, however,

the patriot poet concludes, will themselves overthrow their enormous

power: an event which is the proposed subject of the Lusiad, and which

is represented as, in effect, completed in the last book. On this

system, adopted by the poet, and which on every occasion was avowed by

their kings, the Portuguese made immense conquests in the East. Yet, let

it be remembered, to the honour of GAMA, and the first commanders who

followed his route, that the plots of the Moors, and their various

breaches of treaty, gave rise to the first wars which the Portuguese

waged in Asia. On finding that all the colonies of the Moors were

combined for their destruction, the Portuguese declared war against the

eastern Moors, and their allies, wherever they found them. The course of

human things, however, soon took place, and the sword of victory and

power soon became the sword of tyranny and rapine.

[589] _Far o'er the silver lake of Mexic._--The city of Mexico is

environed with an extensive lake; or, according to Cortez, in his second

narration to Charles V., with two lakes, one of fresh, the other of salt

water, in circuit about fifty leagues. This situation, said the

Mexicans, was appointed by their God Vitzliputzli, who, according to the

explanation of their picture-histories, led their forefathers a journey

of fourscore years, in search of the promised land. Four of the

principal priests carried the idol in a coffer of reeds. Whenever they

halted they built a tabernacle for their god in the midst of their camp,

where they placed the coffer and the altar. They then sowed the land,

and their stay or departure, without regard to the harvest, was directed

by the orders received from their idol, till at last, by his command,

they fixed their abode on the site of Mexico.

[590] _Before the love-sick Roman._--Mark Antony.

[591] _The beverage--the fountain's cooling aid confess'd._--It was a

custom of the ancients in warm climates to mix the coolest spring water

with their wine, immediately before drinking; not, we may suppose, to

render it less intoxicating, but on account of the cooling flavour it

thereby received. Homer tells us that the wine which Ulysses gave to

Polyphemus would bear twenty measures of water. Modern luxury has

substituted preserved ice, in place of the more ancient mixture.

[592] _Music, such as erst subdued the horrid frown of hell_,

etc.--Alluding to the fable of Orpheus. Fanshaw's translation, as

already observed, was published fourteen years before the Paradise Lost.

These lines of Milton--

"What could it less, when spirits immortal sung?

Their song was partial, but the harmony

Suspended hell, and took with ravishment

The thronging audience,"

bear a resemblance to these of Fanshaw--

"Musical instruments not wanting, such

As to the damn'd spirits once gave ease

In the dark vaults of the infernal hall."

To _slumber_ amid their punishment, though omitted by Fanshaw, is

literal:--

"Fizerao descançar da eterna pena."

[593] _No more the summer of my life remains._--It is not certain when

Camoëns wrote this. It seems, however, not long to have preceded the

publication of his poem, at which time he was in his fifty-fifth year.

This apostrophe to his muse may, perhaps, by some be blamed as another

digression; but, so little does it require defence, that one need not

hesitate to affirm that, had Homer, who often talks to his muse,

introduced, on these favourable opportunities, any little picture or

history of himself, these digressions would have been the most

interesting parts of his works. Had any history of Homer complained,

like this of Camoëns, it would have been bedewed with the tears of ages.

[594] _Thy faith repent not, nor lament thy wrong._--P. Alvarez Cabral,

the second Portuguese commander who sailed to India, entered into a

treaty of alliance with Trimumpara, king of Cochin, and high priest of

Malabar. The zamorim raised powerful armies to dethrone him. His

fidelity to the Portuguese was unalterable, though his affairs were

brought to the lowest ebb.--See the history in the Preface.

[595]

_His ship's strong sides shall groan beneath his weight,

And deeper waves receive the sacred freight.--_

Thus Virgil:--

"Simul accipit alveo

Ingentem Æneam. Gemuit sub pondere cymba

Sutilis, et multam accepit rimosa paludem."--ÆN. vi. 412.

That the visionary boat of Charon groaned under the weight of Æneas is a

fine poetical stroke; but that the crazy rents let in the water is

certainly lowering the image. The thought, however, as managed in

Camoëns is much grander than in Virgil, and affords a happy instance

where the hyperbole is truly poetical.

The Lusiad affords many instances which must be highly pleasing to the

Portuguese, but dry to those who are unacquainted with their history.

Nor need one hesitate to assert that, were we not acquainted with the

Roman history from our childhood, a great part of the Æneid would appear

to us intolerably uninteresting. Sensible of this disadvantage which

every version of historical poetry must suffer, the translator has not

only in the notes added every incident which might elucidate the

subject, but has also, all along, in the episode in the third and fourth

books, in the description of the painted ensigns in the eighth, and in

the allusions in the present book, endeavoured to throw every historical

incident into that universal language, the picturesque of poetry. When

Hector storms the Grecian camp, when Achilles marches to battle, every

reader understands and is affected with the bold painting. But when

Nestor talks of his exploits at the funeral games of Amarynces (Iliad

xxiii.) the critics themselves cannot comprehend him, and have vied with

each other in inventing explanations.

[596] _Proas_, or paraos, Indian vessels which lie low on the water, are

worked with oars, and carry 100 men and upwards apiece.

[597]

_His robes are sprinkled o'er,

And his proud face dash'd, with his menials' gore.--_

See the history in the Preface.

[598] _Round Lusus' fleet to pour their sulph'rous entrails._--How

Pacheco avoided this formidable danger, see the history in the preface.

[599] _Nor Tiber's bridge._--When Porsenna besieged Rome, Horatius

Cocles defended the pass of a bridge till the Romans destroyed it behind

him. Having thus saved the pass, heavy armed as he was, he swam across

the Tiber to his companions. Roman history, however, at this period, is

often mixed with fable. Miltiades obtained a great victory over Darius

at Marathon. The stand made by Leonidas at Thermopylæ is well known. The

battles of Pacheco were in defence of the fords by which alone the city

of Cochin could be entered. The numbers he withstood by land and sea,

and the victories he obtained, are much more astonishing than the

defence of Thermopylæ.

[600] _Bound to the mast the godlike hero stands._--English history

affords an instance of similar resolution in Admiral Bembo, who was

supported in a wooden frame, and continued the engagement after his legs

and thighs were shivered in splinters. Contrary to the advice of his

officers, the young Almeyda refused to bear off, though almost certain

to be overpowered, and though both wind and tide were against him. His

father had sharply upbraided him for a former retreat, where victory was

thought impossible. He now fell the victim of his father's ideas of

military glory.

[601] _The fleets of India fly._--After having cleared the Indian seas,

the viceroy, Almeyda, attacked the combined fleets of Egypt, Cambaya,

and the zamorim, in the entrance and harbour of Diu, or Dio. The fleet

of the zamorim almost immediately fled. That of Melique Yaz, Lord of

Diu, suffered much; but the greatest slaughter fell upon the Egyptians

and Turks, commanded by Mir-Hocem, who had defeated and killed the young

Almeyda. Of 800 Mamelukes, or Turks, who fought under Mir-Hocem, only

22, says Osorius, survived this engagement. Melique Yaz, says Faria y

Sousa, was born in slavery, and descended of the Christians of Roxia.

The road to preferment is often a dirty one; but Melique's was much less

so than that of many. As the King of Cambaya was one day riding in

state, an unlucky kite dunged upon his royal head. His majesty in great

wrath swore he would give all he was worth to have the offender killed.

Melique, who was an expert archer, immediately despatched an arrow,

which brought the audacious hawk to the ground. For the merit of this

eminent service he was made Lord of Diu, or Dio, a considerable city,

the strongest and the most important fortress at that time in all

India.--See Faria, 1. 2, c. 2.

[602] _Great Cunia._--Tristan da Cunha, or d'Acugna.

[603] _Heav'n indignant showers their arrows backward._--Some writers

related that, when Albuquerque besieged Ormuz, a violent wind drove the

arrows of the enemy backward upon their own ranks. Osorius says, that

many of the dead Persians and Moors were found to have died by arrows.

But as that weapon was not used by the Portuguese he conjectures that,

in their despair of victory, many of the enemy had thus killed

themselves, rather than survive the defeat.

[604] _Muscat._

[605] Bahrein, in the Persian Gulf.

[606] _What glorious palms on Goa's isle I see._--This important place

was made an archbishopric, the capital of the Portuguese empire in the

east, and the seat of their viceroys; for which purposes it is

advantageously situated on the coast of Dekhan. It still remains in the

possession of the Portuguese.

[607] _Malacca._--The conquest of this place was one of the greatest

actions of Albuquerque. It became the chief port of the eastern part of

Portuguese India, and second only to Goa. Besides a great many pieces of

ordnance which were carried away by the Moors who escaped, 3000 large

cannon remained the prize of the victors. When Albuquerque was on the

way to Malacca, he attacked a large ship; but, just as his men were

going to board her, she suddenly appeared all in flames, which obliged

the Portuguese to bear off. Three days afterwards the same vessel sent a

boat to Albuquerque, offering an alliance, which was accepted. The

flames, says Osorius, were only artificial, and did not the least

damage. Another wonderful adventure immediately happened. The admiral

soon after sent his long-boats to attack a ship commanded by one Nehoada

Beeguea. The enemy made an obstinate resistance. Nehoada himself was

pierced with several mortal wounds, but lost not one drop of blood till

a bracelet was taken off his arm, when immediately the blood gushed out.

According to Osorius, this was said to be occasioned by the virtue of a

stone in the bracelet, taken out of an animal called Cabrisia, which,

when worn on the body, could prevent the effusion of blood from the most

grievous wounds.

[608] _Yet art thou stain'd._--A detail of all the grant actions of

Albuquerque would have been tedious and unpoetical. Camoëns has chosen

the most brilliant, and has happily suppressed the rest by a display of

indignation. The French translator has the following note on this

passage: "Behold another instance of our author's prejudice! The action

which he condemns had nothing in it blameable: but, as he was of a most

amorous constitution, he thought every fault which could plead an amour

in its excuse ought to be pardoned; but true heroes, such as

Albuquerque, follow other maxims. This great man had in his palace a

beautiful Indian slave. He viewed her with the eyes of a father, and the

care of her education was his pleasure. A Portuguese soldier, named Ruy

Diaz, had the boldness to enter the general's apartment, where he

succeeded so well with the girl that he obtained his desire. When

Albuquerque heard of it, he immediately ordered him to the gallows."

