The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India, an Epic Poem
[423] Eris, or Discordia, the goddess of contention.--VIRGIL, Æneid ii.
337.--_Ed._
[424]
_What knighthood asks, the proud accusers yield,
And, dare the damsels' champions to the field.--_
The translator has not been able to discover the slightest vestige of
this chivalrous adventure in any memoirs of the English history. It is
probable, nevertheless, that however adorned with romantic ornament, it
is not entirely without foundation in truth. Castera, who unhappily does
not cite his authority, gives the names of the twelve Portuguese
champions: Alvaro Vaz d'Almada, afterwards Count d'Avranches in
Normandy; another Alvaro d'Almada, surnamed the Juster, from his
dexterity at that warlike exercise; Lopez Fernando Pacheco; Pedro Homen
d'Acosta; Juan Augustin Pereyra; Luis Gonfalez de Malafay; the two
brothers Alvaro and Rodrigo Mendez de Cerveyra; Ruy Gomex de Sylva;
Soueyro d'Acosta, who gave his name to the river Acosta in Africa;
Martin Lopez d'Azevedo; and Alvaro Gonfalez de Coutigno, surnamed
Magricio. The names of the English champions, and of the ladies, he
confesses are unknown, nor does history positively explain the injury of
which the dames complained. It must, however, he adds, have been such as
required the atonement of blood; _il falloit qu'elle fût sanglante_,
since two sovereigns allowed to determine it by the sword. "Some
critics," says Castera, "may perhaps condemn this episode of Camoëns;
but for my part," he continues, "I think the adventure of Olindo and
Sophronia, in Tasso, is much more to be blamed. The episode of the
Italian poet is totally exuberant, whereas that of the Portuguese has a
direct relation to his proposed subject: the wars of his country, a vast
field, in which he has admirably succeeded, without prejudice to the
first rule of the epopea, the unity of the action." The severest critic
must allow that the episode related by Veloso, is happily introduced. To
one who has ever been at sea, the scene must be particularly pleasing.
The fleet is under sail, they plough the smooth deep--
"And o'er the decks cold breath'd the midnight wind."
All but the second watch are asleep in their warm pavilions; the second
watch sit by the mast, sheltered from the chilly gale by a broad
sail-cloth; sleep begins to overpower them, and they tell stories to
entertain one another. For beautiful, picturesque simplicity there is no
sea-scene equal to this in the Odyssey, or Æneid.
[425] _What time he claim'd the proud Castilian throne._--John of Gaunt,
duke of Lancaster, claimed the crown of Castile in the right of his
wife, Donna Constantia, daughter of Don Pedro, the late king. Assisted
by his son-in-law, John I. of Portugal, he entered Galicia, and was
proclaimed king of Castile at the city of St. Jago de Compostella. He
afterwards relinquished his pretensions, on the marriage of his
daughter, Catalina, with the infant, Don Henry of Castile.
[426] _The dames by lot their gallant champions choose._--The ten
champions, who in the fifth book of Tasso's Jerusalem are sent by
Godfrey for the assistance of Armida, are chosen by lot. Tasso, who had
read the Lusiad, and admired its author, undoubtedly had the Portuguese
poet in his eye.
[427]
_In that proud port half circled by the wave,
Which Portugallia to the nation gave,
A deathless name.--_
Oporto, called by the Romans _Calle_. Hence Portugal.
[428]
_Yet something more than human warms my breast,
And sudden whispers--_
In the Portuguese--
_Mas, se a verdade o espirito me adevinha._
Literally, "But, if my spirit truly divine." Thus rendered by Fanshaw--
_But, in my aug'ring ear a bird doth sing._
[429] _As Rome's Corvinus._--Valerius Maximus, a Roman tribune, who
fought and slew a Gaul of enormous stature, in single combat. During the
duel a raven perched on the helmet of his antagonist, sometimes pecked
his face and hand, and sometimes blinded him with the flapping of his
wings. The victor was thence named Corvinus, from Corvus. Vid. Livy, l.
7, c. 26.
[430] _The Flandrian countess on her hero smil'd._--The princess, for
whom Magricio signalized his valour, was Isabella of Portugal, and
spouse to Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, and earl of Flanders. Some
Spanish chronicles relate that Charles VII. of France, having assembled
the states of his kingdom, cited Philip to appear with his other
vassals. Isabella, who was present, solemnly protested that the earls of
Flanders were not obliged to do homage. A dispute arose, on which she
offered, according to the custom of that age, to appeal to the fate of
arms. The proposal was accepted, and Magricio the champion of Isabella,
vanquished a French chevalier, appointed by Charles. Though our authors
do not mention this adventure, and though Emmanuel de Faria, and the
best Portuguese writers treat it with doubt, nothing to the disadvantage
of Camoëns is thence to be inferred. A poet is not obliged always to
follow the truth of history.
