The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India, an Epic Poem
the most illustrious actions. The noblemen, says the same writer, adopt
the children of their sisters, esteeming there can be no other certainty
of the relationship of their heirs.
[491] _The warlike song._--Though Camoëns began his Lusiad in Portugal,
almost the whole of it was written while on the ocean, while in Africa,
and in India.--See his Life.
[492] _As Canace._--Daughter of Eolus. Her father, having thrown her
incestuous child to the dogs, sent her a sword, with which she slew
herself. In Ovid she writes an epistle to her husband-brother, where she
thus describes herself:--
_Dextra tenet calamum, strictum tenet altera ferrum._
[493]
_Soon I beheld that wealth beneath the wave
For ever lost.--_
See the Life of Camoëns.
[494] _My life, like Judah's Heaven-doom'd king of
yore._--Hezekiah.--See Isaiah xxxviii.
[495] _And left me mourning in a dreary jail._--This, and the whole
paragraph from--
_Degraded now, by poverty abhorr'd,_
alludes to his fortunes in India. The latter circumstance relates
particularly to the base and inhuman treatment he received on his return
to Goa, after his unhappy shipwreck.--See his Life.
[496] _Who spurns the muse._--Similarity of condition has produced
similarity of sentiment in Camoëns and Spenser. Each was the ornament of
his country and his age, and each was cruelly neglected by the men of
power, who, in truth, were incapable to judge of their merit, or to
relish their writings. We have seen several of the strictures of Camoëns
on the barbarous nobility of Portugal. The similar complaints of Spenser
will show, that neglect of genius, however, was not confined to the
court of Lisbon:--
"O grief of griefs! O gall of all good hearts!
To see that virtue should despised be
Of such as first were raised for virtue's parts,
And now, broad spreading like an aged tree,
Let none shoot up that nigh them planted be.
O let not those of whom the muse is scorn'd,
Alive or dead be by the muse adorn'd."
RUINS OF TIME.
It is thought Lord Burleigh, who withheld the bounty intended by Queen
Elizabeth, is here meant. But he is more clearly stigmatized in these
remarkable lines, where the misery of dependence on court favour is
painted in colours which must recall several strokes of the Lusiad to
the mind of the reader:--
"Full little knowest thou that hast not tried,
What hell it is, in suing long to bide;
To lose good days, that might be better spent,
To waste long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow,
To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow;
To have thy princess' grace, yet want her peers';
To have thy asking, yet wait many years.
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares,
To eat thy heart thro' comfortless despairs;
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undone."
MOTHER HUBBERD'S TALE.
These lines exasperated still more the inelegant, illiberal Burleigh. So
true is the observation of Mr. Hughes, that, "even the sighs of a
miserable man are sometimes resented as an affront by him that is the
occasion of them."
[497] Kotwâl, a sort of superintendent or inspector of police.--FORBES'
Hindustani Dictionary.
[498] Lusus.
[499] _His cluster'd bough, the same which Bacchus bore._--Camoëns
immediately before, and in the former book, calls the ensign of Lusus a
bough; here he calls it the green thyrsus of Bacchus:--
_O verde Tyrso foi de Bacco usado._
The thyrsus, however, was a javelin twisted with ivy-leaves, used in the
sacrifices of Bacchus.
[500] _In those fair lawns the bless'd Elysium feign'd._--In this
assertion our author has the authority of Strabo. a foundation
sufficient for a poet. Nor are there wanting several Spanish writers,
particularly Barbosa, who seriously affirm that Homer drew the fine
description of Elysium, in his fourth Odyssey, from the beautiful
valleys of Spain, where, in one of his voyages, they say, he arrived.
Egypt, however, seems to have a better title to this honour. The fable
of Charon, and the judges of hell, are evidently borrowed from the
Egyptian rites of burial, and are older than Homer. After a ferryman had
conveyed the corpse over a lake, certain judges examined the life of the
deceased, particularly his claim to the virtue of loyalty, and,
according to the report, decreed or refused the honours of sepulture.
The place of the catacombs, according to Diodorus Siculus, was
surrounded with deep canals, beautiful meadows, and a wilderness of
groves. It is universally known that the greatest part of the Grecian
fables were fabricated from the customs and opinions of Egypt. Several
other nations have also claimed the honour of affording the idea of the
fields of the blessed. Even the Scotch challenge it. Many Grecian
fables, says an author of that country, are evidently founded on the
reports of the Phoenician sailors. That these navigators traded to the
coasts of Britain is certain. In the middle of summer, the season when
the ancients performed their voyages, for about six weeks there is no
night over the Orkney Islands; the disk of the sun, during that time,
scarcely sinking below the horizon. This appearance, together with the
calm which usually prevails at that season, and the beautiful verdure of
the islands, could not fail to excite the admiration of the Phoenicians;
and their accounts of the place naturally afforded the idea that these
islands were inhabited by the spirits of the just. This, says our
author, is countenanced by Homer, who places his "islands of the happy"
at the extremity of the ocean. That the fables of Scylla, the Gorgones,
and several others, were founded on the accounts of navigators, seems
probable; and, on this supposition, the Insulæ Fortunatæ, and
Purpurariæ, now the Canary and Madeira islands, also claim the honour of
giving colours to the description of Elysium. The truth, however,
appears to be this: That a place of happiness is reserved for the
spirits of the good is the natural suggestion of that anxiety and hope
concerning the future which animates the human breast. All the barbarous
nations of Africa and America agree in placing their heaven in beautiful
islands, at an immense distance over the ocean. The idea is universal,
and is natural to every nation in a state of barbarous simplicity.