Camoëns, however, was no such undistinguishing libertine as this would

represent him. In a few pages we find him praising the continence of Don

Henry de Meneses, whose victory over his passions he calls the highest

excellence of youth. Nor does it appear by what authority the Frenchman

assures us of the chaste paternal affection which Albuquerque bore to

this Indian girl. It was the great aim of Albuquerque to establish

colonies in India, and, for that purpose, he encouraged his soldiers to

marry with the natives. The most sightly girls were selected, and

educated in the religion and household arts of Portugal, and portioned

at the expense of the general. These he called his daughters, and with

great pleasure he used to attend their weddings, several couples being

usually joined together at one time. At one of these nuptials, says

Faria, the festivity having continued late, and the brides being mixed

together, several of the bridegrooms committed a blunder. The mistakes

of the night, however, as they were all equal in point of honour, were

mutually forgiven in the morning, and each man took his proper wife whom

he had received at the altar. This delicate anecdote of Albuquerque's

sons and daughters is as bad a commentary on the note of Castera as it

is on the severity which the commander showed to poor Diaz. Nor does

Camoëns stand alone in the condemnation of the general. The historian

agrees with the poet. Mentioning the death of D. Antonio Noronha, "This

gentleman," says Faria, "used to moderate the violent temper of his

uncle, Albuquerque, which soon after showed itself in rigid severity. He

ordered a soldier to be hanged for an amour with one of the slaves whom

he called daughters, and whom he used to give in marriage. When some of

his officers asked him what authority he had to take the poor man's

life, he drew his sword, told them that was his commission, and

instantly broke them." To marry his soldiers with the natives was the

plan of Albuquerque: his severity, therefore, seems unaccountable,

unless we admit the 'perhaps' of Camoëns, _ou de cioso_, perhaps it was

jealousy.--But, whatever incensed the general, the execution of the

soldier was contrary to the laws of every nation;{*} and the honest

indignation of Camoëns against one of the greatest of his countrymen,

one who was the grand architect of the Portuguese empire in the East,

affords a noble instance of that manly freedom of sentiment which knows

no right by which king or peer may do injustice to the meanest subject.

Nor can we omit the observation, that the above note of Castera is of a

piece with the French devotion we have already seen him pay to the name

of king, a devotion which breathes the true spirit of the blessed advice

given by Father Paul to the republic of Venice: "When a nobleman commits

an offence against a subject," says the Jesuit, "let every means be

tried to justify him. But, if a subject has offended a nobleman, let him

be punished with the utmost severity."

{*} Osorius relates the affair of Diaz with some other circumstances;

but with no difference that affects this assertion.

[609] _Not Ammon._--Campaspe, the most beautiful concubine of Alexander

the Great, was given by that monarch to Apelles, whom he perceived in

love with her. Araspas had strict charge of the fair captive, Panthea.

His attempt on her virtue was forgiven by Cyrus.

[610] _And Flandria's earldom on the knight bestow'd._--"Baldwin,

surnamed Iron-arm, Grand Forester of Flanders, being in love with

Judith, the daughter of Charles the Bald, and widow of Ethelwolf, king

of England, obtained his desire by force. Charles, though at first he

highly resented, afterwards pardoned his crime, and consented to his

marriage with the princess."--CASTERA.

* * * * *

This digression in the song of the nymph bears, in manner, a striking

resemblance to the histories which often, even in the heat of battle,

the heroes of Homer relate to each other. That these little episodes

have their beauty and propriety in an epic poem will strongly appear

from a view of M. de la Motte's translation of the Iliad into French

verse. The four and twenty books of Homer he has contracted into twelve,

and these contain no more lines than about four books of the original. A

thousand embellishments which the warm poetical feelings of Homer

suggested to him are thus thrown out by the Frenchman. But what is the

consequence of this improvement? The work of La Motte is unread, even by

his own countrymen, and despised by every foreigner who has the least

relish for poetry and Homer.

[611] _And midnight horror shakes Medina's shrine._--Medina, the city

where Mohammed is buried. About six years after GAMA'S discovery of

India, the Sultan of Egypt sent Maurus, the abbot of the monks at

Jerusalem, who inhabit Mount Sion, on an embassy to Pope Julius II. The

sultan, with severe threats to the Christians of the East in case of

refusal, entreated the Pope to desire Emmanuel, king of Portugal, to

send no more fleets to the Indian seas. The Pope sent Maurus to

Emmanuel, who returned a very spirited answer to his holiness, assuring

him that no threats, no dangers, could make him alter his resolutions,

and lamenting that it had not yet been in his power to fulfil his

purpose of demolishing the sepulchre and erasing the memorials of

Mohammed from the earth. This, he says was the first purpose of sending

his fleets to India. It is with great art that Camoëns so often reminds

us of the grand design of the expedition of his heroes to subvert

Mohammedanism, and found a Christian empire in the East. But the dignity

which this gives to his poem has already been observed in the preface.

[612] _Where Sheba's sapient queen the sceptre bore._--The Abyssinians

contend that their country is the Sheba mentioned in the Scripture, and

that the queen who visited Solomon bore a son to that monarch, from whom

their royal family, to the present time, is descended.

[613] _Snatch'd from thy golden throne._--GAMA only reigned three months

viceroy of India. During his second voyage, the third which the

Portuguese made to India, he gave the zamorim some considerable defeats

by sea, besides his victories over the Moors. These, however, are

judiciously omitted by Camoëns, as the less striking part of his

character.

The French translator is highly pleased with the prediction of GAMA'S

death, delivered to himself at the feast. "The siren," says he,

"persuaded that GAMA is a hero exempt from weakness, does not hesitate

to mention the end of his life. GAMA listens without any mark of

emotion; the feast and the song continue. If I am not deceived, this is

truly great."

[614] _Victorious Henry._--Don Henry de Menezes. He was only

twenty-eight when appointed to the government of India. He died in his

thirtieth year, a noble example of the most disinterested heroism.

[615] _Great Mascarine._--Pedro de Mascarenhas. The injustice done to

this brave officer, and the usurpation of his government by Lopez Vaz de

Sampayo, afford one of the most interesting periods of the history of

the Portuguese in India.

[616] _Great Nunio._--Nunio de Cunha, one of the most worthy of the

Portuguese governors.

[617] _Awed by his fame._--That brave, generous spirit, which prompted

Camoëns to condemn the great Albuquerque for injustice to a common

soldier, has here deserted him. In place of poetical compliment, on the

terrors of his name, Noronha deserved infamy. The siege of Dio, it is

true, was raised on the report of his approach, but that report was the

stratagem of Coje Zofar, one of the general officers of the assailants.

The delays of Noronha were as highly blamable as his treatment of his

predecessor, the excellent Nunio, was unworthy of a gentleman.

[618] _A son of thine, O Gama._--Stephen de Gama.

[619] _A vet'ran, fam'd on Brazil's shore._--Martin Alonzo de Souza. He

was celebrated for clearing the coast of Brazil of several pirates, who

were formidable to that infant colony.

[620] _O'er blood-stain'd ground._--This is as near the original as

elegance will allow--_de sangue cheyo_--which Fanshaw has thus punned:--

"With no little loss,

Sending him home again by _Weeping-Cross_"--

a place near Banbury in Oxfordshire.

[621] Cape Comorin, the southernmost point of India.--_Ed._

[622] _The Rumien fierce, who boasts the name of Rome._--When the

victories of the Portuguese began to overspread the East, several Indian

princes, by the counsels of the Moors, applied for assistance to the

Sultan of Egypt, and the Grand Signior. The troops of these Mohammedan

princes were in the highest reputation for bravery, and though, composed

of many different nations, were known among the orientals by one common

name. Ignorance delights in the marvellous. The history of ancient Rome

made the same figure among the easterns, as that of the fabulous, or

heroic, ages does with us, with this difference, it was better believed.

The Turks of Roumania pretended to be the descendants of the Roman

conquerors, and the Indians gave them and their auxiliaries the name of

Rum{=e}s, or Romans. In the same manner, the fame of Godfrey in the East

conferred the name of Franks on all the western Christians, who, on

their part, gave the name of Moors to all the Mohammedans of the East.

[623] _No hope, bold Mascarene._--The commander of Diu, or Dio, during

this siege, one of the most memorable in the Portuguese history.

[624] _Fierce Hydal-Kan._--The title of the lords or princes of Decan,

who in their wars with the Portuguese have sometimes brought 400,000 men

into the field. The prince here mentioned, after many revolts, was at

last finally subdued by Don John de Castro, the fourth viceroy of India,

with whose reign our poet judiciously ends the prophetic song.

Albuquerque laid the plan, and Castro completed the system of the

Portuguese empire in the East. It is with propriety, therefore, that the

prophecy given to GAMA is here summed up. Nor is the discretion of

Camoëns in this instance inferior to his judgment. He is now within a

few years of his own times, when he himself was upon the scene in India.

But whatever he had said of his contemporaries would have been liable to

misconstruction, and every sentence would have been branded with the

epithets of flattery or malice. A little poet would have been happy in

such an opportunity to resent his wrongs. But the silent contempt of

Camoëns does him true honour.

In this historical song, as already hinted, the translator has been

attentive, as much as he could, to throw it into these universal

languages, the picturesque and characteristic. To convey the sublimest

instruction to princes, is, according to Aristotle, the peculiar

province of the epic muse. The striking points of view in which the

different characters of the governors of India are here placed, are in

the most happy conformity to this ingenious canon of the Stagyrite.

[625]

_In whirling circles now they fell, now rose,

Yet never rose nor fell.--_

The motions of the heavenly bodies, in every system, bear at all times

the same uniform relation to each other; these expressions, therefore,

are strictly just. The first relates to the appearance, the second to

the reality. Thus, while to us the sun appears to go down, to more

western inhabitants of the globe he appears to rise, and while he rises

to us, he is going down to the more eastern; the difference being

entirely relative to the various parts of the earth. And in this the

expressions of our poet are equally applicable to the Ptolemaic and

Copernican systems. The ancient hypothesis which made our earth the

centre of the universe, is the system adopted by Camoëns, a happiness,

in the opinion of the translator, to the English Lusiad. The new system

is so well known, that a poetical description of it would have been no

novelty to the English reader. The other has not only that advantage in

its favour: but this description is perhaps the finest and fullest that

ever was given of it in poetry, that of Lucretius, l. v. being chiefly

argumentative, and therefore less picturesque.

