These specimens will afford an adequate idea of the spirit and style of Gil Vicente’s Autos. His largest work of this class may, however, be referred to, in proof of the little attention he bestowed on dramatic plan in the composition of his spiritual comedies. It purports to be “A Summary of the History of God.” After the prologue, which is spoken by an Angel, Sir Lucifer (Senhor Lucifer,) enters, attended by a numerous retinue of devils. Belial is president of his court of justice (meirinho de corte), and Satan gentleman of his privy council, (fidalgo do conselho). After this privy counsellor has performed his part in the temptation of Adam and Eve in Paradise, the whole details of which are represented on the stage, Lucifer confers on him the dignities of duke and captain of the kingdoms of the world.91 Next succeeds a series of scenes which summarily represent the history of the christian redemption. The World accompanied by Time and angels enters as a king. The representation of the fall of man is followed by the history of Abel, by whom a beautiful and simple hymn is sung.92 The next scenes exhibit the histories of Abraham, Job, and David; and thus the Auto proceeds through the incidents of the old and new testaments until the ascension of Christ, which is represented on the stage amidst an accompaniment of drums and trumpets.
On comparing the Autos of Gil Vicente with those of Calderon, the difference appears not much less considerable than that which exists between the works of Hans Sachs and Shakespeare. But the graceful simplicity with which many of the scenes of these spiritual dramas are executed, raises the Portuguese poet infinitely above the poetic shoe-maker of Nuremberg.
The most unimportant of the dramatic works of Gil Vicente are those which the poet and his son have called comedies. One is a dramatized novel, in which a young lady, whom her lover, a priest, has seduced, appears on the stage in child-bed, and after long lamentations and discussions is actually delivered of a daughter. In the second half of the piece the child whose birth is thus announced has attained the age of womanhood, and is in her turn introduced as a lady loving and beloved. The action, however, is not destitute of interest. In the first half of the drama, a Witch, who summons the Devil on the stage, assists the unfortunate lady in child-bed, and afterwards, five laundresses (lavandeiras) make their appearance. Nevertheless, amidst much extravagance and absurdity, the author has represented several scenes of domestic life, in a style equally pleasing and natural. No example of the intrigue of the Spanish theatre is to be found in this piece, but there is introduced a fool (parvo), or more properly a waggish clown, a character which appears to be the rude prototype of the Spanish gracioso. Pleasing songs in the Spanish language are interspersed through the dialogue. The young girl who was born at the commencement of the piece takes leave of the public in the character of a princess. Several of Gil Vicente’s other works, which are styled comedies, are dramatized novels, similar to that just described. One which is entitled, A Floresta de Enganos, (the Forest or Gardens of Deception),93 is merely a dramatized garland of sprightly fancies enriched with allegorical and mythological ornaments. At the head of the dramatis personæ appears the burlesque character of a philosopher, who, because he has reproved some wicked men for their misconduct, is, by way of punishment, tied to a fool (parvo) with whom he is thus compelled to associate. He regards this punishment as the severest torture that could be inflicted on a philosopher. He speaks Spanish, and the replies of the fool are more remarkable for their rudeness than for their wit.94
Gil Vicente’s tragi-comedies may be regarded as rough outlines of that kind of drama which subsequently formed a variety of the heroic comedies95 of the Spanish stage. They are not historical dramas, but festival pieces adorned with a certain pomp of allegory, mythology, magic, &c. and occasionally interspersed with pathetic scenes. They were performed before the court on festivals or particular occasions, which are specified. One of these dramas, entitled, Amadis de Gaula, and founded on some of the incidents in the celebrated romance of the same name, was, in spite of its inoffensive character, forbidden to be performed in Spain in the reign of Philip II. The cause of this prohibition probably was, that the disguise of Amadis, as a pilgrim, was deemed a profanation of the sacred habit. This piece which is written in the Spanish language, is destitute of all merit of invention. Others of these dramas exhibit more traces of the poet’s fancy; but in none is there the foundation of a genuine dramatic plot. One entitled, Exhortaçaõ de Guerra, (Exhortation to War), was doubtless a favourite with the court. A pious magician appears who has learned necromancy in a sybil’s cave. By powerful spells he summons to his presence some subject demons, whom he suffers to revile him in the coarsest language.96 He however obliges them to conjure up the spirits of Polyxena, Penthesilea, Achilles, Scipio, and other celebrated characters of antiquity. These spirits appear in succession, and address fine compliments to the royal family. In another tragi-comedy Providence is introduced as a Princess. But the most varied of all is Triumpho do Invierno, (Winter’s Triumph), in two parts. Besides a multitude of characters, among which an allegorical personification of Winter is one of the most conspicuous, Gil Vicente exhibited to his audience a view of the open sea, agitated by a storm during the most inclement season of the year. The noise and confusion among the ships in distress, and the oaths and prayers of the Portuguese sailors expressed in rhymes and redondilhas, would naturally be gratifying to a public who at the period when the piece was written, took particular interest in maritime affairs.97 Another of these tragi-comedies is also a satire.
