The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India, an Epic Poem
Peguans were contented to trace their pedigree from a Chinese woman and
a dog; the only living creatures which survived a shipwreck on their
coast.--See Faria.
[654] _A pious queen their horrid rage restrain'd._--Thus in the
original:
"Aqui soante arame no instrumento
Da géraçáo costumáo, o que usaráo
Por manha da Raynha, que inventando
Tal uso, deitou fóra o error nefando."
[655] _And 'mid white whirlpools down the ocean driven._--See the same
account of Sicily, Virg. Æn. iii.
[656] _Ophir its Tyrian name._--Sumatra has been by some esteemed the
Ophir of the Holy Scriptures; but the superior fineness of the gold of
Sofala, and its situation, favour the claim of that Ethiopian isle.--See
Bochart. Geog. Sacr.
[657] _And thousands more._--The extensive countries between India and
China, where Ptolemy places his man-eaters, and where Mandevylle found
"men without heads, who saw and spoke through holes in their breasts,"
continues still very imperfectly known. The Jesuits have told many
extravagant lies of the wealth of these provinces. By the most authentic
accounts they seem to have been peopled by colonies from China. The
religion and manufactures of the Siamese, in particular, confess the
resemblance. In some districts, however, they have greatly degenerated
from the civilization of the mother country.
[658] _And gnaw the reeking limbs._--Much has been said on this subject,
some denying and others asserting the existence of anthropophagi or
man-eaters. Porphyry (de Abstin. i. 4 § 21{*}) says that the Massagetæ
and Derbices (people of north-eastern Asia), esteeming those most
miserable who died of sickness, when their parents and relations grew
old, killed and ate them, holding it more honourable thus to consume
them than that they should be destroyed by vermin. St. Jerome has
adopted this word for word, and has added to it an authority of his own:
"Quid loquar," says he, (Adv. Jov. l. 2, c. 6), "de cæteris nationibus;
cum ipse adolescentulus in Gallia viderim Scotos, gentem Britannicam,
humanis vesci carnibus, et cum per sylvas porcorum greges et armentorum,
pecudumque reperiant, pastorum nates, et fæminarum papillas solere
abscindere, et has solas ciborum delicias arbitrari?" Mandevylle ought
next to be cited. "Aftirwarde men gon be many yles be see unto a yle
that men clepen Milhe: there is a full cursed peple: thei delyten in ne
thing more than to fighten and to fie men, and to drynken gladlyest
mannes blood, which they clepen Dieu."--P. 235. Yet, whatever absurdity
may appear on the face of these tales; and what can be more absurd than
to suppose that a few wild Scots or Irish (for the name was then proper
to Ireland), should so lord it in Gaul, as to eat the breasts of the
women and the hips of the shepherds? Yet, whatever absurdities our
Mandevylles may have obtruded on the public, the evidence of the fact is
not thereby wholly destroyed. Though Dampier and other visitors of
barbarous nations have assured us that they never met with any
man-eaters, and though Voltaire has ridiculed the opinion, yet one may
venture the assertion of their existence, without partaking of a
credulity similar to that of those foreigners, who believed that the men
of Kent were born with tails like sheep (see Lambert's Peramb.), the
punishment inflicted upon them for the murder of Thomas à Becket. Many
are the credible accounts, that different barbarous nations used to eat
their prisoners of war. According to the authentic testimony of the best
Portuguese writers, the natives of Brazil, on their high festivals,
brought forth their captives, and after many barbarous ceremonies, at
last roasted and greedily devoured their mangled limbs. During his
torture the unhappy victim prided himself in his manly courage,
upbraiding their want of skill in the art of tormenting, and telling his
murderers that his belly had been the grave of many of their relations.
Thus the fact was certain long before a late voyage discovered the
horrid practice in New Zealand. To drink human blood has been more
common. The Gauls and other ancient nations practised it. When
Magalhaens proposed Christianity to the King of Subo, a north-eastern
Asiatic island, and when Francis de Castro discovered Santigana and
other islands, a hundred leagues north of the Moluccas, the conversion
of their kings was confirmed by each party drinking of the blood of the
other. Our poet Spenser tells us, in his View of the State of Ireland,
that he has seen the Irish drink human blood, particularly, he adds, "at
the execution of a notable traitor at Limerick, called Murrogh O'Brien,
I saw an old woman, who was his foster-mother, take up his head whilst
he was quartering and suck up all the blood that run thereout, saying,
that the earth was not worthy to drink it, and therewith also steeped
her face and breast and tore her hair, crying out and shrieking most
terribly." It is worthy of regard that the custom of marking themselves
with hot irons, and tattooing, is characteristic both of the Guios of
Camoëns and of the present inhabitants of New Zealand. And if, as its
animals indicate, the island of Otaheite was first peopled by a
shipwreck, the friendship existing in a small society might easily
obliterate the memory of one custom, while the less unfriendly one of
tattooing was handed down, a memorial that they owed their origin to the
north-eastern parts of Asia, where that custom particularly prevails.
{*} [Greek: Istorountai goun Massagetai kai Derbykes hathliôtatous
hêgeisthai tôn hoikeiôn tous automatons teleutêsantas; dio kai
phthasantes katathyousin kai estiôntai tôn philtatôn tous gegêrakotas.]