Our author studied at the university of Coimbra, where the ancient

system and other doctrines of the Aristotelians then, and long

afterward, prevailed.

[626] _He holds His loftiest state._--Called by the old philosophers and

school divines the sensorium of the Deity.

[627] _These spheres behold._--According to the Peripatetics, the

universe consisted of eleven spheres inclosed within each other; as

Fanshaw has familiarly expressed it by a simile which he has lent our

author. The first of these spheres, he says--

"Doth (_as in a nest

Of boxes_) all the other orbs comprise."

In their accounts of this first-mentioned, but eleventh, sphere, which

they called the Empyrean, or heaven of the blest, the disciples of

Aristotle, and the Arab Moors, gave loose to all the warmth of

imagination. And several of the Christian fathers applied to it the

descriptions of heaven which are found in the Holy Scripture.

[628] _Hence motion darts its force._--This is the tenth sphere, the

_Primum Mobile_ of the ancient system. To account for the appearances of

the heavens, the Peripatetics ascribed a double motion to it. While its

influence drew the other orbs from east to west, they supposed it had a

motion of its own from west to east. To effect this, the ponderous

weight and interposition of the ninth sphere, or crystalline heaven, was

necessary. The ancient astronomers observed that the stars shifted their

places. This they called the motion of the crystalline heaven, expressed

by our poet at the rate of one pace during two hundred solar years. The

famous Arab astronomer, Abulhasan, in his Meadows of Gold, calculates

the revolution of this sphere to consist of 49,000 of our years. But

modern discoveries have not only corrected the calculation,{*} but have

also ascertained the reason of the apparent motion of the fixed stars.

The earth is not a perfect sphere; the quantity of matter is greater at

the equator; hence the earth turns on her axis in a rocking motion,

revolving round the axis of the ecliptic, which is called the procession

of the equinoxes, and makes the stars seem to shift their places at

about the rate of a degree in 72 years; according to which all the stars

seem to perform one revolution in the space of 25,920 years, after which

they return exactly to the same situation as at the beginning of this

period. However imperfect in their calculations, the Chaldean

astronomers perceived that the motions of the heavens composed one great

revolution. This they called the _annus magnus_, which those who did not

understand them mistook for a restoration of all things to their first

originals.

{*} However deficient the astronomy of Abulhasan may be, it is nothing

to the calculation of his prophet Mohammed, who tells his disciples,

that the stars were each about the bigness of a house, and hung from the

sky on chains of gold.

[629] _And binds the starry sphere._--This was called the firmament, or

eighth heaven. Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, Venus, Mercury, and Diana,

were the planets which gave name to, and whose orbits composed, the

other spheres or heavens.

[630] _In shining frost the Northern Chariot rides._--Commonly called

Charles' Wain. Andromeda was the daughter of Cepheus, king of Ethiopia,

and of Cassiope. Cassiope boasted that she and her daughter were more

beautiful than Juno and the Nereids. Andromeda, to appease the goddess,

was, at her father's command, chained to a rock to be devoured by a sea

monster, but was saved by Perseus, who obtained of Jupiter that all the

family should be placed among the stars. Orion was a hunter, who, for an

attempt on Diana, was stung to death by a serpent. The star of his name

portends tempests. The Dogs; fable gives this honour to those of

different hunters. The faithful dog of Erigone, however, that died mad

with grief for the death of his mistress, has the best title to preside

over the dog-days. The Swan; whose form Jupiter borrowed to enjoy Leda.

The Hare, when pursued by Orion, was saved by Mercury, and placed in

heaven, to signify that Mercury presides over melancholy dispositions.

The Lyre, with which Orpheus charmed Pluto. The Dragon which guarded the

golden apples of the Hesperides, and the ship Argo complete the number

of the constellations mentioned by Camoëns. If our author has blended

the appearances of heaven with those of the painted artificial sphere,

it is in the manner of the classics. Ovid, in particular, thus describes

the heavens, in the second book of his Metamorphoses.

[631] _Such are their laws impress'd by God's dread will._--Though a

modern narrative of gallant adventures by no means requires the

supposition of a particular Providence, that supposition, however, is

absolutely necessary to the grandeur of an epic poem. The great examples

of Homer and Virgil prove it; and Camoëns understood and felt its force.

While his fleet combat all the horrors of unploughed oceans, we do not

view his heroes as idle wanderers; the care of heaven gives their voyage

the greatest importance. When GAMA falls on his knees and spreads his

hands to heaven on the discovery of India, we are presented with a

figure infinitely more noble than that of the most successful conqueror

who is supposed to act under the influence of fatalism or chance. The

human mind is conscious of its own weakness. It expects an elevation in

poetry, and demands a degree of importance superior to the caprices of

unmeaning accident. The poetical reader cannot admire the hero who is

subject to such blind fortuity. He appears to us with an abject,

uninteresting littleness. Our poetical ideas of permanent greatness

demand a GAMA, a hero whose enterprises and whose person interest the

care of Heaven and the happiness of his people. Nor must this

supposition be confined merely to the machinery. The reason why it

pleases, also requires, that the supposition should be uniform

throughout the whole poem. Virgil, by dismissing Eneas through the ivory

gate of Elysium, has hinted that all his pictures of a future state were

merely dreams, and has thus destroyed the highest merit of the

compliment to his patron Augustus. But Camoëns has certainly been more

happy. A fair opportunity offered itself to indulge the opinions of

Lucretius and the Academic Grove; but Camoëns, in ascribing the

government of the universe to the will of God, has not only preserved

the philosophy of his poem perfectly uniform, but has also shown that

the Peripatetic system is, in this instance, exactly conformable to the

Newtonian.

Though the Author of nature has placed man in a state of moral agency,

and made his happiness and misery to depend upon it, and though every

page of human history is stained with the tears of injured innocence and

the triumphs of guilt, with miseries which must affect a moral, or

thinking being, yet we have been told, that God perceiveth it not, and

that what mortals call moral evil vanishes from before His more perfect

sight. Thus the appeal of injured innocence, and the tear of bleeding

virtue fall unregarded, unworthy of the attention of the Deity.{*} Yet,

with what raptures do these philosophers behold the infinite wisdom and

care of Beelzebub, their god of flies, in the admirable and various

provision he has made for the preservation of the eggs of vermin, and

the generation of maggots.{**}

Much more might be said in proof that our poet's philosophy does not

altogether deserve ridicule. And those who allow a general, but deny a

particular providence, will, it is hoped, excuse Camoëns, on the

consideration, that if we estimate a general moral providence by analogy

of that providence which presides over vegetable and animal nature, a

more particular one cannot possibly be wanted. If a particular

providence, however, is still denied, another consideration obtrudes

itself; if one pang of a moral agent is unregarded, one tear of injured

innocence left to fall unpitied by the Deity, if _Ludit in humanis

Divina potentia rebus_, the consequence is, that the human conception

can form an idea of a much better God. And it may modestly be presumed

we may hazard the laugh of the wisest philosopher, and without scruple

assert, that it is impossible that a created mind should conceive an

idea of perfection superior to that which is possessed by the Creator

and Author of existence.

{*} Perhaps, like Lucretius, some philosophers think this would be too

much trouble to the Deity. But the idea of trouble to the Divine Nature,

is much the same as another argument of the same philosopher, who having

asserted, that before the creation the gods could not know what seed

would produce, from thence wisely concludes that the world was made by

chance.

{**} Ray, in his Wisdom of God in the Creation (though he did not deny a

Providence), has carried this extravagance to the highest pitch. "To

give life," says he, "is the intention of the creation; and how

wonderful does the goodness of God appear in this, that the death and

putrefaction of one animal is the life of thousands." So, the misery of

a family on the death of a parent is nothing, for ten thousand maggots

are made happy by it.--O Philosophy, when wilt thou forget the dreams of

thy slumbers in Bedlam!

[632] _Here Christian Europe.--Vès Europa Christian._--As Europe is

already described in the third Lusiad, this short account of it has as

great propriety, as the manner of it contains dignity.

[633] _Afric behold._--This just and strongly picturesque description of

Africa is finely contrasted with the character of Europe. It contains

also a masterly compliment to the expedition of GAMA, which is all along

represented as the harbinger and diffuser of the blessings of

civilization.

[634] _Gonsalo's zeal shall glow._--Gonsalo de Sylveyra, a Portuguese

Jesuit, in 1555, sailed from Lisbon on a mission to Monomotapa. His

labours were at first successful; but ere he effected any regular

establishment he was murdered by the barbarians.--CASTERA.

[635] _Great Naya, too._--Don Pedro de Naya.... In 1505 he erected a

fort in the kingdom of Sofala, which is subject to Monomotapa. Six

thousand Moors and Caffres laid siege to this garrison, which he

defended with only thirty-five men. After having several times suffered

by unexpected sallies, the barbarians fled, exclaiming to their king

that he had led them to fight against God.--CASTERA.

[636] _In Abyssinia Heav'n's own altars blaze._--Christianity was

planted here in the first century, but mixed with many Jewish rites

unused by other Christians of the East. This appears to give some

countenance to the pretensions of their emperors, who claim their

descent from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and at least reminds us of

Acts viii. 27, where we are told, that the treasurer of the Queen of

Ethiopia came to worship at Jerusalem. Numerous monasteries, we are

told, are in this country. But the clergy are very ignorant, and the

laity gross barbarians. Much has been said of the hill Amara--

"Where Abyssin kings their issue guard ...

... by some suppos'd,

True Paradise, under the Ethiop line

By Nilus head, inclos'd with shining rock,

A whole day's journey high"--MILTON;

and where, according to Urreta (a Spanish Jesuit), is the library

founded by the Queen of Sheba, and enriched with all those writings of

which we have either possession or only the names. The works of Noah,

and the lectures on the mathematics which Abraham read in the plains of

Mamre, are here. And so many are the volumes, that 200 monks are

employed as librarians. It is needless to add, that Father Urreta is a

second Sir John Mandevylle.