Gil Vicente was destined by nature to be a comic poet. His farças (farces) are by far his best productions; and to them he was indebted for the chief portion of his fame, as well as for the honourable but ill-chosen surname which some critics have applied to him. If the literary relationship between two dramatic writers were to be decided by the comic strength of their works, then indeed Gil Vicente might be truly termed a second Plautus. But neither in respect to their form nor their spirit can Vicente’s farces be ranked in the same class with the regular comedies of Plautus. Nevertheless the name of farces, was not given to those comic dramas, on account of their irregularity or their burlesque style. At the rise of the modern theatre in Spain and Portugal all dramas were denominated farces,98 and that the name has been continued to be applied to Vicente’s comedies, is an accident arising merely from the want of a better term of classification. It is in like manner the result of accident, that in France, England and Germany, the same term is still employed to distinguish precisely that species of drama to which Gil Vicente’s farces belong. These pieces are equally burlesque in their design and execution. They may, in a certain sense, be styled dramas of character; for Vicente attached great importance to the burlesque representation of some characters which he sketched from life. But he never thought of founding his comic interest on plot and intrigue; and in the degree of cultivation to which he had attained, and above which he never rose, he was incapable of designing and executing, on a comprehensive scale, a dramatic picture of character with true delicacy of outline, and still less with interesting truth of colouring. His farces, like his other dramas, have no regular plot for their ground-work. They are dramatic conceptions of scenes of real life, rapidly sketched by a glowing fancy, with genuine comic feeling, with a certain poetic keeping, even when derived from the commonest nature, and worked up by more or less of plastic talent, into some form, but without any regard to correctness, and altogether executed as a mere sportive task. In these farces the language and metrical form are the same as in Gil Vicente’s other dramas. The alternation of the Portuguese and Castilian idioms is seldom governed by any other rule than the caprice of the poet. Upon the whole Gil Vicente’s farces bear much resemblance to the Entremeses which subsequently became favourite entertainments on the Spanish stage; like them they are not divided either into acts or scenes.
Among the eleven dramas, which in the collected works of Gil Vicente are entitled farces, there are two festival pieces, in the popular style, which might with equal propriety have been ranged in one of the preceding classes. The first piece is truly a farce. Two miserable servants, the one a Portuguese, the other a Spaniard, who are almost starving in the service of two coxcombs, meet together in the street at midnight, and each in his respective language complains of his sad fate. The Portuguese describes his master as an enamoured enthusiast, who employs himself day and night in writing silly verses, and in singing them to his own wretched music, but who never appears to think of eating and drinking.99 This romantic gentleman (escudeiro) soon makes his appearance with one of his own song books in his hand. Before he begins to sing a song, he reads aloud its title, and names himself as the author. When he has finished it he commences a new song, first pronouncing very formally the words, “Another by the same,” in the style of the old Cancioneiros. He proceeds to sing under the window of his mistress Isabella, a miller’s coquetish daughter, where his music is accompanied by the barking of dogs and the mewing of cats. The blending of these songs, which though insipid, possess something of the tender and melancholy character of the old cantigas, with the conversation of the lover and his servant,—with the whisperings of the serenaded Isabella from her lattice window,—and with the rage of the gallant at the dogs and cats, which mortify him by the interruption of his singing, was doubtless calculated to operate very powerfully on the risibility of the audience, though much of the ludicrous effect of the scene must now be supplied by the imagination of the reader.100 The mother of Isabella at length appears, with a lantern in her hand, endeavouring to learn what is the cause of the uproar. Here a change of scene commences with the lamentations of the old woman in a burlesque caricature style.101 She enters into a dispute first with her coquetish daughter, who has expressed herself pleased with the serenade, and then with the gallant, who at length sings a farewell stanza, and departs. But this collection of songs and dialogues is as far from having any real dramatic object as are the other farces of Vicente, in which he sometimes introduces Witches,—at that period objects of particular interest with the public,—performing incantations in concert with the Devil; sometimes Frenchmen and Italians who speak a kind of broken Portuguese, perhaps often enough heard on the quays of Lisbon. In another of these lively entertaining dramas, an enamoured old man is the principal character.
