The Lusiad Part 25

Up the rough road Alcides, Hermes, strove, All men like you, Apollo, Mars, and Jove: Like you to bless mankind Minerva toil'd; Diana bound the tyrants of the wild; O'er the waste desert Bacchus spread the vine; And Ceres taught the harvest-field to shine.

Fame rear'd her trumpet; to the blest abodes She rais'd, and hail'd them G.o.ds, and sprung of G.o.ds.

"The love of fame, by heav'n's own hand impress'd, The first, and n.o.blest pa.s.sion of the breast, May yet mislead.--Oh guard, ye hero train, No harlot robes of honours false and vain, No tinsel yours, be yours all native gold, Well-earn'd each honour, each respect you hold: To your lov'd king return a guardian band, Return the guardians of your native land; To tyrant power be dreadful; from the jaws Of fierce oppression guard the peasant's cause.

If youthful fury pant for shining arms, Spread o'er the eastern world the dread alarms;[588]

There bends the Saracen the hostile bow, The Saracen thy faith, thy nation's foe; There from his cruel gripe tear empire's reins, And break his tyrant-sceptre o'er his chains.

On adamantine pillars thus shall stand The throne, the glory of your native land; And Lusian heroes, an immortal line, Shall ever with us share our isle divine."

DISSERTATION

ON THE

FICTION OF THE ISLAND OF VENUS.

From the earliest ages, and in the most distant nations, palaces, forests and gardens, have been the favourite themes of poets. And though, as in Homer's island of Rhadamanthus, the description is sometimes only cursory; at other times they have lavished all their powers, and have vied with each other in adorning their edifices and landscapes. The gardens of Alcinous in the Odyssey, and Elysium in the aeneid, have excited the ambition of many imitators. Many instances of these occur in the later writers. These subjects, however, it must be owned, are so natural to the genius of poetry, that it is scarcely fair to attribute to an imitation of the cla.s.sics, the innumerable descriptions of this kind which abound in the old romances. In these, under different allegorical names, every pa.s.sion, every virtue and vice, had its palace, its enchanted bower, or its dreary cave. Among the Italians, on the revival of letters, Pulci, Boiardo, and others, borrowed these fictions from the Gothic romancers; Arios...o...b..rrowed from them, and Spenser has copied Ariosto and Ta.s.so. In the sixth and seventh books of the Orlando Furioso, there is a fine description of the island and palace of Alcina, or Vice; and in the tenth book (but inferior to the other in poetical colouring), we have a view of the country of Logistilla, or Virtue. The pa.s.sage, of this kind, however, where Ariosto has displayed the richest poetical painting, is in the x.x.xiv. book, in the description of Paradise, whither he sends Astolpho, the English duke, to ask the help of St. John to recover the wits of Orlando. The whole is most admirably fanciful. Astolpho mounts the clouds on the winged horse, sees Paradise, and, accompanied by the Evangelist, visits the moon; the adventures in which orb are almost literally translated in Milton's Limbo. But the pa.s.sage which may be said to bear the nearest resemblance to the descriptive part of the island of Venus, is the landscape of Paradise, of which the ingenious Mr. Hoole, to whose many acts of friendship I am proud to acknowledge myself indebted, has obliged me with this translation, though only ten books of his Ariosto are yet published.

"O'er the glad earth the blissful season pours The vernal beauties of a thousand flowers In varied tints: there show'd the ruby's hue, The yellow topaz, and the sapphire blue.

The mead appears one intermingled blaze Where pearls and diamonds dart their trembling rays.

Not emerald here so bright a verdure yields As the fair turf of those celestial fields.

On ev'ry tree the leaves unfading grow, The fruitage ripens and the flow'rets blow!

The frolic birds, gay-plum'd, of various wing Amid the boughs their notes melodious sing: Still lakes, and murm'ring streams, with waters clear, Charm the fix'd eye, and lull the list'ning ear.

A soft'ning genial air, that ever seems In even tenor, cools the solar beams With fanning breeze; while from the enamell'd field, Whate'er the fruits, the plants, the blossoms yield Of grateful scent, the stealing gales dispense The blended sweets to feed th' immortal sense.

"Amid the plain a palace dazzling bright, Like living flame, emits a streamy light, And, wrapp'd in splendour of refulgent day, Outshines the strength of ev'ry mortal ray.

"Astolpho gently now directs his speed To where the s.p.a.cious pile enfolds the mead In circuit wide, and views with eager eyes Each nameless charm that happy soil supplies.

With this compar'd, he deems the world below A dreary desert and a seat of woe!

By Heaven and Nature, in their wrath bestow'd, In evil hour, for man's unblest abode.

"Near and more near the stately walls he drew, In steadfast gaze transported at the view: They seem'd one gem entire, of purer red Than deep'ning gleams transparent rubies shed.

Stupendous work! by art Daedalian rais'd, Transcending all by feeble mortals prais'd!

No more henceforth let boasting tongues proclaim Those wonders of the world, so chronicled by fame!"