[637] _Thy son, brave Gama._--When Don Stephen de Gama was governor of

India, the Christian Emperor and Empress-mother of Ethiopia solicited

the assistance of the Portuguese against the usurpations of the pagan

King of Zeyla. Don Stephen sent his brother, Don Christoval with 500

men. The prodigies of their valour astonished the Ethiopians. But after

having twice defeated the tyrant, and reduced his great army to the last

extremity, Don Christoval, urged too far by the impetuosity of his

youthful valour, was taken prisoner. He was brought before the usurper,

and put to death in the most cruel manner. Waxed threads were twisted

with his beard and afterwards set on fire. He was then dipped in boiling

wax, and at last beheaded by the hand of the tyrant. The Portuguese

esteem him a martyr, and say that his torments and death were inflicted

because he would not renounce the faith.--See Faria y Sousa.

[638] Infidel, pagan.

[639] _Before the virgin-martyr's tomb._--He must be a dull reader

indeed who cannot perceive and relish the amazing variety which prevails

in our poet. In the historical narrative of wars, where it is most

necessary, yet from the sameness of the subject, most difficult, to

attain, our author always attains it with the most graceful ease. In the

description of countries he not only follows the manner of Homer and

Virgil, not only distinguishes each region by its most striking

characteristic, but also diversifies his geography with other incidents

introduced by the mention of the place. St. Catherine, virgin and

martyr, according to Romish histories, was buried on Mount Sinai, and a

chapel was erected over her grave. It is now the Monastery of St.

Catherine.--_Ed._

[640] The crescent, the sign of Turkish supremacy.--_Ed._

[641] _De Branco's sword._--Don Pedro de Castel-Branco. He obtained a

great victory, near Ormuz, over the combined fleets of the Moors, Turks,

and Persians.

[642] _There Barem's isle._--The island of Bahrein is situated in the

Persian Gulf. It is celebrated for the plenty, variety, and fineness of

its diamonds.

[643] _Her warrior sons disdain the arms of fire._--This was the

character of the Persians when GAMA arrived in the East. Yet, though

they thought it dishonourable to use the musket, they esteemed it no

disgrace to rush from a thicket on an unarmed foe. This reminds one of

the spirit of the old romance. Orlando having taken the first invented

cannon from the King of Friza, throws it into the sea with the most

heroic execrations. Yet the heroes of chivalry think it no disgrace to

take every advantage afforded by invulnerable hides and enchanted

armour.

[644]

_There Gerum's isle the hoary ruin wears

Where Time has trod.--_

Presuming on the ruins which are found on this island, the natives

pretend that the Armuzia of Pliny and Strabo was here situated. But this

is a mistake, for that city stood on the continent. The Moors, however,

have built a city in this isle, which they call by the ancient name.

[645] _He who first shall crown thy labours, Gama._--Pedro de Cabral, of

whom see the preface.

[646] Ceylon.

[647] _Some Macon's orgies._--Macon, a name of Mecca, the birthplace of

Mohammed.

[648] _The tomb where Thomas sleeps._--There is (to talk in the Indian

style) _a caste_ of gentlemen, whose hearts are all impartiality and

candour to every religion, except one, the most moral which ever the

world heard of. A tale of a Brahmin, or a priest of Jupiter, would to

them appear worthy of poetry. But to introduce an apostle---- Common

sense, however, will prevail; and the episode of St. Thomas will appear

to the true critic equal in dignity and propriety.

To renew and complete the labours of the apostle, the messenger of

Heaven, is the great design of the hero of the poem, and of the future

missions, in consequence of the discoveries which are the subject of it.

The Christians of St. Thomas, found in Malabar on the arrival of GAMA,

we have already mentioned. The Jesuit missionaries have given most

pompous accounts of the Christian antiquities of India and China. When

the Portuguese arrived in India, the head of the Malabar Christians,

named Jacob, styled himself Metropolitan of India and China. And a

Syriac breviary{*} of the Indian Christians offers praise to God for

sending St. Thomas to India and China. In 1625, in digging for a

foundation near Sigansu, metropolis of the province of Xensi, was found

a stone with a cross on it, full of Chinese, and some Syriac characters,

containing the names of bishops, and an account of the Christian

religion, "that it was brought from Judea; that having been weakened, it

was renewed under the reign of the great Tam" (cir. A.D. 630). But the

Christians, say the Jesuits, siding with the Tartars, cir. A.D. 1200,

were extirpated by the Chinese. In 1543, Fernand Pinto, observing some

ruins near Peking, was told by the people, that 200 years before, a holy

man who worshipped Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, lived there; and

being murdered, was thrown into a river, but his body would not sink;

and soon after the city was destroyed by an earthquake. The same Jesuit

found people at Caminam who knew the doctrines of Christianity, which

they said were preached to their fathers, by John, the disciple of

Thomas. In 1635, some heathens, by night passing through a village in

the province of Fokien, saw some stones which emitted light, under which

were found the figure of crosses. From China, St. Thomas returned to

Meliapore in Malabar, at a time when a prodigious beam of timber floated

on the sea near the coast. The king endeavoured to bring it ashore, but

all the force of men and elephants was in vain. St. Thomas desired leave

to build a church with it, and immediately dragged it to shore with a

single thread. A church was built, and the king baptized. This enraged

the Brahmins, the chief of whom killed his own son, and accused Thomas

of the murder. But the saint, by restoring the youth to life, discovered

the wickedness of his enemies. He was afterwards killed by a lance while

kneeling at the altar; after, according to tradition, he had built 3300

stately churches, many of which were rebuilt, cir. 800, by an Armenian

named Thomas Cananeus. In 1533, the body of the apostle, with the head

of the lance beside him, was found in his church by D. Duarte de

Meneses; and in 1558 was, by D. Constantine de Braganza, removed to Goa.

To these accounts, selected from Faria y Sousa, let two from Osorius be

added. When Martin Alonzo de Souza was viceroy, some brazen tables were

brought to him, inscribed with unusual characters, which were explained

by a learned Jew, and imported that St. Thomas had built a church at

Meliapore. And by an account sent to Cardinal Henrico, by the Bishop of

Cochin, in 1562, when the Portuguese repaired the ancient chapel of St.

Thomas,{**} there was found a stone cross with several characters on it,

which the best antiquarians could not interpret, till at last a Brahmin

translated it, "That in the reign of Sagam, Thomas was sent by the Son

of God, whose disciple he was, to teach the law of heaven in India; that

he built a church, and was killed by a Brahmin at the altar."

{*} The existence of this breviary is a certain fact. These Christians

had the Scripture also in the Syriac language.

{**} This was a very ancient building, in the very first style of

Christian churches. The Portuguese have now disfigured it with their

repairs and new buildings.

A view of Portuguese Asia, which must include the labours of the

Jesuits, forms a necessary part in the comment on the Lusiad: this note,

therefore, and some obvious reflections upon it, are in place. It is as

easy to bury an inscription and find it again, as it is to invent a

silly tale; but, though suspicion of fraud on the one hand, and silly

absurdity on the other, lead us to despise the authority of the Jesuits,

yet one fact remains indisputable. Christianity had been much better

known in the East, several centuries before, than it was at the arrival

of GAMA. Where the name was unknown, and where the Jesuits were

unconcerned, crosses were found. The long existence of the Christians of

St. Thomas in the midst of a vast pagan empire, proves that the learned

of that kingdom must have some knowledge of their doctrines. And these

facts give countenance to some material conjectures concerning the

religion of the Brahmins.

[649] _When now the chief who wore the triple thread._--Of this, thus

Osorius: "_Terna fila ab humero dextero in latus finistrum gerunt, ut

designent trinam in natura divina rationem._--They (the Brahmins) wear

three threads, which reach from the right shoulder to the left side, as

significant of the trinal distinction in the Divine Nature." That some

sects of the Brahmins wear a symbolical tessera of three threads is

acknowledged on all hands; but, from whatever the custom arose, it is

not to be supposed that the Brahmins, who have thousands of ridiculous

contradictory legends, should agree in their accounts or explanations of

it. They have various accounts of a Divine Person having assumed human

nature. And the god Brahma, as observed by Cudworth, is generally

mentioned as united in the government of the universe with two others,

sometimes of different names. They have also images with three heads

rising out of one body, which they say represent the Divine Nature.{*}

But are there any traces of these opinions in the accounts which the

Greek and Roman writers have given us of the Brahmins? And will the wise

pay any credit to the authority of those books which the public never

saw, and which, by the obligation of their keepers, they are never to

see; and some of which, by the confession of their keepers, since the

appearance of Mohammed, have been rejected? The Platonic idea of a

trinity of divine attributes was well known to the ancients, yet perhaps

the Athanasian controversy offers a fairer field to the conjecturist.

That controversy for several ages engrossed the conversation of the

East. All the subtilty of the Greeks was called forth, and no

speculative contest was ever more universally or warmly disputed; so

warmly, that it is a certain fact that Mohammed, by inserting into his

Koran some declarations in favour of the Arians, gained innumerable

proselytes to his new religion. Abyssinia, Egypt, Syria, Persia, and

Armenia were perplexed with this unhappy dispute, and from the earliest

times these countries have had a commercial intercourse with India. The

number, blasphemy, and absurdity of the Jewish legends of the Talmud and

Targums, bear a striking resemblance to the holy legends of the

Brahmins. The Jews also assert the great antiquity of their Talmudical

legends. Adam, Enoch, and Noah are named among their authors; but we

know their date; Jerusalem, ere their birth, was destroyed by Titus. We

also know, that the accounts which the Greek writers give of the

Brahmins fall infinitely short of those extravagances which are

confessed even by their modern admirers. And Mohammedanism does not

differ from Christianity, more than the account which even these

gentlemen give, does from that of Porphyry. That laborious philosopher,

though possessed of all the knowledge of his age, though he mentions

their metempsychosis and penances, has not a word of any of their idols,

or the legends of Brahma or his brothers. On the contrary, he represents

their worship as extremely pure and simple. Strabo's account of them is

similar. And Eusebius has assured us they worshipped no images.{**} Yet,

on the arrival of the modern Europeans in India, innumerable were their

idols; and all the superstition of ancient Egypt, in the adoration of

animals and vegetables, seemed more than revived by the Brahmins. Who

that considers this striking alteration in their features, can withhold

his contempt when he is told of the religious care with which these

philosophers have these four thousand years preserved their sacred

rites.

{*} To these undoubted facts the author will not add the authority of a

Xavier, who tells us, that he prevailed upon a Brahmin to explain to him

some part of their hidden religion; when to his surprise, the Indian, in

a low voice, repeated the Ten Commandments.

