tragedies than any other to be found in modern history.* It is to this deeply pathetic episode in the Lusiad, we owe the beautiful tale of Olinda, as related by Tasso in his Gerusalemme. Thus, in Camoens, we have, here an allegory, or series of allegories; there an historical sketch; now a description, and anon a portraiture of manners and customs; we turn from a description of a tempest to a picture of an Eastern landscape, which in turn is succeeded by one of female beauty and loveliness. In order to afford sufficient scope for all this variety, without violating the rules of epic poetry, the fleet is made to afford views of Asia, Africa, and America, as well as Europe; so that the reader never wearies, always certain as he is that not more than a half dozen stanzas lie between him and some novelty that is to be found nowhere else. Every time the fleet enters a harbor, or even approaches the coast, people, unlike any ever met with before, present themselves and are described accordingly. Each of these descriptions has beauties peculiar to itself. The following extract, from the fourth book, will serve as a specimen :

"Here, various monsters of the wild were seen,
And birds of plumage, azure,'scarlet, green:
Here, various herbs, and flowers of various bloom;
There black as night the forest's horrid gloom,
Whose shaggy brakes, by human step untrod,
Darken'd the glaring lion's dread abode.
Here, as the monarch fix'd his wondering eyes,
Two hoary fathers from the streams arise;
Their aspect rustic, yet a reverend grace
Appear'd majestic on their wrinkled face;
Their tawny beards uncomb'd and sweepy long
Adown their knees in shaggy ringlets hung;
From every lock the crystal drops distill,
And bathe their limbs as in a trickling rill;
Gray wreaths of flowers, of fruitage, and of boughs,
Nameless in Europe, crown'd their furrow'd brows.
Bent o'er his staff, more silver'd o'er with years,
Worn with a longer way, the one appears,
Who now flow beckoning with his wither'd hand,
As now advanced before the king they stand."

* Don Pedro, eldest son of King Alfonso the Fourth, had married Inez, a young and beautiful Castilian lady, unknown to his father. The secret was not discovered until she had three beautiful children; when the nobles,

1

That a man like Camoens should have been persecuted and forced to drag out a miserable existence in the native country that he loved so well, is not strange. Such has ever been the fate of great thinkers, too proud of their divine gifts to fawn upon, or flatter the great. If Tasso suffered and wept, it was not for such noble independence as that which forms the most striking trait in the character of Camoens. The circumstances in which the two great epic poets were placed, in the commencement of their careers, had, however, a remarkable similarity. Camoens, as well as Tasso, was honored with court favor soon after he left the University of Coimbra, where he was educated. The author of the Lusiad, as well as the author of the Gerusalemme, was not only of an affectionate nature, but he aspired to love the highest and best in the land. To this dangerous ambition he added a tendency to satire. Neither was to be tolerated at the Royal court of Lisbon, and, accordingly, the too daring poet was banished. It was in vain he sought to move the hearts of the authors of his exile by sonnets and elegies, which, had he written nothing else, would have proved him a poet of no ordinary genius. The first effusion in which he laments his banishment, concludes as follows:

"Ye waves, transport the tears which now I weep,
Ye winds, upon your breezes waft my sighs
To where my long lost hopes of comfort sleep,
Where ye have borne the soul of her I prize."

jealous of the Spanish family of De Castro, revealed it to the king. Don Pedro was immediately sent for; but on being questioned he denied that there was any ground for the report. A conspiracy was at once formed against the life of the lady, in which the king joined. Taking three of his counsellors with him, he surprised Inez in her concealment while her husband was absent hunting. Suspecting his intent, she approached, pale and trembling, leading by the hand her three beautiful children; and throwing herself at his feet, implored for mercy. Her youth and loveliness, and the sight of his own grandchildren clinging to her for protection, softened his heart and he left without accomplishing his design. But being reproached by his companions with want of resolution, he bid themselves perform the deed; and in a few minutes her voice was silenced for ever. The rage of Don Pedro, on finding his unacknowledged wife a gory corpse before him, knew no bounds; and the terrible vengeance he executed on all the conspirators, save his father, gained him the title of Pedro the Cruel. An episode, for which Camoens had such materials as these, might well be supposed to possess a deep and touching pathos.

It would be needless, even if we had time and space for the task, to detail the adventures and misfortunes that chequered the life of Camoens, since there are few who take any interest in the struggles of genius, who are not already familiar with them. If what he has written were as well known as what he has suffered, perhaps no other epic poet-not excepting Milton--would be more read both in England and America. It will, therefore, be sufficient for our present purpose, to glance at an incident or two in his life, which show that in age, as well as in youth, he had just cause of complaint against the country whose greatest glory is to have produced such a man. The cause of his leaving Portugal is fully explained by himself, in a letter to a friend, which is still preserved in the Royal Library, at Lisbon. "When," he says, "I left that country, like one bound for another world, I sent all the hopes which, till then, I had nourished, to be hanged, with a cryer going before them, for utterers of false coin. I freed myself from these home thoughts, that there might not remain in me one stone upon another. The last words which I uttered were those of Scipio: "Ingrata patria non possidebis ossa mea. For, without an offence which could subject me to purgatory for three days, I have endured three thousand from ill tongues, worse intentions, and malignant wills, occasioned by pure envy." Though banished from court, he entertained no resentment against either the king or his ministers. Don John III. was just preparing an expedition against Africa; and the poet joined it and distinguished himself in several battles, especially in a naval engagement with the Moors, in the Straits of Gibraltar, in which he lost his right eye, while attempting to board one of the enemy's vessels. The fame he had acquired in this way caused him to obtain permission to return to Lisbon, but only to be banished a second time for a renewal of his attentions to his beloved Donna Catharina. Nor was he less a soldier in India than in his native country, or in the Mediterranean.