Camoens read and admired Ariosto; but it by no means follows that he borrowed the hint of his island of Venus from that poet. The luxury of flowery description is as common in poetry as are the tales of love. The heroes of Ariosto meet beautiful women in the palace of Alcina:--

"Before the threshold wanton damsels wait, Or, sport between the pillars of the gate: But, beauty more had brighten'd in their face Had modesty attemper'd ev'ry grace; In vestures green each damsel swept the ground, Their temples fair, with leafy garlands crown'd.

These, with a courteous welcome, led the knight To this sweet Paradise of soft delight....

Enamour'd youths and tender damsels seem To chant their loves beside a purling stream.

Some by a branching tree, or mountain's shade, In sports and dances press the downy glade, While one discloses to his friend, apart, The secret transport of his am'rous heart."--BOOK vi.

But these descriptions also, which bring the homes of knight-errantry into the way of beautiful wantons, are as common in the old romance as the use of the alphabet: and indeed the greatest part of these love-adventures are evidently borrowed from the fable of Circe.

Astolpho, who was transformed into a myrtle by Alcina, thus informs Rogero:--

"Her former lovers she esteem'd no more, For many lovers she possess'd before; I was her joy---- Too late, alas, I found her wav'ring mind In love inconstant as the changing wind!

Scarce had I held two months the fairy's grace, When a new youth was taken to my place: Rejected, then, I join'd the banish'd herd That lost her love, as others were preferr'd ...

Some here, some there, her potent charms retain, In diverse forms imprison'd to remain; In beeches, olives, palms, or cedars clos'd, Or, such as me, you here behold expos'd; In fountains some, and some in beasts confin'd, As suits the wayward fairy's cruel mind."

HOOLE, Ar. bk. vi.

When incidents, character, and conduct confess the resemblance, we may, with certainty, p.r.o.nounce from whence the copy is taken. Where only a similar stroke of pa.s.sion or description occurs, it belongs alone to the arrogance of dulness, to tell us on what pa.s.sage the poet had his eye.

Every great poet has been persecuted in this manner: Milton in particular. His commentators have not left him a flower of his own growth. Yet, like the creed of the atheist, their system is involved in the deepest absurdity. It is easy to suppose that men of poetical feelings, in describing the same thing, should give us the same picture.

But, that the Paradise Lost, which forms one animated whole of the n.o.blest poetry, is a mere cento, compiled from innumerable authors, ancient and modern, is a supposition which gives Milton a cast of talents infinitely more extraordinary and inexplicable than the greatest poetical genius. When Gaspar Poussin painted clouds and trees in his landscapes, he did not borrow the green and the blue of the leaf and the sky from Claude Lorraine. Neither did Camoens, when he painted his island of Venus, spend the half of his life in collecting his colours from all his predecessors who had described the beauties of the vernal year, or the stages of pa.s.sion. Camoens knew how others had painted the flowery bowers of love; these formed his taste, and corrected his judgment. He viewed the beauties of nature with poetical eyes, from thence he drew his landscapes; he had felt all the allurements of love, and from thence he describes the agitations of that pa.s.sion.

Nor is the description of fairy bowers and palaces, though most favourite topics, peculiar to the romances of chivalry. The poetry of the orientals also abounds with them, yet, with some characteristic differences. Like the const.i.tutions and dress of the Asiatics, the landscapes of the eastern muse are warm and feeble, brilliant and slight, and, like the manners of the people, wear an eternal sameness.

The western muse, on the contrary, is nervous as her heroes, sometimes flowery as her Italian or English fields, sometimes majestically great as her Runic forests of oak and pine; and always various, as the character of her inhabitants. Yet, with all those differences of feature, several oriental fictions greatly resemble the island of Circe, and the flowery dominions of Alcina. In particular, the adventures of Prince Agib, or the third Calender, in the Arabian Tales, afford a striking likeness of painting and catastrophe.

If Ariosto's, however, seem to resemble any eastern fiction, the island of Venus in Camoens bears a more striking resemblance to a pa.s.sage in Chaucer. The following beautiful piece of poetical painting occurs in the a.s.sembly of the Fowles:--

"The bildir oak, and eke the hardie ashe, The pillir elme, the coffir unto caraine, The boxe pipetre, the holme to whippis la.s.she, The sailing firre, the cypres deth to plaine, The shortir ewe, the aspe for shaftis plaine, The olive of pece, and eke the dronkin vine, The victor palme, the laurir to divine.

A gardein sawe I full of blossomed bowis, Upon a river, in a grene mede There as sweetness evirmore inough is, With flouris white, and blewe, yelowe, and rede, And colde and clere wellestremis, nothing dede, That swommin full of smale fishis light, With finnis rede, and scalis silver bright.

On every bough the birdis herd I syng With voice of angell, in ther harmonie That busied 'hem, ther birdis forthe to bryng, And little pretie conies to ther plaie gan hie; And furthir all about I gan espie The dredful roe, the buck, the hart and hind, Squirils, and bestis smal of gentle kind.