{**} ... [Greek: chiliades pollai tôn legomenôn Brachmanôn, hoitines

kata paradison tôn progonôn kai nomôn, oute phoneuousin, OUTE XOANA

SEBONTAI].--EUSEB. Prep. Evan. lib. 6, c. 10, p. 275. Ed. Paris, 1628.

[650] _Thee, Thomas, thee, the plaintive Ganges mourn'd._--The

versification of the original is here exceedingly fine. Even those who

are unacquainted with the Portuguese may perceive it.

"Choraraóte Thomé, o Gange, o Indo,

Choroute toda a terra, que pizaste;

Mas mais te choráo as almas, que vestindo

Se hiáo dà Santa Fê, que lhe ensinaste;

Mas os anjos do ceo cantando, & rindo,

Te recebem na gloria que ganhaste."

[651] _Like him, ye Lusians, simplest Truth pursue._--It is now time to

sum up what has been said of the labours of the Jesuits. Diametrically

opposite to this advice was their conduct in every Asiatic country where

they pretended to propagate the gospel. Sometimes we find an individual

sincere and pious, but the great principle which always actuated them as

a united body was the lust of power and secular emolument, the

possession of which they thought could not be better secured than by

rendering themselves of the utmost importance to the see of Rome. In

consequence of these principles, wherever they came their first care was

to find what were the great objects of the fear and adoration of the

people. If the sun was esteemed the giver of life, Jesus Christ was the

Son of that luminary, and they were his younger brethren, sent to

instruct the ignorant. If the barbarians were in dread of evil spirits,

Jesus Christ came on purpose to banish them from the world, had driven

them from Europe,{*} and the Jesuits were sent to the East to complete

his unfinished mission. If the Indian converts still retained a

veneration for the powder of burned cow-dung, the Jesuits made the sign

of the cross over it, and the Indian besmeared himself with it as usual.

Heaven, or universal matter, they told the Chinese, was the God of the

Christians, and the sacrifices of Confucius were solemnized in the

churches of the Jesuits. This worship of Confucius, Voltaire, with his

wonted accuracy, denies. But he ought to have known that this, with the

worship of _tien_, or heaven, had been long complained of at the court

of Rome (see Dupin), and that after the strictest scrutiny the charge

was fully proved, and Clement XI., in 1703, sent Cardinal Tournon to the

small remains of the Jesuits in the East with a papal decree to reform

these abuses. But the cardinal, soon after his arrival, was poisoned in

Siam by the holy fathers. Xavier, and the other Jesuits who succeeded

him, by the dexterous use of the great maxims of their master Loyola,

_Omnibus omnia, et omnia munda mundis_, gained innumerable proselytes.

They contradicted none of the favourite opinions of their converts, they

only baptized, and gave them crucifixes to worship, and all was well.

But their zeal in uniting to the see of Rome the Christians found in the

East descended to the minutest particulars. And the native Christians of

Malabar were so violently persecuted as heretics that the heathen

princes took arms in their defence in 1570 (see Geddes, Hist. Malabar),

and the Portuguese were almost driven from India. Abyssinia, by the same

arts, was steeped in blood, and two or three Abyssinian emperors lost

their lives in endeavouring to establish the pope's supremacy. An order

at last was given from the throne to hang every missionary, without

trial, wherever apprehended, the emperor himself complaining that he

could not enjoy a day in quiet for the intrigues of the Romish friars.

In China, also, they soon rendered themselves insufferable. Their skill

in mathematics and the arts introduced them to great favour at court,

but all their cunning could not conceal their villainy. Their

unwillingness to ordain the natives raised suspicions against a

profession thus monopolized by strangers; their earnest zeal in amassing

riches, and their interference with, and deep designs on, secular power

(the fatal rock on which they have so often been shipwrecked), appeared,

and their churches were levelled with the ground. About 90,000 of the

new converts, together with their teachers, were massacred, and their

religion was prohibited. In Japan the rage of government even exceeded

that of China, and in allusion to their chief object of adoration, the

cross, several of the Jesuit fathers were crucified by the Japanese, and

the revival of the Christian name was interdicted by the severest laws.

Thus, in a great measure, ended in the East the labours of the society

of Ignatius Loyola, a society which might have diffused the greatest

blessings to mankind, could honesty have been added to their great

learning and abilities. Had that indefatigable zeal which laboured to

promote the interests of their own brotherhood and the Roman see been

employed in the real interests of humanity and civilization, the great

design of diffusing the law of Heaven, challenged by its author as the

purpose of the Lusiad, would have been amply completed, and the remotest

hordes of Tartary and Africa ere now had been happily civilized. But

though the Jesuits have failed, they have afforded a noble lesson to

mankind.

"Though fortified with all the brazen mounds

That art can rear, and watch'd by eagle eyes,

Still will some rotten part betray the structure

That is not bas'd on simple honesty."

{*} This trick, it is said, has been played in America within these

twenty years, where the notion of evil spirits gives the poor Indians

their greatest misery. The French Jesuits told the Six Nations, that

Jesus Christ was a Frenchman, and had driven all evil demons from

France; that he had a great love for the Indians, whom he intended also

to deliver, but taking England in his way, he was crucified by the

wicked Londoners.

[652] _The dying._--The innumerable superstitions performed on the banks

of the river Ganges, afford a pitiable picture of the weakness of

humanity. The circumstances here mentioned are literally true. It is no

uncommon scene for the English ships to be surrounded with the corpses

which come floating down this hallowed stream.

[653]

_Pegu, whose sons (so held old faith) confess'd

A dog their sire.--_

The tradition of this country boasted this infamous and impossible

original. While other nations pretend to be descended of demi-gods, the

Peguans were contented to trace their pedigree from a Chinese woman and

a dog; the only living creatures which survived a shipwreck on their

coast.--See Faria.

[654] _A pious queen their horrid rage restrain'd._--Thus in the

original:

"Aqui soante arame no instrumento

Da géraçáo costumáo, o que usaráo

Por manha da Raynha, que inventando

Tal uso, deitou fóra o error nefando."

[655] _And 'mid white whirlpools down the ocean driven._--See the same

account of Sicily, Virg. Æn. iii.

[656] _Ophir its Tyrian name._--Sumatra has been by some esteemed the

Ophir of the Holy Scriptures; but the superior fineness of the gold of

Sofala, and its situation, favour the claim of that Ethiopian isle.--See

Bochart. Geog. Sacr.

[657] _And thousands more._--The extensive countries between India and

China, where Ptolemy places his man-eaters, and where Mandevylle found

"men without heads, who saw and spoke through holes in their breasts,"

continues still very imperfectly known. The Jesuits have told many

extravagant lies of the wealth of these provinces. By the most authentic

accounts they seem to have been peopled by colonies from China. The

religion and manufactures of the Siamese, in particular, confess the

resemblance. In some districts, however, they have greatly degenerated

from the civilization of the mother country.

[658] _And gnaw the reeking limbs._--Much has been said on this subject,

some denying and others asserting the existence of anthropophagi or

man-eaters. Porphyry (de Abstin. i. 4 § 21{*}) says that the Massagetæ

and Derbices (people of north-eastern Asia), esteeming those most

miserable who died of sickness, when their parents and relations grew

old, killed and ate them, holding it more honourable thus to consume

them than that they should be destroyed by vermin. St. Jerome has

adopted this word for word, and has added to it an authority of his own:

"Quid loquar," says he, (Adv. Jov. l. 2, c. 6), "de cæteris nationibus;

cum ipse adolescentulus in Gallia viderim Scotos, gentem Britannicam,

humanis vesci carnibus, et cum per sylvas porcorum greges et armentorum,

pecudumque reperiant, pastorum nates, et fæminarum papillas solere

abscindere, et has solas ciborum delicias arbitrari?" Mandevylle ought

next to be cited. "Aftirwarde men gon be many yles be see unto a yle

that men clepen Milhe: there is a full cursed peple: thei delyten in ne

thing more than to fighten and to fie men, and to drynken gladlyest

mannes blood, which they clepen Dieu."--P. 235. Yet, whatever absurdity

may appear on the face of these tales; and what can be more absurd than

to suppose that a few wild Scots or Irish (for the name was then proper

to Ireland), should so lord it in Gaul, as to eat the breasts of the

women and the hips of the shepherds? Yet, whatever absurdities our

Mandevylles may have obtruded on the public, the evidence of the fact is

not thereby wholly destroyed. Though Dampier and other visitors of

barbarous nations have assured us that they never met with any

man-eaters, and though Voltaire has ridiculed the opinion, yet one may

venture the assertion of their existence, without partaking of a

credulity similar to that of those foreigners, who believed that the men

of Kent were born with tails like sheep (see Lambert's Peramb.), the

punishment inflicted upon them for the murder of Thomas à Becket. Many

are the credible accounts, that different barbarous nations used to eat

their prisoners of war. According to the authentic testimony of the best

Portuguese writers, the natives of Brazil, on their high festivals,

brought forth their captives, and after many barbarous ceremonies, at

last roasted and greedily devoured their mangled limbs. During his

torture the unhappy victim prided himself in his manly courage,

upbraiding their want of skill in the art of tormenting, and telling his

murderers that his belly had been the grave of many of their relations.

Thus the fact was certain long before a late voyage discovered the

horrid practice in New Zealand. To drink human blood has been more

common. The Gauls and other ancient nations practised it. When

Magalhaens proposed Christianity to the King of Subo, a north-eastern

Asiatic island, and when Francis de Castro discovered Santigana and

other islands, a hundred leagues north of the Moluccas, the conversion

of their kings was confirmed by each party drinking of the blood of the

other. Our poet Spenser tells us, in his View of the State of Ireland,

that he has seen the Irish drink human blood, particularly, he adds, "at

the execution of a notable traitor at Limerick, called Murrogh O'Brien,

I saw an old woman, who was his foster-mother, take up his head whilst

he was quartering and suck up all the blood that run thereout, saying,

that the earth was not worthy to drink it, and therewith also steeped

her face and breast and tore her hair, crying out and shrieking most

terribly." It is worthy of regard that the custom of marking themselves

with hot irons, and tattooing, is characteristic both of the Guios of

Camoëns and of the present inhabitants of New Zealand. And if, as its

animals indicate, the island of Otaheite was first peopled by a

shipwreck, the friendship existing in a small society might easily

obliterate the memory of one custom, while the less unfriendly one of

tattooing was handed down, a memorial that they owed their origin to the

north-eastern parts of Asia, where that custom particularly prevails.