[431] _The Rhine another pass'd, and prov'd his might._--This was Alvaro
Vaz d'Almada. The chronicle of Garibay relates, that at Basle he
received from a German a challenge to measure swords, on condition that
each should fight with the right side unarmed; the German by this hoping
to be victorious, for he was left-handed. The Portuguese, suspecting no
fraud, accepted. When the combat began he perceived the inequality. His
right side unarmed was exposed to the enemy, whose left side, which was
nearest to him was defended with half a cuirass. Notwithstanding all
this, the brave Alvaro obtained the victory. He sprang upon the German,
seized him, and, grasping him forcibly in his arms, stifled and crushed
him to death; imitating the conduct of Hercules, who in the same manner
slew the cruel Anteus. Here we ought to remark the address of our
author; he describes at length the injury and grief of the English
ladies, the voyage of the twelve champions to England, and the prowess
they there displayed. When Veloso relates these, the sea is calm; but no
sooner does it begin to be troubled, than the soldier abridges his
recital: we see him follow by degrees the preludes of the storm, we
perceive the anxiety of his mind on the view of the approaching danger,
hastening his narration to an end. Behold the strokes of a
master!--_This note, and the one preceding, are from Castera._
[432] _The halcyons, mindful of their fate, deplore._--Ceyx, king of
Trachinia, son of Lucifer, married Alcyone, the daughter of Eolus. On a
voyage to consult the Delphic Oracle, he was shipwrecked. His corpse was
thrown ashore in the view of his spouse, who, in the agonies of her love
and despair, threw herself into the sea. The gods, in pity of her pious
fidelity, metamorphosed them into the birds which bear her name. The
halcyon is a little bird about the size of a thrush, its plumage of a
beautiful sky blue, mixed with some traits of white and carnation. It is
vulgarly called the kingfisher. The halcyons very seldom appear but in
the finest weather, whence they are fabled to build their nests on the
waves. The female is no less remarkable than the turtle, for her
conjugal affection. She nourishes and attends the male when sick, and
survives his death but a few days. When the halcyons are surprised in a
tempest, they fly about as in the utmost terror, with the most
lamentable and doleful cries. To introduce them, therefore, in the
picture of a storm is a proof, both of the taste and judgment of
Camoëns.
[433] _With shrill, faint voice, th' untimely ghost complains._--It may
not perhaps be unentertaining to cite Madame Dacier and Mr. Pope on the
voices of the dead. It will, at least, afford a critical observation
which appears to have escaped them both. "The shades of the suitors,"
observes Dacier, "when they are summoned by Mercury out of the palace of
Ulysses, emit a feeble, plaintive, inarticulate sound, [Greek:
trizousi], strident: whereas Agamemnon, and the shades that have been
long in the state of the dead, speak articulately. I doubt not but Homer
intended to show, by the former description, that when the soul is
separated from the organs of the body, it ceases to act after the same
manner as while it was joined to it; but how the dead recover their
voices afterwards is not easy to understand. In other respects Virgil
paints after Homer:--
_Pars tollere vocem
Exiguam: inceptus clamor frustratur hiantes."_
To this Mr. Pope replies, "But why should we suppose, with Dacier, that
these shades of the suitors (of Penelope) have lost the faculty of
speaking? I rather imagine that the sounds they uttered were signs of
complaint and discontent, and proceeded not from an inability to speak.
After Patroclus was slain he appears to Achilles, and speaks very
articulately to him; yet, to express his sorrow at his departure, he
acts like these suitors: for Achilles--
'Like a thin smoke beholds the spirit fly,
And hears a feeble, lamentable cry.'
Dacier conjectures that the power of speech ceases in the dead, till
they are admitted into a state of rest; but Patroclus is an instance to
the contrary in the Iliad, and Elpenor in the Odyssey, for they both
speak before their funereal rites are performed, and consequently before
they enter into a state of repose amongst the shades of the happy."
The critic, in his search for distant proofs, often omits the most
material one immediately at hand. Had Madame Dacier attended to the
episode of the souls of the suitors, the world had never seen her
ingenuity in these mythological conjectures; nor had Mr. Pope any need
to bring the case of Patroclus or Elpenor to overthrow her system.
Amphimedon, one of the suitors, in the very episode which gave birth to
Dacier's conjecture, tells his story very articulately to the shade of
Agamemnon, though he had not received the funereal rites:--
"Our mangled bodies, now deform'd with gore,
Cold and neglected spread the marble floor:
No friend to bathe our wounds! or tears to shed
O'er the pale corse! the honours of the dead."
ODYS. XXIV.
On the whole, the defence of Pope is almost as idle as the conjectures
of Dacier. The plain truth is, poetry delights in personification;
everything in it, as Aristotle says of the Iliad, has manners; poetry
must therefore personify according to our ideas. Thus in Milton:--
"Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth."
And thus in Homer, while the suitors are conducted to hell:--
"Trembling, the spectres glide, and plaintive vent
Thin, hollow screams, along the deep descent:"
and, unfettered with mythological distinctions, either shriek or
articulately talk, according to the most poetical view of their supposed
circumstances.
[434] Exod. xiv. 29.
[435] Noah.
[436] Venus.
[437] For the fable of Eolus see the tenth Odyssey.
[438]
_And vow, that henceforth her Armada's sails
Should gently swell with fair propitious gales._
In innumerable instances Camoëns discovers himself a judicious imitator
of the ancients. In the two great masters of the epic are several
prophecies oracular of the fate of different heroes, which give an air
of solemn importance to the poem. The fate of the Armada thus obscurely
anticipated, resembles in particular the prophecy of the safe return of
Ulysses to Ithaca, foretold by the shade of Tiresias, which was
afterwards fulfilled by the Phæacians. It remains now to make some
observations on the machinery used by Camoëns in this book. The
necessity of machinery in the epopea, and the, perhaps, insurmountable
difficulty of finding one unexceptionably adapted to a poem where the
heroes are Christians, or, in other words, to a poem whose subject is