[659] _Other worlds the souls of beasts receive._--That Queen Elizabeth
reigned in England, is not more certain than that the most ignorant
nations in all ages have had the idea of a state after death. The same
faculty which is conscious of existence whispers the wish for it; and,
so little acquainted with the deductions of reasoning have some tribes
been, that not only their animals, but even the ghosts of their domestic
utensils have been believed to accompany them to the islands of the
blessed. Long ere the voice of philosophy was heard, the opinion of an
after state was popular in Greece. The works of Homer bear incontestable
evidence of this. And there is not a feature in the history of the human
mind better ascertained, than that no sooner did speculation seize upon
the topic, than belief declined, and, as the great Bacon observes, the
most learned, became the most atheistical ages. The reason of this is
obvious. While the human mind is all simplicity, popular opinion is
cordially received; but, when reasoning begins, proof is expected, and
deficiency of demonstration being perceived, doubt and disbelief
naturally follow. Yet, strange as it may appear, if the writer's memory
does not greatly deceive him, these certain facts were denied by Hobbes.
If he is not greatly mistaken, that gentleman, who gave a wretched, a
most unpoetical translation of Homer, has so grossly misunderstood his
author, as to assert that his mention of a future state was not in
conformity to the popular opinion of his age, but only his own poetical
fiction. He might as well have assured us, that the sacrifices of Homer
had never any existence in Greece. But, as no absurdity is too gross for
some geniuses, our murderer of Homer, our Hobbes, has likewise asserted,
that the belief of the immortality of the human soul was the child of
pride and speculation, unknown in Greece till long after the appearance
of the Iliad.
[660] _Oh gentle Mecon._--It was on the coast of Cochin-China, at the
mouth of this river, the Maekhaun, or Camboja of modern writers, that
Camoëns suffered the unhappy shipwreck which rendered him the sport of
fortune during the remainder of his life. The literal rendering of the
Portuguese, which Mickle claims the liberty of improving, is, "On his
gentle, hospitable bosom shall he receive the song, wet from woful,
unhappy shipwreck, escaped from destroying tempests, from ravenous
dangers, the effect of the unjust sentence upon him whose lyre shall be
more renowned than enriched."--_Ed._
[661] _Here ere the cannon's rage in Europe roar'd._--According to Le
Comte's memoirs of China, and those of other travellers, the mariner's
compass, fire-arms, and printing were known in that empire, long ere the
invention of these arts in Europe. But the accounts of Du Halde, Le
Comte, and the other Jesuits, are by no means to be depended on. It was
their interest (in order to gain credit in Europe and at the court of
Rome) to magnify the splendour of the empire where their mission lay,
and they have magnified it into romance itself. It is pretended, that
the Chinese used fire-arms in their wars with Zenghis Khan, and
Tamerlane; but it is also said that the Sogdians used cannon against
Alexander. The mention of any sulphurous composition in an old writer
is, with some, immediately converted into a regular tire of artillery.
The Chinese, indeed, on the first arrival of Europeans, had a kind of
mortars, which they called fire-pans, but they were utter strangers to
the smaller fire-arms. Verbiest, a Jesuit, was the first who taught them
to make brass cannon, set upon wheels. And, even so late as the hostile
menace which Anson gave them, they knew not how to level, or manage,
their ordnance to any advantage. Their printing is, indeed, much more
ancient than that of Europe, but it does not deserve the same name, the
blocks of wood with which they stamp their sheets being as inferior to
as they are different from the movable types of Europe. The Chinese have
no idea of the graces of fine writing; here, most probably, the fault
exists in their language; but the total want of nature in their
painting, and of symmetry in their architecture, in both of which they
have so long been experienced, afford a heavy accusation against their
genius. But, in planning gardens, and in the art of beautifying the face
of their country, they are unequalled. Yet, even in their boasted
gardening their genius stands accused. The art of ingrafting, so long
known to Europe, is still unknown to them. And hence their fruits are
vastly inferior in flavour to those of the western world. The amazing
wall of defence against the Tartars, though 1500 miles in extent, is a
labour inferior to the canals, lined on the sides with hewn stone, which
everywhere enrich, and adorn their country; some of which reach 1000
miles, and are of depth to carry vessels of burthen. These grand remains
of antiquity prove that there was a time when the Chinese were a much
more accomplished people than at present. Though their princes for many
centuries have discovered no such efforts of genius as these, the
industry of the people still remains, in which they rival, and resemble,
the Dutch. In every other respect they are the most unamiable of
mankind. Amazingly uninventive, for, though possessed of them, the arts
have made no progress among the Chinese these many centuries: even what
they were taught by the Jesuits is almost lost. So false in their
dealings, they boast that none but a Chinese can cheat a Chinese. The
crime which disgraces human nature, is in this nation of atheists, and
most stupid of all idolaters, common as _that charter'd libertine, the
air_. Destitute, even in idea, of that elevation of soul which is
expressed by the best sense of the word piety, in the time of calamity
whole provinces are desolated by self-murder; an end, as Hume says, of
some of the admired names of antiquity, not unworthy of so detestable a
character. And, as it is always found congenial to baseness of heart,
the most dastardly cowardice completes the description of that of the
Chinese.