{*} [Greek: Istorountai goun Massagetai kai Derbykes hathliôtatous

hêgeisthai tôn hoikeiôn tous automatons teleutêsantas; dio kai

phthasantes katathyousin kai estiôntai tôn philtatôn tous gegêrakotas.]

[659] _Other worlds the souls of beasts receive._--That Queen Elizabeth

reigned in England, is not more certain than that the most ignorant

nations in all ages have had the idea of a state after death. The same

faculty which is conscious of existence whispers the wish for it; and,

so little acquainted with the deductions of reasoning have some tribes

been, that not only their animals, but even the ghosts of their domestic

utensils have been believed to accompany them to the islands of the

blessed. Long ere the voice of philosophy was heard, the opinion of an

after state was popular in Greece. The works of Homer bear incontestable

evidence of this. And there is not a feature in the history of the human

mind better ascertained, than that no sooner did speculation seize upon

the topic, than belief declined, and, as the great Bacon observes, the

most learned, became the most atheistical ages. The reason of this is

obvious. While the human mind is all simplicity, popular opinion is

cordially received; but, when reasoning begins, proof is expected, and

deficiency of demonstration being perceived, doubt and disbelief

naturally follow. Yet, strange as it may appear, if the writer's memory

does not greatly deceive him, these certain facts were denied by Hobbes.

If he is not greatly mistaken, that gentleman, who gave a wretched, a

most unpoetical translation of Homer, has so grossly misunderstood his

author, as to assert that his mention of a future state was not in

conformity to the popular opinion of his age, but only his own poetical

fiction. He might as well have assured us, that the sacrifices of Homer

had never any existence in Greece. But, as no absurdity is too gross for

some geniuses, our murderer of Homer, our Hobbes, has likewise asserted,

that the belief of the immortality of the human soul was the child of

pride and speculation, unknown in Greece till long after the appearance

of the Iliad.

[660] _Oh gentle Mecon._--It was on the coast of Cochin-China, at the

mouth of this river, the Maekhaun, or Camboja of modern writers, that

Camoëns suffered the unhappy shipwreck which rendered him the sport of

fortune during the remainder of his life. The literal rendering of the

Portuguese, which Mickle claims the liberty of improving, is, "On his

gentle, hospitable bosom shall he receive the song, wet from woful,

unhappy shipwreck, escaped from destroying tempests, from ravenous

dangers, the effect of the unjust sentence upon him whose lyre shall be

more renowned than enriched."--_Ed._

[661] _Here ere the cannon's rage in Europe roar'd._--According to Le

Comte's memoirs of China, and those of other travellers, the mariner's

compass, fire-arms, and printing were known in that empire, long ere the

invention of these arts in Europe. But the accounts of Du Halde, Le

Comte, and the other Jesuits, are by no means to be depended on. It was

their interest (in order to gain credit in Europe and at the court of

Rome) to magnify the splendour of the empire where their mission lay,

and they have magnified it into romance itself. It is pretended, that

the Chinese used fire-arms in their wars with Zenghis Khan, and

Tamerlane; but it is also said that the Sogdians used cannon against

Alexander. The mention of any sulphurous composition in an old writer

is, with some, immediately converted into a regular tire of artillery.

The Chinese, indeed, on the first arrival of Europeans, had a kind of

mortars, which they called fire-pans, but they were utter strangers to

the smaller fire-arms. Verbiest, a Jesuit, was the first who taught them

to make brass cannon, set upon wheels. And, even so late as the hostile

menace which Anson gave them, they knew not how to level, or manage,

their ordnance to any advantage. Their printing is, indeed, much more

ancient than that of Europe, but it does not deserve the same name, the

blocks of wood with which they stamp their sheets being as inferior to

as they are different from the movable types of Europe. The Chinese have

no idea of the graces of fine writing; here, most probably, the fault

exists in their language; but the total want of nature in their

painting, and of symmetry in their architecture, in both of which they

have so long been experienced, afford a heavy accusation against their

genius. But, in planning gardens, and in the art of beautifying the face

of their country, they are unequalled. Yet, even in their boasted

gardening their genius stands accused. The art of ingrafting, so long

known to Europe, is still unknown to them. And hence their fruits are

vastly inferior in flavour to those of the western world. The amazing

wall of defence against the Tartars, though 1500 miles in extent, is a

labour inferior to the canals, lined on the sides with hewn stone, which

everywhere enrich, and adorn their country; some of which reach 1000

miles, and are of depth to carry vessels of burthen. These grand remains

of antiquity prove that there was a time when the Chinese were a much

more accomplished people than at present. Though their princes for many

centuries have discovered no such efforts of genius as these, the

industry of the people still remains, in which they rival, and resemble,

the Dutch. In every other respect they are the most unamiable of

mankind. Amazingly uninventive, for, though possessed of them, the arts

have made no progress among the Chinese these many centuries: even what

they were taught by the Jesuits is almost lost. So false in their

dealings, they boast that none but a Chinese can cheat a Chinese. The

crime which disgraces human nature, is in this nation of atheists, and

most stupid of all idolaters, common as _that charter'd libertine, the

air_. Destitute, even in idea, of that elevation of soul which is

expressed by the best sense of the word piety, in the time of calamity

whole provinces are desolated by self-murder; an end, as Hume says, of

some of the admired names of antiquity, not unworthy of so detestable a

character. And, as it is always found congenial to baseness of heart,

the most dastardly cowardice completes the description of that of the

Chinese.

Unimproved as their arts is their learning. Though their language

consists of few words, it is almost impossible for a stranger to attain

the art of speaking it. And what a European learns ere he is seven years

old, to read, is the labour of the life of a Chinese. In place of our 24

letters, they have more than 60,000 marks, which compose their writings:

and their paucity of words, all of which may be attained in a few hours,

requires such an infinite variety of tone and action, that the slightest

mistake in modulation renders the speaker unintelligible. And in

addressing a great man, in place of "my Lord," you may call him a

_beast_, the word being the some, all the difference consisting in the

tone of it. A language like this must ever be a bar to the progress and

accomplishments of literature. Of medicine they are very ignorant. The

ginseng, which they pretended was a universal remedy, is found to be a

root of no singular virtue. Their books consist of odes without poetry,

and of moral maxims, excellent in themselves, but without investigation

or reasoning. For, to philosophical discussion and metaphysics they seem

utterly strangers; and, when taught mathematics by the Jesuits, their

greatest men were lost in astonishment. Whatever their political wisdom

has been, at present it is narrow and barbarous. Jealous lest strangers

should steal their arts--arts which are excelled at Dresden, and other

parts of Europe--they preclude themselves from the great advantages

which arise from an intercourse with civilized nations. Yet, in the laws

which they impose on every foreign ship which enters their ports for

traffic, they even exceed the cunning and avarice of the Dutch. In their

internal policy the military government of Rome under the emperors is

revived, with accumulated barbarism. In every city and province the

military are the constables and peace officers. What a picture is this!

Nothing but Chinese or Dutch industry could preserve the traffic and

population of a country under the control of armed ruffians. But, hence

the emperor has leisure to cultivate his gardens, and to write

despicable odes to his concubines.

Whatever was their most ancient doctrine, certain it is that the

legislators who formed the present system of China presented to their

people no other object of worship than _Tien Kamti_, the material

heavens and their influencing power; by which an intelligent principle

is excluded. Yet, finding that the human mind in the rudest breasts is

conscious of its weakness, and prone to believe the occurrences of life

under the power of lucky or unlucky observances, they permitted their

people the use of sacrifices to those Lucretian gods of superstitious

fear. Nor was the principle of devotion, imprinted by Heaven in the

human heart, alone perverted; another unextinguishable passion was also

misled. On tablets, in every family, are written the names of the last

three of their ancestors, added to each, "Here rests his soul:" and

before these tablets they burn incense, and pay adoration. Confucius,

who, according to their histories, had been in the West about 500 years

before the Christian era, appears to be only the confirmer of their old

opinions; but the accounts of him and his doctrine are involved in

uncertainty. In their places of worship, however, boards are act up,

inscribed, "This is the seat of the soul of Confucius," and to these,

and their ancestors, they celebrate solemn sacrifices, without seeming

to possess any idea of the intellectual existence of the departed soul.

The Jesuit Ricci, and his brethren of the Chinese mission, _very

honestly_ told their converts, that _Tien_ was the God of the

Christians, and that the label of Confucius was the term by which they

expressed His divine majesty. But, after a long and severe scrutiny at

the court of Rome, Tien was found to signify nothing more than

_heavenly_ or _universal matter_, and the Jesuits of China were ordered

to renounce this heresy. Among all the sects who worship different idols

in China, there is only one which has any tolerable idea of the

immortality of the soul; and among these, says Leland, Christianity at

present obtains some footing. But the most interesting particular of

China yet remains to be mentioned. Conscious of the obvious tendency,

Voltaire and others have triumphed in the great antiquity of the

Chinese, and in the distant period they ascribe to the creation. But the

bubble cannot bear the touch. If some Chinese accounts fix the era of

creation 40000 years ago, others are contented with no less than 884953.

But who knows not that every nation has its Geoffry of Monmouth? And we

have already observed the legends which took their rise from the Annus

Magnus of the Chaldean and Egyptian astronomers, an apparent revolution

of the stars, which in reality has no existence. To the fanciful who

held this Annus Magnus, it seemed hard to suppose that our world was in

its first revolution of the great year, and to suppose that many were

past was easy. And, that this was the case, we have absolute proof in

the doctrines of the Brahmins, who, though they talk of hundreds of

thousands of years which are past, yet confess, that this, the fourth

world, has not yet attained its 6000th year. And much within this

compass are all the credible proofs of Chinese antiquity comprehended.

To three heads all three proofs are reduceable--their form of

government, which, till the conquest of the Tartars in 1644, bore the

marks of the highest antiquity; their astronomical observations; and

their history.

Simply and purely patriarchal, every father was the magistrate in his

own family; and the emperor, who acted by his substitutes, the

Mandarins, was venerated and obeyed as the father of all. The most

passive submission to authority thus branched out was inculcated by

Confucius, and their other philosophers, as the greatest duty of

morality. But, if there is an age in sacred or profane history where the

manners of mankind are thus delineated, no superior antiquity is proved

by the form of Chinese government. Their ignorance of the very ancient

art of ingrafting fruit-trees, and the state of their language (like the

Hebrew in its paucity of words), a paucity characteristic of the ages

when the ideas of men required few syllables to clothe them, prove

nothing farther than the early separation of the Chinese colony{*} from

the rest of mankind; nothing farther, except that they have continued

till very lately without any material intercourse with the other nations

of the world.