[501] The goddess Minerva.
[502] _The heav'n-built towers of Troy._--Alluding to the fable of
Neptune, Apollo, and Laomedon.
[503]
_On Europe's strand, more grateful to the skies,
He bade th' eternal walls of Lisbon rise.--_
For some account of this tradition, see the note on Lusiad, bk. iii. p.
76. Ancient traditions, however fabulous, have a good effect in poetry.
Virgil has not scrupled to insert one, which required an apology:--
_Prisca fides facto, sed fama perennis._
Spenser has given us the history of Brute and his descendants at full
length in the Faerie Queene; and Milton, it is known, was so fond of
that absurd legend, that he intended to write a poem on the subject; and
by this fondness was induced to mention it as a truth in the
introduction to his History of England.
[504] _The brother chief._--Paulus de Gama.
[505] _That gen'rous pride which Rome to Pyrrhus bore._--When Pyrrhus,
king of Epirus, was at war with the Romans, his physician offered to
poison him. The senate rejected the proposal, and acquainted Pyrrhus of
the designed treason. Florus remarks on the infamous assassination of
Viriatus, that the Roman senate did him great honour; _ut videretur
aliter vinci non potuisse_; it was a confession that they could not
otherwise conquer him,--Vid. Flor. l. 17. For a fuller account of this
great man, see the note on Lusiad, bk. i. p. 9.
[506] _Some deem the warrior of Hungarian race._--See the note on the
Lusiad, bk. iii p. 67.
[507] Jerusalem.
[508] _The first Alonzo._--King of Portugal.
[509] _On his young pupil's flight._--"Some, indeed most, writers say,
that the queen advancing with her army towards Guimaraez, the king,
without waiting till his governor joined him, engaged them and was
routed: but that afterwards the remains of his army, being joined by the
troops under the command of Egaz Munitz, engaged the army of the queen a
second time, and gained a complete victory."--UNIV. HIST.
[510] _Egaz behold, a chief self-doom'd to death._--See the same story
in bk. iii. p. 71. Though history affords no authentic document of this
transaction, tradition, the poet's authority, is not silent. And the
monument of Egaz in the monastery of Paço de Souza gives it countenance.
Egaz and his family are there represented, in bas relief, in the
attitude and garb, says Castera, as described by Camoëns.
[511] _Ah Rome! no more thy gen'rous consul boast._--Sc. Posthumus, who,
overpowered by the Samnites, submitted to the indignity of passing under
the yoke.
[512] _The Moorish king._--The Alcaydes, or tributary governors under
the Miramolin{*} or Emperor of Morocco, are often by the Spanish and
Portuguese writers styled kings. He who was surprised and taken prisoner
by Don Fuaz Roupinho was named _Gama_. Fuaz, after having gained the
first naval victory of the Portuguese, also experienced their first
defeat. With one and twenty sail he attacked fifty-four large galleys of
the Moors. "The sea," says Brandan, "which had lately furnished him with
trophies, now supplied him with a tomb."
{*} This should be (and is evidently only a corruption of),
_Emir-el-Mumenin_, _i.e._ in Arabic, Commander of the believers.--_Ed._
[513] _A foreign navy brings the pious aid._--A navy of crusaders,
mostly English.
[514] _And from the leaves._--This legend is mentioned by some ancient
Portuguese chronicles. Homer would have availed himself, as Camoëns has
done, of a tradition so enthusiastic, and characteristic of the age.
Henry was a native of Bonneville near Cologne. "His tomb," says Castera,
"is still to be seen in the monastery of St. Vincent, but without the
palm."
[515] _In robes of white behold a priest advance._--Thestonius, prior of
the regulars of St. Augustine of Conymbra. Some ancient chronicles
relate this circumstance as mentioned by Camoëns. Modern writers assert,
that he never quitted his breviary.--CASTERA.
[516] _The son of Egas._--He was named Mem Moniz, and was son of Egas
Moniz, celebrated for the surrender of himself and family to the King of
Castile, as already mentioned.
[517] _The dauntless Gerald._--"He was a man of rank, who, in order to
avoid the legal punishment to which several crimes rendered him
obnoxious, put himself at the head of a party of freebooters. Tiring,
however, of that life, he resolved to reconcile himself to his sovereign
by some noble action. Full of this idea, one evening he entered Evora,
which then belonged to the Moors. In the night he killed the sentinels
of one of the gates, which he opened to his companions, who soon became
masters of the place. This exploit had its desired effect. The king
pardoned Gerald, and made him governor of Evora. A knight with a sword
in one hand, and two heads in the other, from that time became the
armorial bearing of the city."--CASTERA.
[518] _Wrong'd by his king._--Don Pedro Fernando de Castro, injured by
the family of Lara, and denied redress by the King of Castile, took the
infamous revenge of bearing arms against his native country. At the head
of a Moorish army he committed several outrages in Spain; but was
totally defeated in Portugal.
[519] _And lo, the skies unfold._--"According to some ancient Portuguese
histories, Don Matthew, bishop of Lisbon, in the reign of Alonso I,
attempted to reduce Alcazar, then in possession of the Moors. His