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The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India, an Epic Poem

Luís de Camões

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.