{*} The Chinese colony! Yes, let philosophy smile; let her talk of the

different species of men which are found in every country; let her brand

as absurd the opinion of Montesquieu, which derives all the human race

from one family. Let her enjoy her triumph. Peace to her insolence,

peace to her dreams and her reveries. But let common sense be contented

with the demonstration (See Whiston, Bentley, etc.) that a creation in

every country is not wanted, and that one family is sufficient in every

respect for the purpose. If philosophy will talk of black and white men

as different in species, let common sense ask her for a demonstration,

that climate and manner of life cannot produce this difference; and let

her add, that there is the strongest presumptive experimental proof that

the difference thus happens. If philosophy draw her inferences from the

different passions of different tribes; let common sense reply, that

stripped of every accident of brutalization and urbanity, the human mind

in all its faculties, all its motives, hopes and fears, is most

wonderfully the same in every age and country. If philosophy talk of the

impossibility of peopling distant islands and continents from one

family, let common sense tell her to read Bryant's Mythology. If

philosophy asserts that the Kelts wherever they came found aborigines,

let common sense reply, there were tyrants enough almost 2000 years

before their emigrations, to drive the wretched survivors of slaughtered

hosts to the remotest wilds. She may also add, that many islands have

been found which bore not one trace of mankind, and that even Otaheite

bears the evident marks of receiving its inhabitants from a shipwreck,

its only animals being the hog, the dog, and the rat. In a word, let

common sense say to philosophy, "I open my egg with a pen-knife, but you

open yours with the blow of a sledge hammer."

A continued succession of astronomical observations, for 4000 years, was

claimed by the Chinese, when they were first visited by the Europeans.

Voltaire, that _son of truth_, has often with great triumph mentioned

the indubitable proofs of Chinese antiquity; but at these times he must

have received his information from the same dream which told him that

Camoëns accompanied his friend GAMA in the voyage which discovered the

East Indies. If Voltaire and his disciples will talk of Chinese

astronomy, and the 4000 years antiquity of its perfection, let them

enjoy every consequence which may possibly result from it. But let them

allow the same liberty to others. Let them allow others to draw _their_

inferences from a few stubborn facts, facts which demonstrate the

ignorance of the Chinese in astronomy. The earth, they imagined, was a

great plain, of which their country was the midst; and so ignorant were

they of the cause of eclipses, that they believed the sun and moon were

assaulted, and in danger of being devoured by a huge dragon. The stars

were considered as the directors of human affairs, and thus their

boasted astronomy ends in that silly imposition, judicial astrology.

Though they had made some observations on the revolutions of the

planets, and though in the emperor's palace there was an observatory,

the first apparatus of proper instruments ever known in China was

introduced by Father Verbiest. After this it need scarcely be added,

that their astronomical observations which pretend an antiquity of 4000

years, are as false as a Welch genealogy, and that the Chinese

themselves, when instructed by the Jesuits, were obliged to own that

their calculations were erroneous and impossible. The great credit and

admiration which their astronomical and mathematical knowledge procured

to the Jesuits, afford an indubitable confirmation of these facts.

Ridiculous as their astronomical, are their historical antiquities.

After all Voltaire has said of it, the oldest date to which their

history pretends is not much above 4000 years. During this period 236

kings have reigned, of 22 different families. The first king reigned 100

years, then we have the names of some others, but without any detail of

actions, or that concatenation of events which distinguishes authentic

history. That mark of truth does not begin to appear for upwards of 2000

years of the Chinese legends. Little more than the names of kings, and

these often interrupted with wide chasms, compose all the annals of

China, till about the period of the Christian era. Something like a

history then commences, but that is again interrupted by a wide chasm,

which the Chinese know not how to fill up otherwise, than by asserting

that a century or two elapsed in the time, and that at such a period a

new family mounted the throne. Such is the history of China, full

brother in every family feature to those Monkish tales, which sent a

daughter of Pharoah to be queen of Scotland, which sent Brutus to

England, and a grandson of Noah to teach school among the mountains in

Wales.

[662] _Immense the northern wastes their horrors spread._--Tartary,

Siberia, Samoyada, Kamtchatka, etc. A short account of the Grand Lama of

Thibet Tartary shall complete our view of the superstitions of the East.

While the other pagans of Asia worship the most ugly monstrous idols,

the Tartars of Thibet adore a real living god. He sits cross-legged on

his throne, in the great temple, adorned with gold and diamonds. He

never speaks, but sometimes elevates his hand in token that he approves

of the prayers of his worshippers. He is a ruddy well-looking young man,

about 25 or 27, and is the most miserable wretch on earth, being the

mere puppet of his priests, who dispatch him whenever age or sickness

make any alteration in his features; and another, instructed to act his

part, is put in his place. Princes of very distant provinces send

tribute to this deity and implore his blessing, and, as Voltaire has

merrily told us, think themselves secure of benediction if favoured with

something from his godship, esteemed more sacred than the hallowed

cow-dung of the Brahmins.

[663] _How bright a silver mine._--By this beautiful metaphor (omitted

by Castera) Camoëns alludes to the great success, which in his time

attended the Jesuit missionaries in Japan. James I. sent an embassy to

the sovereign, and opened a trade with this country, but it was soon

suffered to decline. The Dutch are the only Europeans who now traffic

with the Japanese, which it is said they obtain by trampling on the

cross and by abjuring the Christian name. In religion the Japanese are

much the same as their neighbours of China. And in the frequency of

self-murder, says Voltaire, they vie with their brother islanders of

England.

[664] _The ground they touch not._--These are commonly called the birds

of Paradise. It was the old erroneous opinion that they always soared in

the air, and that the female hatched her young on the back of the male.

Their feathers bear a mixture of the most beautiful azure, purple, and

golden colours, which have a fine effect in the rays of the sun.

[665] _From hence the pilgrim brings the wondrous tale._--Streams of

this kind are common in many countries. Castera attributes this quality

to the excessive coldness of the waters, but this is a mistake. The

waters of some springs are impregnated with sparry particles, which

adhering to the herbage, or the clay, on the banks of their channel,

harden into stone, and incrust the original retainers.

[666] _Here from the trees the gum._--Benzoin, a species of

frankincense. The oil mentioned in the next line, is that called the

rock oil, petroleum, a black fetid mineral oil, good for bruises and

sprains.

[667] _Wide forests there beneath Maldivia's tide._--A sea plant,

resembling the palm, grows in great abundance in the bays about the

Maldivian islands. The boughs rise to the top of the water, and bear a

kind of apple, called the coco of Maldivia, which is esteemed an

antidote against poison.

[668] _The tread of sainted footstep._--The imprint of a human foot is

found on the high mountain, called the Pic of Adam. Legendary tradition

says, that Adam, after he was expelled from Paradise, did penance 300

years on this hill, on which he left the print of his footstep. This

tale seems to be Jewish, or Mohammedan; for the natives, according to

Captain Knox (who was twenty years a captive in Ceylon), pretend the

impression was made by the god Budha, when he ascended to heaven, after

having, for the salvation of mankind, appeared on the earth. His priests

beg charity for the sake of Budha, whose worship they perform among

groves of the Bogahah-tree, under which, when on earth, they say he

usually sat and taught.

[669] _And lo, the Island of the Moon._--Madagascar is thus named by the

natives.

[670] The kingfishers.

[671] _Now to the West, by thee, great chief, is given._--The sublimity

of this eulogy on the expedition of the Lusiad has been already

observed. What follows is a natural completion of the whole; and, the

digressive exclamation at the end excepted, is exactly similar to the

manner in which Homer has concluded the Iliad.

[672] _Near either pole._--We are now presented with a beautiful view of

the American world. Columbus discovered the West Indies before, but not

the continent till 1498--the year after GAMA sailed from Lisbon.

[673] _The first bold hero._--Cabral, the first after GAMA who sailed to

India, was driven by tempest to the Brazils, a proof that more ancient

voyagers might have met with the same fate. He named the country Santa

Cruz, or Holy Cross; it was afterwards named Brazil, from the colour of

the wood with which it abounds. It is one of the finest countries in the

new world.

[674] _To match thy deeds shall Magalhaens aspire._--Camoëns, though he

boasts of the actions of Magalhaens as an honour to Portugal, yet

condemns his defection to the King of Spain, and calls him--

_O Magalhaens, no feito com verdade

Portuguez, porèm naó na lealdade._

"In deeds truly a Portuguese, but not in loyalty." And others have

bestowed upon him the name of traitor, but perhaps undeservedly. Justice

to the name of this great man requires an examination of the charge. Ere

he entered into the service of the King of Spain by a solemn act, he

unnaturalized himself. Osorius is very severe against this unavailing

rite, and argues that no injury which a prince may possibly give, can

authorize a subject to act the part of a traitor against his native

country. This is certainly true, but it is not strictly applicable to

the case of Magalhaens. Many eminent services performed in Africa and

India entitled him to a certain allowance, which, though inconsiderable

in itself, was esteemed as the reward of distinguished merit, and

therefore highly valued. For this Magalhaens petitioned in vain. He

found, says Faria, that the malicious accusations of some men had more

weight with his sovereign than all his services. After this unworthy

repulse, what patronage at the Court of Lisbon could he hope? And though

no injury can vindicate the man who draws his sword against his native

country, yet no moral duty requires that he who has some important

discovery in meditation should stifle his design, if uncountenanced by

his native prince. It has been alleged, that he embroiled his country in

disputes with Spain. But neither is this strictly applicable to the

neglected Magalhaens. The courts of Spain and Portugal had solemnly

settled the limits within which they were to make discoveries and

settlements, and within these did Magalhaens and the court of Spain

propose that his discoveries should terminate. And allowing that his

calculations might mislead him beyond the bounds prescribed to the

Spaniards, still his apology is clear, for it would have been injurious

to each court, had he supposed that the faith of the boundary treaty

would be trampled upon by either power. If it is said that he

aggrandized the enemies of his country, the Spaniards, and introduced

them to a dangerous rivalship with the Portuguese settlements; let the

sentence of Faria on this subject be remembered: "Let princes beware,"

says he, "how by neglect or injustice they force into desperate actions

the men who have merited rewards."

