The Lusiad Part 53

[679] _Reviv'd, unenvied._--Thus imitated, or rather translated into Italian by Guarini:--

"Con si sublime stil' forse cantato Havrei del mio Signor l'armi e l'honori, Ch' or non havria de la Meonia tromba Da invidiar Achille."

Similarity of condition, we have already observed, produced similarity of complaint and sentiment in Spenser and Camoens. Each was unworthily neglected by the grandees of his age, yet both their names will live, when the remembrance of the courtiers who spurned them shall _sink beneath their mountain tombs_. These beautiful stanzas from Phinehas Fletcher on the memory of Spenser, may also serve as an epitaph for Camoens. The unworthy neglect, which was the lot of the Portuguese bard, but too well appropriates to him the elegy of Spenser. And every reader of taste, who has perused the Lusiad, will think of the Cardinal Henrico, and feel the indignation of these manly lines:--

"Witness our Colin{*}, whom tho' all the Graces And all the Muses nurst; whose well-taught song Parna.s.sus' self and Glorian{**} embraces, And all the learn'd and all the shepherds throng; Yet all his hopes were crost, all suits denied; Discouraged, scorn'd, his writings vilified: Poorly (poor man) he liv'd; poorly (poor man) he died.

"And had not that great hart (whose honoured head{***} All lies full low) pitied thy woful plight, There hadst thou lien unwept, unburied, Unblest, nor graced with any common rite; Yet shalt thou live, when thy great foe{****} shall sink Beneath his mountain tombe, whose fame shall stink; And time his blacker name shall blurre with blackest ink."

{*} Colin Clout, Spenser.

{**} Glorian, Elizabeth in the Faerie Queen.

{***} The Earl of Ess.e.x.

{****} Lord Burleigh.

[680] Achilles, son of Peleus.