The Lusiad

“ Subjects as we are, let us venerate the amusements of our sovereigns; let us believe that the august cares for our good, which employ them, follow them often even to the very bosom of their pleasures."
Many are the strokes in the Lusiad which must endear the character of Camoëns to every reader of sensibility. The noble freedom and manly indignation with which he mentions the foible of his prince, and the flatterers of his court, would do honour to the greatest names of Greece or Rome. ”

“ Poetical conduct cannot possibly bear a stronger resemblance, than the reward of the heroes of the Lusiad, the prophetic song, and the vision shown to Gama bear to the games at the funeral of Patroclus and the redemption of the body of Hector, considered as the completion of the anger of Achilles, the subject of the Iliad. Nor is it a greater honour to resemble a Homer and a Virgil, than it is to be resembled by a Milton. ”

“ What are the adventures of an old, fabulous hero's arrival in Britain, what are Greece and Latium in arms for a woman compared to this! Troy is in ashes, and even the Roman empire is no more. But{xxix} the effects of the voyage, adventures, and bravery of the hero of the Lusiad will be felt and beheld, and perhaps increase in importance, while the world shall remain.
Happy in his choice, happy also was the genius of Camoëns in the method of pursuing his subject. He has not, like Tasso, given it a total appearance of fiction; nor has he, like Lucan, excluded allegory and poetical machinery. ”

“ One may venture to affirm, that there is no poem of equal length, which abounds with so many impassioned encomiums on the fair sex, and the power of their beauty, as the Lusiad. The genius of Camoëns seems never so pleased as when he is painting the variety of female charms ”

“ On the homeward voyage, Venus prepares a magic festival for the adventurers, on an enchanted island, and the goddess Thetis becomes the bride of the admiral. Here the poet finds the opportunity to complete the narrative of his country's history, and a prophetic nymph is brought forward to describe the future achievements of the nation from that period to the time of Camoëns.
The Lusiad is one of the noblest monuments ever raised to the national glory of any people, and it is difficult to conceive how so grand and beautiful a whole could be formed on a plan so trivial and irregular. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The Lusiad is best known in England by the translation of Mickle, who has been thought to have done something more than justice to his author, both by the unmeasured eulogies he bestows upon him, and by the more substantial service of excelling the [Pg 331] original in his unfaithful delineation. [1179] The style of Mickle is certainly more poetical, according to our standard, than that of Camoens, that is, more figurative and emphatic; but it seems to me replenished with commonplace phrases, and wanting in the facility and sweetness of the original; ”

“ The joy of the fleet on the homeward departure from India.—We are now come to that part of the Lusiad, which, in the conduct of the poem, is parallel to the great catastrophe of the Iliad, when, on the death of Hector, Achilles thus addresses the Grecian army—
"Ye sons of Greece, in triumph bring
The corpse of Hector, and your pæons sing:
Be this the song, slow moving toward the shore,
'Hector is dead, and Ilion is no more.'"
Our Portuguese poet, who in his machinery, and many other instances, has followed the manner of Virgil, now forsakes him. ”

“ The critics have vehemently declaimed against the least mixture of the comic, with the dignity of the epic poem. It is needless to enter into any defence of this passage of Camoëns, farther than to observe that Homer, Virgil, and Milton have offended the critics in the same manner, and that this piece of raillery in the Lusiad is by much the politest, and the least reprehensible, of anything of the kind in the four poets. In Homer are several strokes of low raillery. Patroclus having killed Hector's charioteer, puns thus on his sudden fall: It is a pity he is not nearer the sea! ”

“ The good characters of the victorious heroes, however neglected by the great genius of Homer, have a fine effect in making an epic poem interest us and please. It might have been said, that Monzaida was a traitor to his friends, who crowned his villainy with apostacy. Camoëns has, therefore, wisely drawn him with other features, worthy of the friendship of Gama. Had this been neglected, the hero of the Lusiad might have shared the fate of the wise Ulysses of the Iliad, against whom, as Voltaire justly observes, every reader bears a secret ill will. ”

“ The Lusiad is simple in style; its subject is prosaic; it is a constant wonder that out of such unpromising materials Camoens could construct a poem of such interest. He could not have done so had he not been so great a poet, so impassioned a patriot.
Camoens was in one sense of the word a practical man, like Ariosto ”

“ The family of the eldest intermarried with the first nobility of Portugal, and even, according to Castera, with the blood royal. But the family of the second brother, whose fortune was slender, had the superior honour to produce the author of the Lusiad.
Early in life the misfortunes of the poet began. In his infancy, Simon Vaz de Camoëns, his father, commander of a vessel, was shipwrecked at Goa, where, with his life, the greatest part of his fortune was lost. His mother, however, Anne de Macedo of Santarem, provided for the education of her son Luis, at the University of Coimbra. ”

“ Authors of genius have taken fright at the gripe of "the master of the holy palace," or the lacerating scratches of the "corrector-general por su magestad." At Madrid and Lisbon, and even at Rome, this licensing of books has confined most of their authors to the body of the good fathers themselves.
The Commentaries on the Lusiad, by Faria de Souza, had occupied his zealous labours for twenty-five years, and were favourably received by the learned. But the commentator was brought before this tribunal of criticism and religion, as suspected of heretical opinions ”

“ At the same time it must not be forgotten that the Lusiad is a totally different kind of heroic poem from all those epopees, whether successful or unsuccessful, in which a single hero is the main spring of the whole epic action. According to the plan which Camoens sketched for his national poem, he was enabled to dispense with the choice of a hero whose atchievements should throw those of all others into the shade, and form the sole source of epic interest. To this plan, however, an essential beauty of epic poetry was necessarily sacrificed. ”

