the national glory of Portugal, above that of all other Christian nations, on the ground that while the Portuguese, by their valour, were extending the dominion of the Catholic faith, and had not, for a considerable period, waged war against any of the European states, those states were contending against each other, and even in a certain measure, against the church of Rome. Tostrengthen, in some degree, the poetic probability by a matter of fact, Camoens has introduced, at the period when the intercourse between the Portuguese and the Indian Prince of Calecut commences, a Moor, named Monzayde, whose destiny had conducted him over land: to India; through this mediator, who speaks Spanish, and who finally becomes a Christian, the Indians are made acquainted with the power of the Por tuguese and Spanish arms. This Moor is also the interpreter, who, in the eighth canto, assists Paulo da Gama in explaining the historical pictures and embroideries to the Indian ambassador. In point of poetic merit, this supplement to the abstract of the history of Portugal, is far inferior to the narrative in the third and fifth Cantos :-but Camoens could find no other means of accomplishing his purpose; for he was equally reluctant to omit any thing which he conceived to belong to his pictures of Portuguese national glory, or to crowd too many of the events of former times into one part of his poem. None of these historical descriptions, which occupy a large portion of the eighth Canto, form finished pictures; they are mere sketches, and are, in general, deficient in poetic warmth; but the ninth Canto makes ample amends for this fault. The magic festival, which Venus pre

pares to recreate her beloved navigators, after the fatigues they have encountered, is boldly conceived, and charmingly executed; and in this part of the composition, the poet's fancy has revelled with evident delight. Camoens, like all the Portuguese poets of his age, next to the indulgence of heroic feeling, and all-powerful patriotism, was fond of luxuriantly pourtraying the passion of love. Except the fate of Inez de Castro, and the achievements of Nuno Alverez Pereira, at the battle of Aljuabarrota, the poet has exécuted no portion of his poem with such decided predilection, as the visit of the navigators to the enchanted island; and to no other part of the poem is so much space alloted in proportion to the whole. The long description of the preparations for the luxuriant festival, and of the festival itself, which commences at the eighteenth stanza of the ninth, and extends into the tenth Canto, is full of picturesque beauty. Its great prolixity, however, must, even according to the correct plan which Camoens followed, be accounted a defect in the composition. But the reader, like the poet himself, soon forgets every thing but the seductive painting, which sometimes, it must be confessed, only just respects the boundaries of decorum, which yet, upon the whole, offends no elevated feeling, and which has not been surpassed by any later poet in the same style. The first idea of the island of love, on which Camoens makes Venus entertain the Portuguèse navigators, seems borrowed from Ariosto, but Ariosto's description of the magic gardens of Alcina, scarcely affords a ground-work for the scenes and situations in the Lusiad. There is, however, little room to doubt

that Tasso, when he trod in Ariosto's footsteps, in order to describe the abode of Armida, availed himself of the description of Camoens. In the tone of frank simplicity, with which the festival is announced, the character of the poet is again manifested. It is described as merely "a refreshment for restoring the exhausted strength of the navigators; some interest for those fatigues which render short life still shorter.' Venus, in her car drawn by doves, descends from Mount Ida in quest of Cupid. She finds him with a throng of loves employed in forging arrows. The fuel used in the process of forging, is allegorically and whimsically described to be human hearts, and the red hot arrows are cooled in tears. Cupid and his little deputies are directed to wound a number of goddesses and sea-nymphs, so that every individual on board Vasco da Gama's fleet, shall, on landing on the magic Island, find himself in the situation of a happy lover. Meanwhile Venus adorns the island with the loveliest charms of nature. On first landing, the navigators know not where they are, but they are soon satisfied with the pleasing reality, without concerning themselves about the nature of the miracle which has transported them to a terrestrial heaven. When the festival is drawing to a close, the poet, for the first time, explains the object of the fiction, by stating it to be an allegorical representation of the happiness which is the reward of courage and virtue. After this cold manner of dissolving the enchantment, the unprejudiced reader feels little interest in the conclusion of the poem. The stanzas in which the prophetic nymph celebrates the future achievements of the Portuguese,

are historical fragments, the connexion of which must be studied, in order to form a just estimate of their poetic merits and demerits. The geographic supplement, which is put into the mouth of Thetis, is still colder, notwithstanding the singular idea of the globe which hovers in the air, and which exalts the miracle of the geographic lecture. But thus is the sympathy of the reader more powerfully excited by the passage towards the end of the Lusiad, where Camoens speaks of himself, which he had refrained from doing in the preceding part of the work. As he approached the close of his labour, he was impressed with the conviction, that no earthly happiness awaited him; and now saw "his years descending, and the transition, from summer to autumn, near at hand; his genius, frozen by the coldness of fate, and he himself borne down by sorrow into the stream of black oblivion and eternal sleep." His heart then pours forth the epiphonema of the poem, consisting of a didactic apos trophe to his sovereign, full of loyalty, but not less abounding in honest zeal for truth, justice, and virtue,

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An epic poem, so powerfully imbued with intensity of feeling and character as the Lusiad, naturally calls to mind Dante's Divina Comedia, and Klopstock's Messiah. But the Lusiad bears, in other respects, no more resemblance to the Messiah, than to every other great poem, in which the beauties make amends for the exercise of indulgence towards numerous faults. The Lusiad presents a greater similarity to the works of Dante. Both poems are epic, though neither are epopees, in the strict sense of the term. Both are singular, but truly poetic in invention, and, in both,

the full stream of purest poetry is incessantly broken by false learning, and various unpoetic excressences. But, with respect to the invention, the Divina Comedia is, in its original plan, trivial, and only becomes grand by the poetic filling up of the vast divisions of hell, purgatory, and heaven. The Lusiad is more poetic in its outline, but not so rich in its internal parts. Finally, the two poems are distinguished by the kind of feeling which prevails in each, and by a total difference of style. Dante introduced all the variety of the terrestrial world, of which he had perfect command, into the mystic region of a celestial and subterraneous existence, in which he, as a Christian, placed faith; and the whole plan of his extraordinary poem has for its object, the pious apotheoses of his beloved Beatrice. Camoens glowed with patriotism and heroism; and to avoid weakening the patriotic, and nationally heroic character of his poem, by the force of religious interest, he preferred introducing into his terrestrial fiction, the heaven of mythology, because he felt that it afforded him the finest imagery. Dante's style is, throughout, energetic, frequently rude, and always characteristic of the spirit of the extraordinary writer, who stood alone, and who, in a great measure, him self created the language in which he expressed his feelings. Camoens, like Ariosto, was wholly the man of his age, and his country; a fact which is sufficiently evident from the delicate and luxuriant style, which he partly borrowed from Ariosto, and which he only cultivated as far as was necessary, for the expression of the serious epopœia.