The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India, an Epic Poem
allusion to the truth of history. Barros relates, that an anger being
brought before the Zamorim, "_Em hum vaso de agua l'he mostrara hunas
naos, que vin ham de muy longe para a India, e que a gente d'ellas seria
total destruiçam dos Mouros de aquellas partes._--In a vessel of water
he showed him some ships which from a great distance came to India, the
people of which would effect the utter subversion of the Moors." Camoëns
has certainly chosen a more poetical method of describing this
divination, a method in the spirit of Virgil; nor in this is he inferior
to his great master. The supernatural flame which seizes on Lavinia
while assisting at the sacrifice alone excepted, every other part of the
augury of Latinus, and his dream in the Albunean forest, whither he went
to consult his ancestor, the god Faunus, in dignity and poetical
colouring, cannot come in comparison with the divination of the Magi,
and the appearance of the demon in the dream of the Moorish priest.
[539] _Th'eternal yoke._--This picture, it may perhaps be said, is but a
bad compliment to the heroes of the Lusiad, and the fruits of their
discovery. A little consideration, however, will vindicate Camoëns. It
is the demon and the enemies of the Portuguese who procure this
divination; everything in it is dreadful, on purpose to determine the
zamorim to destroy the fleet of GAMA. In a former prophecy of the
conquest of India (when the catual describes the sculpture of the royal
palace), our poet has been careful to ascribe the happiest effects to
the discovery of his heroes:--
"Beneath their sway majestic, wise, and mild,
Proud of her victors' laws, thrice happier India smil'd."
[540] _So let the tyrant plead._--In this short declamation, a seeming
excrescence, the business of the poem in reality is carried on. The
zamorim, and his prime minister, the catual, are artfully characterised
in it; and the assertion--
_Lur'd was the regent with the Moorish gold,_
is happily introduced by the declamatory reflections which immediately
precede it.
[541]
_The Moors----their ancient deeds relate,
Their ever-faithful service of the state.--_
An explanation of the word _Moor_ is here necessary. When the East
afforded no more field for the sword of the conqueror, the Saracens,
assisted by the Moors, who had embraced their religion, laid the finest
countries in Europe in blood and desolation. As their various
embarkations were from the empire of Morocco, the Europeans gave the
name of _Moors_ to all the professors of the Mohammedan religion. In the
same manner the eastern nations blended all the armies of the Crusaders
under one appellation, and the _Franks_, of whom the army of Godfrey was
mostly composed, became their common name for all the inhabitants of the
West. Before the arrival of GAMA, as already observed, all the traffic
of the East, from the Ethiopian side of Africa to China, was in the
hands of Arabian Mohammedans, who, without incorporating with the pagan
natives, had their colonies established in every country commodious for
commerce. These the Portuguese called Moors; and at present the
Mohammedans of India are called the Moors of Hindostan by our English
writers. The intelligence these Moors gave to one another, relative to
the actions of GAMA; the general terror with which they beheld the
appearance of Europeans, whose rivalship they dreaded as the destruction
of their power; the various frauds and arts they employed to prevent the
return of one man of GAMA'S fleet to Europe, and their threat to
withdraw from the dominions of the zamorim, are all according to the
truth of history. The speeches of the zamorim and of GAMA, which follow,
are also founded in truth.
[542] Troy.
[543] _No sumptuous gift thou bring'st._--"As the Portuguese did not
expect to find any people but savages beyond the Cape of Good Hope, they
only brought with them some preserves and confections, with trinkets of
coral, of glass, and other trifles. This opinion, however, deceived
them. In Melinda and in Calicut they found civilized nations, where the
arts flourished; who wanted nothing; who were possessed of all the
refinements and delicacies on which we value ourselves. The King of
Melinda had the generosity to be contented with the present which GAMA
made; but the zamorim, with a disdainful eye, beheld the gifts which
were offered to him. The present was this: Four mantles of scarlet, six
hats adorned with feathers, four chaplets of coral beads, twelve Turkey
carpets, seven drinking cups of brass, a chest of sugar, two barrels of
oil, and two of honey."--CASTERA.
[544] _Fair Acidalia, Love's celestial queen._--Castera derives Acidalia
from [Greek: akêdês], which, he says, implies to act without fear or
restraint. Acidalia is one of the names of Venus, in Virgil; derived
from Acidalus, a fountain sacred to her in Boeotia.
[545] _Sprung from the prince._--John I.
[546] _And from her raging tempests, nam'd the Cape._--Bartholomew Diaz,
was the first who discovered the southmost point of Africa. He was
driven back by the storms, which on these seas were thought always to
continue, and which the learned of former ages, says Osorius, thought
impassable. Diaz, when he related his voyage to John II. called the
southmost point the Cape of Tempests. The expectation of the king,
however, was kindled by the account, and with inexpressible joy, says
the same author, he immediately named it the Cape of Good Hope.
[547]
_The pillar thus of deathless fame, begun
By other chiefs_, etc.--
"Till I now ending what those did begin,
The furthest pillar in thy realm advance;
Breaking the element of molten tin,
Through horrid storms I lead to thee the dance."
FANSHAW.
[548]
_The regent's palace high o'erlook'd the bay,
Where Gama's black-ribb'd fleet at anchor lay._--
The resemblance of this couplet to many passages in Homer, must be
obvious to the intelligent critic.