Of instrumentes of stringis, in accorde Herd I so plaie a ravishyng swetnesse, That G.o.d, that makir is of all and Lorde, Ne herd nevir a better, as I gesse, There with a winde, unneth it might be lesse, Made in the levis grene a noise soft Accordant to the foulis song en loft.

The aire of the place so attempre was, That ner was there grevaunce of hot ne cold--

Under a tre beside a well I seye Cupid our lorde his arrowes forge and file, And at his fete his bowe all redie laye, And well his doughtir temprid all the while The heddis in the well, and with her wile She couchid 'hem aftir as thei should serve, Some for to flea, and some to wound and carve.

And upon pillirs grete of Jaspir long I saw a temple of Bra.s.se ifoundid strong.

And about the temple dauncid alwaie Women inow, of which some there ywere Faire of 'hemself, and some of 'hem were gaie, In kirtils all disheveled went thei there, That was ther office or from yere to yere, And on the temple sawe I white and faire Of dovis sittyng many a thousande paire."

Here we have Cupid forging his arrows, the woodland, the streams, the music of instruments and birds, the frolics of deer and other animals; and _women enow_. In a word, the island of Venus is here sketched out, yet Chaucer was never translated into Latin or any language of the continent, nor did Camoens understand a line of English. The subject was common, and the same poetical feelings in Chaucer and Camoens pointed out to each what were the beauties of landscapes and of bowers devoted to pleasure.

Yet, though the fiction of bowers, of islands, and palaces, was no novelty in poetry, much, however, remains to be attributed to the poetical powers and invention of Camoens. The island of Venus contains, of all others, by much the completest gradation, and fullest a.s.semblage of that species of luxuriant painting. Nothing in the older writers is equal to it in fulness. Nor can the island of Armida, in Ta.s.so, be compared to it, in poetical embroidery or pa.s.sionate expression; though Ta.s.so as undoubtedly built upon the model of Camoens, as Spenser appropriated the imagery of Ta.s.so when he described the bower of Acrasia, part of which he has literally translated from the Italian poet. The beautiful fictions of Armida and Acrasia, however, are much too long to be here inserted, and they are well known to every reader of taste.

But the chief praise of our poet is yet unmentioned. The introduction of so beautiful a fiction as an essential part of the conduct and machinery of an epic poem, does the greatest honour to the invention of Camoens.

The machinery of the former part of the poem not only acquires dignity, but is completed by it. And the conduct of Homer and Virgil has, in this, not only received a fine imitation, but a masterly contrast. In the finest allegory the heroes of the Lusiad receive their reward: and, by means of this allegory, our poet gives a n.o.ble imitation of the n.o.blest part of the aeneid. In the tenth Lusiad, GAMA and his heroes hear the nymphs in the divine palace of Thetis sing the triumphs of their countrymen in the conquest of India: after this the G.o.ddess shows GAMA a view of the eastern world, from the Cape of Good Hope to the furthest islands of j.a.pan. She poetically describes every region, and the princ.i.p.al islands, and concludes, "All these are given to the western world by you." It is impossible any poem can be summed up with greater sublimity. The Fall of Troy is nothing to this. Nor is this all: the most masterly fiction, finest compliment, and ultimate purpose of the aeneid is not only n.o.bly imitated, but the conduct of Homer, in concluding the Iliad, as already observed, is paralleled, without one circ.u.mstance being borrowed. 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. Milton certainly heard of Fanshaw's translation of the Lusiad, though he might never have seen the original, for it was published fourteen years before he gave his Paradise Lost to the world. But, whatever he knew of it, had the last book of the Lusiad been two thousand years known to the learned, every one would have owned that the two last boots of the Paradise Lost were evidently formed upon it. But whether Milton borrowed any hint from Camoens is of little consequence. That the genius of the great Milton suggested the conclusion of his immortal poem in the manner and with the machinery of the Lusiad, is enough. It is enough that the part of Michael and Adam in the two last books of the Paradise Lost are, in point of conduct, exactly the same with the part of Thetis and GAMA in the conclusion of the Lusiad. Yet, this difference must be observed; in the narrative of his last book, Milton has flagged, as Addison calls it, and fallen infinitely short of the untired spirit of the Portuguese poet.

END OF THE NINTH BOOK.

BOOK X.

THE ARGUMENT.

In the opening of this, the last canto, the poet resumes the allegory of the Isle of Joy, or of Venus: the fair nymphs conduct their lovers to their radiant palaces, where delicious wines sparkle in every cup.

Before the poet describes the song of a prophetic siren, who celebrates the praise of the heroes who are destined in enn.o.ble the name of their country, he addresses himself to his muse in a tone of sorrow, which touches us the more deeply when we reflect upon the unhappy situation to which this great poet was at last reduced. In the song of the siren, which follows, is afforded a prophetic view from the period of Gama's expedition down to Camoens' own times, in which Pacheco, and other heroes of Portugal, pa.s.s in review before the eye of the reader. When the siren has concluded her prophetic song, Thetis conducts Gama to the top of a mountain and addresses him in a set speech. The poem concludes with the poet's apostrophe to King Sebastian.