The Lusiad Part 46

"But the pencil was wanting, colors were wanting, honour, reward, favour, the nourishers of the arts." This seemed to the translator as in impropriety, and contrary to the purpose of the whole speech of Paulus, which was to give the catual a high idea of Portugal. In the fate of the imaginary painter, the Lusian poet gives us the picture of his own, resentment wrung this impropriety from him. The spirit of the complaint, however, is preserved in the translation. The couplet--

"Immortal fame his deathless labours gave; Poor man, he sunk neglected to the grave!"

is not in the original. It is the sigh of indignation over the unworthy fate of the unhappy Camoens.

[535] _The ghost-like aspect and the threat'ning look._--Mohammed, by some historians described as of a pale livid complexion, and _trux aspectus et vox terribilis_, of a fierce threatening aspect, voice, and demeanour.

[536]

_When, softly usher'd by the milky dawn, The sun first rises.--_

"I deceive myself greatly," says Castera, "if this simile is not the most n.o.ble and the most natural that can be found in any poem. It has been imitated by the Spanish comedian, the ill.u.s.trious Lopez de Vega, in his comedy of Orpheus and Eurydice, act i. sc. 1:--

"_Como mirar puede ser El sol al amanecer, I quando se enciende, no._"

Castera adds a very loose translation of these Spanish lines in French verse. The literal English is, _As the sun may be beheld at its rising, but, when ill.u.s.triously kindled, cannot_. Naked, however, as this is, the imitation of Camoens is evident. As Castera is so very bold in his encomium of this fine simile of the sun, it is but justice to add his translation of it, together with the original Portuguese, and the translation of Fanshaw. Thus the French translator:--

_Les yeux peuvent soutenir la clarte du soleil naissant, mais lorsqu'il s'est avance dans sa carriere lumineuse, et que ses rayons repandent les ardeurs du midi, on tacherait en vain de l'envisager; un prompt aveuglement serait le prix de cette audace._

Thus elegantly in the original:--

"Em quanto he fraca a forca desta gente, Ordena como em tudo se resista, Porque quando o Sol sahe, facilmente Se pde nelle por a aguda vista: Porem despois que sobe claro, & ardente, Se a agudeza dos olhos o conquista Tao cega fica, quando ficareis, Se raizes criar lhe nao tolheis."

And thus humbled by Fanshaw:--

"_Now_ whilst this people's strength is not yet knit, Think how ye may resist them by all ways.

For when the _Sun_ is in his _nonage_ yit, Upon his _morning beauty_ men may gaze; But let him once up to his _zenith_ git, He strikes them _blind_ with his _meridian rays_; So _blind_ will ye be, if ye look not too't, If ye permit these _cedars_ to take root."

[537]

_Around him stand, With haggard looks, the h.o.a.ry Magi band.--_

The Brahmins, the diviners of India. Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus, l. 23, says, that the Persian Magi derived their knowledge from the Brachmanes of India. And Arria.n.u.s, l. 7, expressly gives the Brahmins the name of Magi. The Magi of India, says he, told Alexander, on his pretensions to divinity, that in everything he was like other men, except that he took less rest, and did more mischief. The Brahmins are never among modern writers called Magi.

[538] _The hov'ring demon gives the dreadful sign._--This has an allusion to the truth of history. Barros relates, that an anger being brought before the Zamorim, "_Em hum vaso de agua l'he mostrara hunas naos, que vin ham de muy longe para a India, e que a gente d'ellas seria total destruicam dos Mouros de aquellas partes._--In a vessel of water he showed him some ships which from a great distance came to India, the people of which would effect the utter subversion of the Moors." Camoens has certainly chosen a more poetical method of describing this divination, a method in the spirit of Virgil; nor in this is he inferior to his great master. The supernatural flame which seizes on Lavinia while a.s.sisting at the sacrifice alone excepted, every other part of the augury of Latinus, and his dream in the Albunean forest, whither he went to consult his ancestor, the G.o.d Faunus, in dignity and poetical colouring, cannot come in comparison with the divination of the Magi, and the appearance of the demon in the dream of the Moorish priest.

[539] _Th'eternal yoke._--This picture, it may perhaps be said, is but a bad compliment to the heroes of the Lusiad, and the fruits of their discovery. A little consideration, however, will vindicate Camoens. It is the demon and the enemies of the Portuguese who procure this divination; everything in it is dreadful, on purpose to determine the zamorim to destroy the fleet of GAMA. In a former prophecy of the conquest of India (when the catual describes the sculpture of the royal palace), our poet has been careful to ascribe the happiest effects to the discovery of his heroes:--

"Beneath their sway majestic, wise, and mild, Proud of her victors' laws, thrice happier India smil'd."

[540] _So let the tyrant plead._--In this short declamation, a seeming excrescence, the business of the poem in reality is carried on. The zamorim, and his prime minister, the catual, are artfully characterised in it; and the a.s.sertion--

_Lur'd was the regent with the Moorish gold,_

is happily introduced by the declamatory reflections which immediately precede it.