In the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries, the spirit

of discovery broke forth in its greatest vigour. The East and the West

had been visited by GAMA and Columbus; and the bold idea of sailing to

the East by the West was revived by Magalhaens. Revived, for misled by

Strabo and Pliny, who place India near to the west of Spain, Columbus

expecting to find the India of the ancients when he landed on

Hispaniola, thought he had discovered the Ophir of Solomon. And hence

the name of Indies was given to that and the neighbouring islands.

Though America and the Moluccas were now found to be at a great

distance, the genius of Magalhaens still suggested the possibility of a

western passage. And accordingly, possessed of his great design, and

neglected with contempt at home, he offered his service to the court of

Spain, and was accepted. With five ships and 250 men he sailed from

Spain in September, 1519, and after many difficulties, occasioned by

mutiny and the extreme cold, he entered the great Pacific Ocean or South

Seas by those straits which bear his Spanish name Magellan. From these

straits, in the 52-1/2 degree of southern latitude, he traversed that

great ocean, till in the 10th degree of north latitude he landed on the

island of Subo or Marten. The king of this country was then at war with

a neighbouring prince, and Magalhaens, on condition of his conversion to

Christianity, became his auxiliary. In two battles the Spaniards were

victorious, but in the third, Magalhaens, together with one Martinho, a

judicial astrologer, whom he usually consulted, was unfortunately

killed. Chagrined with the disappointment of promised victory, the new

baptised king of Subo made peace with his enemies, and having invited to

an entertainment the Spaniards on shore, he treacherously poisoned them

all. The wretched remains of the fleet arrived at the Portuguese

settlements in the isles of Banda and Ternate, where they were received,

says Faria, as friends, and not as intruding strangers; a proof that the

boundary treaty was esteemed sufficiently sacred. Several of the

adventurers were sent to India, and from thence to Spain, in Portuguese

ships, one ship only being in a condition to return to Europe by the

Cape of Good Hope. This vessel, named the _Victoria_, however, had the

honour to be the first which ever surrounded the globe; an honour by

some ignorantly attributed to the ship of Sir Francis Drake. Thus

unhappily ended, says Osorius, the expedition of Magalhaens. But the

good bishop was mistaken, for a few years after he wrote, and somewhat

upwards of fifty after the return of the _Victoria_, Philip II. of Spain

availed himself of the discoveries of Magalhaens. And the navigation of

the South Seas between Spanish America and the Asian Archipelago, at

this day forms the basis of the power of Spain: a basis, however, which

is at the mercy of Great Britain, while her ministers are wise enough to

preserve her great naval superiority. A Gibraltar in the South Seas is

only wanting. But when this is mentioned, who can withhold his eyes from

the isthmus of Darien--the rendezvous appointed by nature for the fleets

which may one day give law to the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans: a

settlement which to-day might have owned subjection to Great Britain, if

justice and honour had always presided in the cabinet of William the

Third?

[675] _A land of giants._--The Patagonians. Various are the fables of

navigators concerning these people. The Spaniards who went with

Magalhaens affirmed they were about ten feet in height, since which

voyage they have risen and fallen in their stature, according to the

different humours of our sea wits.

[676] _The goddess spake._--We are now come to the conclusion of the

fiction of the island of Venus, a fiction which is divided into three

principal parts. In each of these the poetical merit is obvious, nor

need we fear to assert, that the happiness of our author, in uniting all

these parts together in one great episode, would have excited the

admiration of Longinus. The heroes of the Lusiad receive their reward in

the Island of Love. They are led to the palace of Thetis, where, during

a divine feast, they hear the glorious victories and conquests of the

heroes who are to succeed them in their Indian expedition, sung by a

siren; and the face of the globe itself, described by the goddess,

discovers the universe, and particularly the extent of the eastern

world, now given to Europe by the success of GAMA. Neither in grandeur,

nor in happiness of completion, may the Æneid or Odyssey be mentioned in

comparison. The Iliad alone, in epic conduet (as already observed) bears

a strong resemblance. But however great in other views of poetical

merit, the games at the funeral of Patroclus, and the redemption of the

body of Hector, considered as the interesting conclusion of a great

whole, can never in propriety and grandeur be brought into competition

with the admirable episode which concludes the poem on the discovery of

India.

Soon after the appearance of the Lusiad, the language of Spain was also

enriched with an heroic poem, the author of which has often imitated the

Portuguese poet, particularly in the fiction of the globe of the world,

which is shown to GAMA. In the _Araucana_, a globe, surrounded with a

radiant sphere, is also miraculously supported in the air; and on this

an enchanter shows to the Spaniards the extent of their dominions in the

new world. But Don Alonzo d'Arcilla is in this, as in every other part

of his poem, greatly inferior to the poetical spirit of Camoëns. Milton,

whose poetical conduct in concluding the action of his Paradise Lost, as

already pointed out, seems formed upon the Lusiad, appears to have had

this passage particularly in his eye. For, though the machinery of a

visionary sphere was rather improper for the situation of his

personages, he has, nevertheless, though at the expense of an impossible

supposition, given Adam a view of the terrestrial globe. Michael sets

the father of mankind on a mountain--

"From whose top

The hemisphere of earth in clearest ken

Stretch'd out to th' amplest reach of prospect lay....

His eye might there command wherever stood

City of old or modern fame, the seat

Of mightiest empire, from the destin'd walls

Of Cambalu ...

On Europe thence and where Rome was to sway

The world."

And even the mention of America seems copied by Milton:--

"In spirit perhaps he also saw

Rich Mexico, the seat of Montezume,

And Cusco in Peru, the richer seat

Of Atabalipa, and yet unspoil'd

Guiana, whose great city Geryon's sons

Call El Dorado."

It must also be owned by the warmest admirer of the Paradise Lost, that

the description of America in Camoëns--

"Vedes a grande terra, que contina

Vai de Calisto ao sen contrario polo--

To farthest north that world enormous bends,

And cold beneath the southern pole-star ends,"

conveys a bolder and a grander idea than all the names enumerated by

Milton.

Some short account of the writers whose authorities have been adduced in

the course of these notes may not now be improper. Fernando Lopez de

Castagneda went to India on purpose to do honour to his countrymen, by

enabling himself to record their actions and conquests in the East. As

he was one of the first writers on that subject, his geography is often

imperfect. This defect is remedied in the writings of John de Barros,

who was particularly attentive to this head. But the two most eminent,

as well as fullest, writers on the transaction of the Portuguese in the

East, are Manuel de Faria y Sousa, knight of the Order of Christ, and

Hieronimus Osorius, bishop of Sylves. Faria, who wrote in Spanish, was a

laborious inquirer, and is very full and circumstantial. With honest

indignation he rebukes the rapine of commanders and the errors and

unworthy resentments of kings. But he is often so drily particular, that

he may rather be called a journalist than an historian. And by this

uninteresting minuteness, his style, for the greatest part, is rendered

inelegant. The Bishop of Sylves, however, claims a different character.

His Latin is elegant, and his manly and sentimental manner entitles him

to the name of historian, even where a Livy or a Tacitus are mentioned.

But a sentence from himself, unexpected in a father of the communion of

Rome, will characterize the liberality of his mind. Talking of the edict

of King Emmanuel, which compelled the Jews to embrace Christianity under

severe persecution: "Nec ex lege, nec ex religione factum ... tibi

assumas," says he, "ut libertatem voluntatis impedias, et vincula

mentibus effrenatis injicias? At id neque fleri potest, neque Christi

sanctissimum numen approbat. Voluntarium enim sacrificium non vi malo

coactum ab hominibus expetit: neque vim mentibus inferri, sed voluntates

ad studium veræ religionis allici et invitari jubet."

It is said, in the preface to Osorius, that his writings were highly

esteemed by Queen Mary of England, wife of Philip II. What a pity is it,

that this manly indignation of the good bishop against the impiety of

religious persecution, made no impression on the mind of that bigoted

princess!

[677] _And the wide East is doom'd to Lusian sway._--Thus, in all the

force of ancient simplicity, and the true sublime, ends the poem of

Camoëns. What follows is one of those exuberances we have already

endeavoured to defend in our author, nor in the strictest sense is this

concluding one without propriety. A part of the proposition of the poem

is artfully addressed to King Sebastian, and he is now called upon in an

address (which is an artful second part to the former), to behold and

preserve the glories of his throne.

[678] _And John's bold path and Pedro's course pursue._--John I. and

Pedro the Just, two of the greatest of the Portuguese monarchs.

[679] _Reviv'd, unenvied._--Thus imitated, or rather translated into

Italian by Guarini:--

"Con si sublime stil' forse cantato

Havrei del mio Signor l'armi e l'honori,

Ch' or non havria de la Meonia tromba

Da invidiar Achille."

Similarity of condition, we have already observed, produced similarity

of complaint and sentiment in Spenser and Camoëns. Each was unworthily

neglected by the grandees of his age, yet both their names will live,

when the remembrance of the courtiers who spurned them shall _sink

beneath their mountain tombs_. These beautiful stanzas from Phinehas

Fletcher on the memory of Spenser, may also serve as an epitaph for

Camoëns. The unworthy neglect, which was the lot of the Portuguese bard,

but too well appropriates to him the elegy of Spenser. And every reader

of taste, who has perused the Lusiad, will think of the Cardinal

Henrico, and feel the indignation of these manly lines:--

"Witness our Colin{*}, whom tho' all the Graces

And all the Muses nurst; whose well-taught song

Parnassus' self and Glorian{**} embraces,

And all the learn'd and all the shepherds throng;

Yet all his hopes were crost, all suits denied;

Discouraged, scorn'd, his writings vilified:

Poorly (poor man) he liv'd; poorly (poor man) he died.

"And had not that great hart (whose honoured head{***}

All lies full low) pitied thy woful plight,

There hadst thou lien unwept, unburied,

Unblest, nor graced with any common rite;

Yet shalt thou live, when thy great foe{****} shall sink

Beneath his mountain tombe, whose fame shall stink;

And time his blacker name shall blurre with blackest ink."

{*} Colin Clout, Spenser.

{**} Glorian, Elizabeth in the Faerie Queen.

{***} The Earl of Essex.

{****} Lord Burleigh.

[680] Achilles, son of Peleus.