But it is needless to follow him in the various expeditions in which he engaged and fought with his usual bravery. Nor is it necessary to notice his successful efforts in time of peace, to earn an independent livelihood. Suffice it to say that, however well he was prospering in India by his industry, always devoting his leisure hours to the great work of his life, he still yearned for his beloved Portugal; and, in 1569, after an absence of sixteen

years, he returned to Lisbon. The King was so well pleased with his poem, that he gave him a pension, but though it was scarcely sufficient to procure him the necessaries of life, it was soon taken from him. So wretched a state was he in now, while the fame of the Lusiad had already extended to every part of Europe, that a faithful black servant, whom he had brought from Java, had to beg a morsel of bread for him after nightfall, through the streets of Lisbon. Finally, he had to take refuge in a charity hospital, where, according to Josepe Indio, a friar, who belonged to the institution, "he died without a shroud to cover him, after having triumphed in the East Indies, and sailed 5,500 leagues." It is worthy of remark, that Portugal has never been the same since. The poet himself felt that the once proud and generons spirit of the nation had passed away. In writing to his old friend Don Francisco de Almeyda, only one week before his death, he says: "The world shall witness how dearly I have loved my country. I have returned not merely to die in her bosom, but to die with her!"*

Such has been the fate of a man whom the greatest geniuses the world has produced, since his time, have been proud to honor. Tasso, who did not disdain to copy after so great a master in his Gerusalemme Liberata, addressed one of the noblest sonnets to be found in any language, to the hero of the Lusiad. The conclusion of which is but poorly rendered into English, as follows:

"Farther than thou didst sail his deathless song,
Shall bear the dazzling splendor of thy name;
And under many a sky thy actions crown,

While time and fame together glide along."

Although Voltaire liked no one that wrote in favor of Christianity, and was jealous of the fame of Camoens, on account of the inferiority of his own Henriade, intended for an epic, he could not deny that the Lusiad was full of grandeur and sublimity. He says, of the episode of Ignes, that "We cannot find even in Virgil, the most correct and pathetic author of antiquity, an incident more touching or more perfectly described." The same critic concludes his description of the Spirit of the Cape with the admis

* Veran todos que fuy tan aficionado a mi patria que, no solo bolvi para morir en ella, mas para morir con ella.

sion, "I believe that such a fiction would be thought noble and proper in all ages, and in all nations." This is high praise from one who, like Voltaire, scoffed at everything that contained any tinge of religion. The author of the Henriade is greatly amused because Gama, in a storm, addresses his prayers to Christ; but it is Venus who comes to his relief. In another part of his well known essay on the Lusiad, he says: "Bacchus et la Vierge Marie se trouverant tout naturellement ensemble." Montesquieu, a much honester critic, and one whose judgment was much less warped by prejudices, remarks, in his Spirit of Laws, that the Lusiad" combines the charms of the Odysse with the magnificence of the Eneid."* Nor is it alone the great thinkers of Southern Europe, who, besides the illustrious English authors already referred to, are thus enthusiastic in their admiration of Camoens. The Germans are more so, if possible. Frederick Schlegel, in his History of Literature, declares him superior to Tasso or Ariosto. "Uniformity appears," says that eminent critic, "to be well nigh inseparable from poetry that is essentially lyric; there is rather considerable beauty in the soft, elegiac tones which apostophize those charms that appeal to the senses. The epic poet, on the other hand, must be more copious and varied. He must embrace a world of circumstances, the spirit of the past and present, of his nation and of nature. He must be skilled to touch each chord of human passion; his strain must not be monotonous. In this epic richness, Camoens is far superior to Tasso: in the grand heroic of the former, there are passages whose tender delicacy yields not to Tasso's choicest lines; his lay, though warmed by southern fancy, often breathes a loving plaint of sorrow, whilst the raptu rous inspiration of the gentle passion elevates his verse to the dignity of a romantic epic. He blends the picturesque fulness of Ariosto with the musical enchantment of Tasso, and superadds the earnest grandeur of that genuine heroic element which Tasso longed for, but never attained. After what has been said, it may seem

* “ Les Portugais naviguant sur l'océan Atlantique decouvrirent la point la plus méridionale de l'Afrique ; ils virent une vaste mer; elle porta aux Indes Orientales; leurs perils sur cette mer, et la deconverte de Mozambique, de Melinde, et de Calecut ont été chanté par le Camoens, dont le poème fait sentir quelque chose des charmes de l'Odyssee, et de la magnificence de l'Enéide." Esprit du Loi, Tome xxi., c: 21.