[541]

_The Moors----their ancient deeds relate, Their ever-faithful service of the state.--_

An explanation of the word _Moor_ is here necessary. When the East afforded no more field for the sword of the conqueror, the Saracens, a.s.sisted by the Moors, who had embraced their religion, laid the finest countries in Europe in blood and desolation. As their various embarkations were from the empire of Morocco, the Europeans gave the name of _Moors_ to all the professors of the Mohammedan religion. In the same manner the eastern nations blended all the armies of the Crusaders under one appellation, and the _Franks_, of whom the army of G.o.dfrey was mostly composed, became their common name for all the inhabitants of the West. Before the arrival of GAMA, as already observed, all the traffic of the East, from the Ethiopian side of Africa to China, was in the hands of Arabian Mohammedans, who, without incorporating with the pagan natives, had their colonies established in every country commodious for commerce. These the Portuguese called Moors; and at present the Mohammedans of India are called the Moors of Hindostan by our English writers. The intelligence these Moors gave to one another, relative to the actions of GAMA; the general terror with which they beheld the appearance of Europeans, whose rivalship they dreaded as the destruction of their power; the various frauds and arts they employed to prevent the return of one man of GAMA'S fleet to Europe, and their threat to withdraw from the dominions of the zamorim, are all according to the truth of history. The speeches of the zamorim and of GAMA, which follow, are also founded in truth.

[542] Troy.

[543] _No sumptuous gift thou bring'st._--"As the Portuguese did not expect to find any people but savages beyond the Cape of Good Hope, they only brought with them some preserves and confections, with trinkets of coral, of gla.s.s, and other trifles. This opinion, however, deceived them. In Melinda and in Calicut they found civilized nations, where the arts flourished; who wanted nothing; who were possessed of all the refinements and delicacies on which we value ourselves. The King of Melinda had the generosity to be contented with the present which GAMA made; but the zamorim, with a disdainful eye, beheld the gifts which were offered to him. The present was this: Four mantles of scarlet, six hats adorned with feathers, four chaplets of coral beads, twelve Turkey carpets, seven drinking cups of bra.s.s, a chest of sugar, two barrels of oil, and two of honey."--CASTERA.

[544] _Fair Acidalia, Love's celestial queen._--Castera derives Acidalia from ???d??, which, he says, implies to act without fear or restraint.

Acidalia is one of the names of Venus, in Virgil; derived from Acidalus, a fountain sacred to her in Botia.

[545] _Sprung from the prince._--John I.

[546] _And from her raging tempests, nam'd the Cape._--Bartholomew Diaz, was the first who discovered the southmost point of Africa. He was driven back by the storms, which on these seas were thought always to continue, and which the learned of former ages, says Osorius, thought impa.s.sable. Diaz, when he related his voyage to John II. called the southmost point the Cape of Tempests. The expectation of the king, however, was kindled by the account, and with inexpressible joy, says the same author, he immediately named it the Cape of Good Hope.

[547]

_The pillar thus of deathless fame, begun By other chiefs_, etc.--

"Till I now ending what those did begin, The furthest pillar in thy realm advance; Breaking the element of molten tin, Through horrid storms I lead to thee the dance."

FANSHAW.

[548]

_The regent's palace high o'erlook'd the bay, Where Gama's black-ribb'd fleet at anchor lay._--

The resemblance of this couplet to many pa.s.sages in Homer, must be obvious to the intelligent critic.

[549] _As in the sun's bright beam._--Imitated from Virgil, who, by the same simile, describes the fluctuation of the thoughts of aeneas, on the eve of the Latian war:--

"Laomedontius heros Cuncta videns, magno curarum fluctuat aestu, Atque animum nunc huc celerem, nunc dividit illuc, In partesque rapit varias, perque omnia versat.

Sicut aquae tremulum labris ubi lumen ahenis Sole repercussum, aut radiantis imagine Lunae, Omnia pervolitat late loca: jamque sub auras Erigitur, summique ferit laquearia tecti."

"This way and that he turns his anxious mind, Thinks, and rejects the counsels he design'd; Explores himself in vain, in ev'ry part, And gives no rest to his distracted heart: So when the sun by day or moon by night Strike on the polish'd bra.s.s their trembling light, The glitt'ring species here and there divide, And cast their dubious beams from side to side; Now on the walls, now on the pavement play, And to the ceiling flash the glaring day."

Ariosto has also adopted this simile in the eighth book of his Orlando Furioso:--

"Qual d'acqua chiara il tremolante lume Dal Sol per percossa, o da' notturni rai, Per gli ampli tetti va con lungo salto A destra, ed a sinistra, e ba.s.so, ed alto."

"So from a water clear, the trembling light Of Phbus, or the silver ray of night, Along the s.p.a.cious rooms with splendour plays, Now high, now low, and shifts a thousand ways."

HOOLE.

But the happiest circ.u.mstance belongs to Camoens. The velocity and various shiftings of the sun-beam, reflected from a piece of crystal or polished steel in the hand of a boy, give a much stronger idea of the violent agitation and sudden shiftings of thought than the image of the trembling light of the sun or moon reflected from a vessel of water. The brazen vessel, however, and not the water, is only mentioned by Dryden.

Nor must another inaccuracy pa.s.s un.o.bserved. That the reflection of the moon _flashed the glaring day_ is not countenanced by the original.

We have already seen the warm encomium paid by Ta.s.so to his contemporary, Camoens. That great poet, the ornament of Italy, has also testified his approbation by several imitations of the Lusiad. Virgil, in no instance, has more closely copied Homer, than Ta.s.so has imitated the appearance of Bacchus, or the evil demon, in the dream of the Moorish priest. The enchanter Ismeno thus appears to the sleeping Solyman:--