The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India, an Epic Poem
modern, have already been observed in the preface. The machinery of
Camoëns has also been proved, in every respect, to be less exceptionable
than that of Tasso in his Jerusalem, or that of Voltaire in his
Henriade. The descent of Bacchus to the palace of Neptune, in the depths
of the sea, and his address to the watery gods, are noble imitations of
Virgil's Juno in the first Æneid. The description of the storm is also
masterly. In both instances the conduct of the Æneid is joined with the
descriptive exuberance of the Odyssey. The appearance of the star of
Venus through the storm is finely imagined; the influence of the nymphs
of that goddess over the winds, and their subsequent nuptials, are in
the spirit of the promise of Juno to Eolus:--
_Sunt mihi bis septum præstanti corpore nymphæ:
Quarum, quæ forma pulcherrima; Deïopeiam_
_Connubio jungam stabili, propriamque dicabo:
Omnes ut tecum meritis pro talibus annos
Exigat, et pulchra faciat te prole párentem._--VIRGIL, Æn. bk. i.
And the fiction itself is an allegory, exactly in the manner of Homer.
Orithia, the daughter of Erecteus, and queen of the Amazons, was
ravished and carried away by Boreas.
[439] Vasco de Gama.
[440] This refers to the Catholic persecutions of Protestants whom they
had previously condemned at the Diet of Spires. War was declared against
the Protestants in 1546. It lasted for six years, when a treaty of peace
was signed at Passau on the Danube, in 1552.--_Ed._
[441] _Some blindly wand'ring, holy faith disclaim._--At the time when
Camoëns wrote, the German empire was plunged into all the miseries of a
religious war, the Catholics using every endeavour to rivet the chains
of Popery, the adherents of Luther as strenuously endeavouring to shake
them off.
[442]
_High sound the titles of the English crown,
King of Jerusalem.--_
The title of "King of Jerusalem" was never assumed by the kings of
England. Robert, duke of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror, was
elected King of Jerusalem by the army in Syria, but declined it in hope
of ascending the throne of England. Henry VIII. filled the throne of
England when our author wrote: his luxury and conjugal brutality amply
deserved the censure of the honest poet.
[443] France.
[444] _What impious lust of empire steels thy breast._--The French
translator very cordially agrees with the Portuguese poet in the
strictures upon Germany, England, and Italy.
[445] The Mohammedans.
[446] _Where Cynifio flows._--A river in Africa, near Tripoli.--VIRGIL,
Georg. iii. 311.--_Ed._
[447] _O Italy! how fall'n, how low, how lost!_--However these severe
reflections on modern Italy may displease the admirers of Italian
manners, the picture on the whole is too just to admit of confutation.
Never did the history of any court afford such instances of villainy and
all the baseness of intrigue as that of the pope's. That this view of
the lower ranks in the pope's dominions is just, we have the indubitable
testimony of Addison. Our poet is justifiable in his censures, for he
only follows the severe reflections of the greatest of the Italian
poets. It were easy to give fifty instances; two or three, however,
shall suffice. Dante, in his sixth canto, del Purg.--
_Ahi, serva Italia, di dolore ostello,
Nave senza nocchiero in gran tempesta,
Non donna di provincie, bordello._
"Ah, slavish Italy, the inn of dolour, a ship without a pilot in a
horrid tempest:--not the mistress of provinces, but a brothel!"
Ariosto, canto 17:--
_O d' ogni vitio fetida sentina
Dormi Italia imbríaco._
"O inebriated Italy, thou sleepest the sink of every filthy vice!"
And Petrarch:--
_Del'empia Babilonia, ond'è fuggita
Ogni vergogna, ond'ogni bene è fuori,
Albergo di dolor, madre d'errori
Son fuggit'io per allungar la vita._
"From the impious Babylon (the Papal Court) from whence all shame and
all good are fled, the inn of dolour, the mother of errors, have I
hastened away to prolong my life."
[448] _The fables old of Cadmus_.--Cadmus having slain the dragon which
guarded the fountain of Dirce, in Boeotia, sowed the teeth of the
monster. A number of armed men immediately sprang up, and surrounded
Cadmus, in order to kill him. By the counsel of Minerva he threw a
precious stone among them, in striving for which they slew one another.
Only five survived, who afterwards assisted him to build the city of
Thebes.--Vid. Ovid. Met. iv.
_Terrigenæ pereunt per mutua vulnera fratres._
[449]
_So fall the bravest of the Christian name,
While dogs unclean.--_
Imitated from a fine passage in Lucan, beginning--
_Quis furor, O Cives! quæ tanta licentia ferri,
Gentibus invisis_ Latium _præbere cruorem?_
[450] The Mohammedans.
[451] Constantinople.
[452] _Beyond the Wolgian Lake._--The Caspian Sea, so called from the
large river Volga, or Wolga, which empties itself into it.
[453]
_Their fairest offspring from their bosoms torn,
(A dreadful tribute !)--_
By this barbarous policy the tyranny of the Ottomans was long sustained.
The troops of the Turkish infantry and cavalry, known by the name of
Janissaries and Spahis, were thus supported. "The sons of
Christians--and those the most completely furnished by nature--were
taken in their childhood from their parents by a levy made every five
years, or oftener, as occasion required."--SANDYS.
[454] Mohammedans.
[455]
_O'er Afric's shores
The sacred shrines the Lusian heroes rear'd.--_
See the note on book v. p. 137.
[456] _Of deepest west._--Alludes to the discovery and conquest of the
Brazils by the Portuguese.