[549] _As in the sun's bright beam._--Imitated from Virgil, who, by the
same simile, describes the fluctuation of the thoughts of Æneas, on the
eve of the Latian war:--
"Laomedontius heros
Cuncta videns, magno curarum fluctuat æstu,
Atque animum nunc huc celerem, nunc dividit illuc,
In partesque rapit varias, perque omnia versat.
Sicut aquæ tremulum labris ubi lumen ahenis
Sole repercussum, aut radiantis imagine Lunæ,
Omnia pervolitat late loca: jamque sub auras
Erigitur, summique ferit laquearia tecti."
"This way and that he turns his anxious mind,
Thinks, and rejects the counsels he design'd;
Explores himself in vain, in ev'ry part,
And gives no rest to his distracted heart:
So when the sun by day or moon by night
Strike on the polish'd brass their trembling light,
The glitt'ring species here and there divide,
And cast their dubious beams from side to side;
Now on the walls, now on the pavement play,
And to the ceiling flash the glaring day."
Ariosto has also adopted this simile in the eighth book of his Orlando
Furioso:--
"Qual d'acqua chiara il tremolante lume
Dal Sol per percossa, o da' notturni rai,
Per gli ampli tetti và con lungo salto
A destra, ed a sinistra, e basso, ed alto."
"So from a water clear, the trembling light
Of Phoebus, or the silver ray of night,
Along the spacious rooms with splendour plays,
Now high, now low, and shifts a thousand ways."
HOOLE.
But the happiest circumstance belongs to Camoëns. The velocity and
various shiftings of the sun-beam, reflected from a piece of crystal or
polished steel in the hand of a boy, give a much stronger idea of the
violent agitation and sudden shiftings of thought than the image of the
trembling light of the sun or moon reflected from a vessel of water. The
brazen vessel, however, and not the water, is only mentioned by Dryden.
Nor must another inaccuracy pass unobserved. That the reflection of the
moon _flashed the glaring day_ is not countenanced by the original.
We have already seen the warm encomium paid by Tasso to his
contemporary, Camoëns. That great poet, the ornament of Italy, has also
testified his approbation by several imitations of the Lusiad. Virgil,
in no instance, has more closely copied Homer, than Tasso has imitated
the appearance of Bacchus, or the evil demon, in the dream of the
Moorish priest. The enchanter Ismeno thus appears to the sleeping
Solyman:--
"Soliman' Solimano, i tuoi silenti
Riposi à miglior tempo homai riserva:
Che sotto il giogo de straniere genti
La patria, ove regnasti, ancor' e serva.
In questa terra dormi, e non rammenti,
Ch'insepolte de' tuoi l'ossa conserva?
Ove si gran' vestigio e del tuo scorno,
Tu neghittoso aspetti il nuovo giorno?"
Thus elegantly translated by Mr. Hoole:--
"Oh! Solyman, regardless chief, awake!
In happier hours thy grateful slumber take:
Beneath a foreign yoke thy subjects bend,
And strangers o'er thy land their rule extend:
Here dost thou sleep? here close thy careless eyes,
While uninterr'd each lov'd associate lies?
Here where thy fame has felt the hostile scorn,
Canst thou, unthinking, wait the rising morn?"
The conclusion of this canto has been slightly altered by the
translator. Camoëns, adhering to history, makes GAMA (when his factors
are detained on shore) seize upon some of the native merchants as
hostages. At the intreaty of their wives and children the zamorim
liberates his captives; while GAMA, having recovered his men and the
merchandise, sailed away, carrying with him the unfortunate natives,
whom he had seized as hostages.
As there is nothing heroic in this dishonourable action of GAMA'S,
Mickle has omitted it, and has altered the conclusion of the
canto.--_Ed._
[550] Mickle, in place of the first seventeen stanzas of this canto, has
inserted about three hundred lines of his own composition; in this
respect availing himself of the licence he had claimed in his
preface.--_Ed._
[551] _Thy sails, and rudders too, my will demands._--According to
history.
[552] _My sov'reign's fleet I yield not to your sway._--The circumstance
of GAMA'S refusing to put his fleet into the power of the zamorim, is
thus rendered by Fanshaw:--
"The Malabar protests that he shall rot
In prison, if he send not for the _ships_.
_He_ (_constant_, and with noble _anger_ hot)
His haughty _menace_ weighs not at _two chips_."
[553] _Through Gata's hills._--The hills of Gata or Gate, mountains
which form a natural barrier on the eastern side of the kingdom of
Malabar.
"Nature's rude wall, against the fierce Canar
They guard the fertile walls of Malabar."
LUSIAD, vii.
[554] _Then, furious, rushing to the darken'd bay._--For the
circumstances of the battle, and the tempest which then happened, see
the Life of GAMA.
[555] _I left my fix'd command my navy's guard._--See the Life of GAMA.
[556] _Unmindful of my fate on India's shore._--This most magnanimous
resolution, to sacrifice his own safety or his life for the safe return
of the fleet, is strictly true.--See the Life of GAMA.
[557] _Abrupt--the monarch cries_--"_What yet may save!_"--GAMA'S
declaration, that no message from him to the fleet could alter the
orders he had already left, and his rejection of any further treaty,
have a necessary effect in the conduct of the poem. They hasten the
catastrophe, and give a verisimilitude to the abrupt and full submission
of the zamorim.
[558] _The rollers_--_i.e._ the capstans.--The capstan is a cylindrical
windlass, worked with bars, which are moved from hole to hole as it