“ In this unhappy situation, in 1579, in his sixty-second year, the year after the fatal defeat of Don Sebastian, died Luis de Camoens, the greatest literary genius ever produced by Portugal; in martial courage, and spirit of honour, nothing inferior to her greatest heroes. And in a manner suitable to the poverty in which he died was he buried. Soon after, however, many epitaphs honoured his memory; the greatness of his merit was universally confessed, and his Lusiad was translated into various languages. ”

“ Bacchus, in the Lusiad, an epic poem by Camoens (1569) , is the personification of the evil principle which acts in opposition to Jupiter, the lord of Destiny. Mars is made by the poet the guardian power of Christianity, and Bacchus of Mohammedanism. ”

“ but, above all things, was an ardent admirer of Camoens. Parts of the Lusiad, he could recite in the original. ”

“ One in English, named Elvira; the other two are by M. de la Motte, a Frenchman, and Luis Velez de Guevara, a Spaniard. How these different writers have handled the same subject is not unworthy of the attention of the critic. The tragedy of M. de la Motte, from which Elvira is copied, is highly characteristic of the French drama. In the Lusiad, the beautiful victim expresses the strong emotions of genuine nature. She feels for what her lover will feel for her; the mother rises in her breast, she implores pity for her children ”

“ But Don Alonzo d'Arcilla is in this, as in every other part of his poem, greatly inferior to the poetical spirit of Camoëns. Milton, whose poetical conduct in concluding the action of his Paradise Lost, as already pointed out, seems formed upon the Lusiad, appears to have had this passage particularly in his eye. For, though the machinery of a visionary sphere was rather improper for the situation of his personages, he has, nevertheless, though at the expense of an impossible supposition, given Adam a view of the terrestrial globe. Michael sets the father of mankind on a mountain ”

“ Of his adventures in China, and the temporary prosperity he enjoyed there, while he held the somewhat uncongenial office of Provedor dos defuntos, i.e., Trustee for deceased persons, Mickle has given an ample account in the introduction to the Lusiad. During those years Camoëns completed his poem, about half of which was written before he left Europe. ”

“ All the objections which may be urged against an epic composition of this kind, are so very obvious, that from a mere sketch of the contents of the Lusiad, it is impossible to conceive how a poet, even of the most uncommon talents, could form a grand and beautiful whole on a plan at once so trivial and so irregular. But the plan of the composition of this poem resembles a scaffolding, which is surrounded and concealed by the beauty and grandeur of the building ”

“ At the commencement of the third canto, a new life is infused into the poem. But to try this poetic survey of Portuguese history, as it stands in connection with the whole, by any rule of prosaic verisimilitude, would be to depart from the poetic spirit of the Lusiad. In order to understand the narrative which Vasco da Gama relates to the King of Melinda, it is necessary to possess that knowledge of the events alluded to, which Camoens presumed every Portuguese to possess, but which in all probability could not have been possessed by a sovereign of Melinda. ”

“ He has a real tenderness, and a fine emotional sentimentality, while his patriotism is undeniable. But in spite of these merits, which at the best are fitter for the lyric [58] than the scope of the epic, the Lusiads suffer from the fatal defects of prolixity and commonplace, both in language and thought. The supernatural machinery is an example of childish imitation. Camoens has introduced the heathen mythology together with the sacred names of his own religion. The Portuguese poet had many precedents for the combination, but he is not strong enough to make us endure its essential absurdity. ”

“ Moreover, I have supplied the arguments to the several cantos, given a few more explanatory notes, and added a table of contents.
"The late ingenious translator of the Lusiad,"* says Lord Strangford, "has portrayed the character, and narrated the misfortunes of our poet, in a manner more honourable to his feelings as a man than to his accuracy in point of biographical detail. It is with diffidence that the present writer essays to correct his errors; but, as the real circumstances of the life of Camoëns are mostly to be found in his own minor compositions, with which Mr. ”

“ Johnson told me in 1772, that, about twenty years before that time, he himself had a design to translate the Lusiad, of the merit of which he spoke highly, but had been prevented by a number of other engagements.'
Mr. ”

“ Beneath the Lusian sweepy force o'erthrown,
Crush'd by their batter'd mails the wounded groan;
Burning with thirst they draw their panting breath,
And curse their prophet [214] as they writhe in death. ”

“ Had mark'd how bold the Lusian heroes shone,
What time he claim'd the proud Castilian throne, [425]
How matchless pour'd the tempest of their might,
When, thund'ring at his side, they rul'd the fight:
Nor less their ardent passion for the fair,
Gen'rous and brave, he view'd with wond'ring care,
When, crown'd with roses, to the nuptial bed
The warlike John his lovely daughter led—
'From Lusitania's clime,' the hero cries,
'The gallant champions of your fame shall rise.
Their hearts will burn (for well their hearts I know)
To pour your vengeance on the guilty foe. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Yet whatever liberties an epic or a tragic poet may commendably take in embellishing the actions of his heroes, an assertion relative to the scene where his poem opens, if false, must be equally ridiculous as to call Vespasian the first who had ever assumed the title of Cæsar. But it will be found that Camoens has not fallen into such absurdity. The poem opens with a description of the Lusitanian fleet, after having doubled the Cape of Hope, driving about in the great Ethiopian Ocean, so far from land that it required the care of the Gods to conduct it to some hospitable shore. ”