[457] The poet, having brought his heroes to the shore of India,
indulges himself with a review of the state of the western and eastern
worlds; the latter of which is now, by the labour of his heroes,
rendered accessible to the former. The purpose of his poem is also
strictly kept in view. The west and the east he considers as two great
empires; the one of the true religion, the other of a false. The
professors of the true, disunited and destroying one another; the
professors of the false one, all combined to extirpate the other. He
upbraids the professors of the true religion for their vices,
particularly for their disunion, and for deserting the interests of holy
faith. His countrymen, however, he boasts, have been its defenders and
planters, and, without the assistance of their brother powers, will
plant it in Asia.
"The Crusaders," according to Voltaire, "were a band of vagabond
thieves, who had agreed to ramble from the heart of Europe in order to
desolate a country they had no right to, and massacre, in cold blood, a
venerable prince, more than fourscore years old, and his whole people,
against whom they had no pretence of complaint."
To prove that the Crusades were neither so unjustifiable, so impolitic,
nor so unhappy in their consequences as superficial readers of history
are accustomed to regard them, would not be difficult.
Upon the whole, it will be found that the Portuguese poet talks of the
political reasons of a Crusade with an accuracy in the philosophy of
history as superior to that of Voltaire, as the poetical merit of the
Lusiad surpasses that of the Henriade. And the critic in poetry must
allow, that, to suppose the discovery of GAMA the completion of all the
endeavours to overthrow the great enemies of the true religion, gives a
dignity to the poem, and an importance to the hero, similar to that
which Voltaire, on the same supposition, allows to the subject of the
Jerusalem of Tasso.
[458] Calicut is the name of a famous sea-port town in the province of
Malabar.
[459]
_The herald hears
Castilia's manly tongue salute his ears.--_
This in according to the truth of history. While the messenger sent
ashore by GAMA was borne here and there, and carried off his feet by the
throng, who understood not a word of his language, he was accosted in
Spanish by a Moorish merchant, a native of Tunis, who, according to
Osorius, had been the chief person with whom King Ferdinand had formerly
contracted for military stores. He proved himself an honest agent, and
of infinite service to GAMA; he returned to Portugal, where, according
to Faria, he died in the Christian communion. He was named Monzaida.
[460] _The sacred pledge of eastern faith._--To eat together was, and
still is, in the east looked upon as the inviolable pledge of
protection. As a Persian nobleman was one day walking in his garden, a
wretch in the utmost terror prostrated himself before him, and implored
to be protected from the rage of a multitude who were in pursuit of him,
to take his life. The nobleman took a peach, eat part of it, and gave
the rest to the fugitive, assuring him of safety. As they approached the
house, they met a crowd who carried the murdered corpse of the
nobleman's beloved son. The incensed populace demanded the murderer, who
stood beside him, to be delivered to their fury. The father, though
overwhelmed with grief and anger, replied, "We have eaten together, and
I will not betray him." He protected the murderer of his son from the
fury of his domestics and neighbours, and in the night facilitated his
escape.
[461] _i.e._ crescent-shaped.--_Ed._
[462] _In Rhodope._--The beautiful fable of the descent of Orpheus to
hell, for the recovery of his beloved wife, Eurydice, will be found in
Virgil's Georgics, bk. iv., lines 460-80.--_Ed._
[463]
(_For now the banquet on the tented plain,
And sylvan chase his careless hours employ_).--
The great Mogul, and other eastern sovereigns, attended by their
courtiers, spend annually some months of the finest season in
encampments in the field, in hunting parties, and military amusements.
[464] _Th' enormous mountain._--The Himalaya range, which is a
continuation of an immense chain of mountains girdling the northern
regions of the earth and known by various names, as Caucasus, Homodus,
Paropamissus, Imaus, etc., and from Imaus extended through Tartary to
the sea of Kamschatka. Not the range of mountains so called in Asia
Minor.--_Ed._
[465] _As wild traditions tell._--Pliny, imposed upon by some Greeks,
who pretended to have been in India, relates this fable.--Vide Nat.
Hist. lib. 12.
[466] _Is fondly plac'd in Ganges' holy wave._--Almost all the Indian
nations attribute to the Ganges the virtue of cleansing the soul from
the stains of sin. They have such veneration for this river, that if any
one in their presence were to throw any filth into the stream, an
instant death would punish his audacity.
[467] Cambaya, the ancient Camanes of Ptolemy, gives name to the gulf of
that name at the head of which it is situated. It is the principal
seaport of Guzerat.--_Ed._
[468] Porus was king of part of the Punjaub, and was conquered by
Alexander the Great.--_Ed._
[469] _Narsinga._--The laws of Narsing oblige the women to throw
themselves into the funeral pile, to be burnt with their deceased
husbands. An infallible secret to prevent the desire of
widowhood.--CASTERA from Barros, Dec. 4.
[470] The Canarese, who inhabit Canara, on the west coast of
India.--_Ed._
[471] Medina, a city of Arabia, famous as being the burial-place of
Mohammed, and hence esteemed sacred.--_Ed._
[472] According to tradition, Perimal, a sovereign of India, embraced
Islamism about 800 years before GAMA'S voyage, divided his dominions
into different kingdoms, and ended his days as a hermit at Mecca.--_Ed._
[473] _i.e._ pariahs, outcasts.
[474] _Brahma their founder as a god they boast._--Antiquity has talked
much, but knew little with certainty of the Brahmins, and their
philosophy. Porphyry and others esteem them the same as the