Of all these farces, however, that entitled Inez Pereira, is distinguished by the most remarkable plot and the greatest stretch of dramatic talent. The history of this piece serves to throw some light on the relation in which Gil Vicente stood with respect to the Portuguese public. Some persons, it appears, had expressed doubts of his title to the authorship of the admired farces attributed to him, and in order to maintain the reputation of his talent, he was desirous that a pointed theme should be prescribed to him as a ground-work for dramatic composition. It was accordingly suggested that he would find a fit subject in the Portuguese proverb: “I prefer an ass that carries me, to a horse that throws me.”102 For the comic representation of this proverb, Vicente chose the prettily conceived story of a young girl, who rejects the matrimonial offer of a wealthy simpleton, because she is resolved to marry none but a man of superior understanding and talents. Inez at length finds a man after her own heart. She gives him her hand, but soon grows very unhappy, because she finds that with such a husband, his will must always be her law. She now sincerely repents the coyness with which she had listened to the proposals of her less gifted lover. Death soon interposes in her favour, and she becomes a widow. Her former suitor offers himself again, and Inez triumphs in the possession of a husband whom she finds it easy to manage. This happily chosen fable is worked up with more care than Vicente seems to have bestowed on his other farces. Had this poet been placed in circumstances similar to those which a hundred and fifty years later operated in favour of Moliere, Inez Pereira would in all probability have been made one of the best comic pieces of character in the dramatic literature of modern times. But in this drama Gil Vicente has contented himself with grouping his characters in a brilliant but confused throng, stringing his scenes together like a wreath of roses, exhibiting events, between which, days, weeks, and months intervene, in immediate succession, like pictures in a rareeshow; and thus upon the whole he has made little approximation towards the point of cultivated taste.103 But this farce supplies illustrations of the manners of the age, which could not easily be obtained from any other source.—We learn from it that the jews in Lisbon were then particularly celebrated as marriage brokers (casamenteiros) and that they carried on this employment as an ordinary branch of traffic. One of the suitors is introduced by some jews of this profession to Inez Pereira.
On reverting from the dramas of Gil Vicente to the poetic works of the classic writers, at whose head Saa de Miranda stands, the reader will find himself transported to a totally different world. But this transition belongs to the chronological order of the subject.
FERREIRA.
Antonio Ferreira, surnamed the Portuguese Horace, was born at Lisbon in the year 1528. His parents, who belonged to the first class of nobility, destined him for a statesman or public functionary. He obtained the degree of Doctor at the University of Coimbra, where he studied the civil law. He took however less interest in his jurisprudential studies than in the lectures of a professor of ancient literature, named Diogo de Tieve, who at that time possessed great celebrity, and for whom after quitting the university he continued to entertain a strong affection and regard. While Ferreira was pursuing his studies at Coimbra, the works of Horace, and other poets of antiquity, produced on him an impression totally different from that which was experienced by the other students, who directed their attention to ancient literature. Among the latter it was a fashion to write verses in latin, and to look with disdain on the Portuguese language; but Ferreira, while yet a youth, proved himself an enthusiastic lover of his mother tongue. He resolved not to write a line in any foreign language, not even in Spanish; and he faithfully kept his determination. In his beautiful introductory or dedicatory stanza, to readers after his own taste (a os bons engenhos) he intimates that his poems shall belong “to those readers to whose pure bosoms he may commit them. For himself he will be content with the glory of having it said that he loved his native land and his countrymen.”104 But the patriotic spirit which thus glowed in the soul of Ferreira was combined, in a manner then altogether uncommon, with a similar enthusiasm for the ancient classics, and particularly for the poetry of Horace. The example of Saa de Miranda had also its influence in forming his taste; and he closely studied the Italian poets from whom he learned to combine classic correctness of ideas and language, on the model of the ancients, with a natural poetic style, suited to the age in which he lived. The beautiful structure of Italian verse so charmed him, that he thought no other metres possessed sufficient dignity to entitle them to be introduced into Portuguese poetry. He accordingly never composed in redondilhas, and, generally speaking, in no verse in the old national style. The whole object of his ambition was to be a classical poet, and in that character to give to Portuguese poetry a new, and according to his taste, a more noble diction. Inspired with the hope of accomplishing this purpose, he laboured with so much assiduity, that before he left the university he had composed the greater portion of the hundred and thirteen sonnets which are contained in the collection of his poems. Whether the “Lady of his Thoughts,” who supplies in these sonnets the place of Petrarch’s Laura, was no imaginary character, is uncertain. It cannot, however, be doubted, that in his fifth elegy the poet alludes to a real and beloved Manila, who had been snatched from him by death. Ferreira was twenty-nine years of age when he published the first collection of his poetic works. He had previously been engaged in delivering academic lectures, probably on jurisprudence, in the university of Coimbra. In his poetic pursuits, he was joined by several young men of similar talent, particularly Andrade Caminha, Jeronymo Cortereal, and Diogo Bernardes, who, together with other poets of that age, formed a circle of disciples and admirers of Saa de Miranda. But he grew tired of his university studies, and visited the court where he soon acquired distinction. He obtained the high office of desembargador de camara de supplicaçaõ (judge of the council of grace), and he was likewise appointed a fidalgo da casa real (gentleman of the royal household). For the young poets of Portugal he now became an oracle of criticism; and a most brilliant prospect had opened itself to him, when in the year 1569, and at the age of forty-one, he died of the plague which was supposed to be brought to Lisbon from the Levant. A monument was erected to his memory in the church where he was buried; but the stone is now much defaced.105
Though not a poet of the first rank, Ferreira has, as a classical poet, been surpassed by no other in Portuguese literature, and has in that respect also had but few equals in the literature of Spain. His fancy was circumscribed, and to originality he seems to have put forth no pretension; but the sound taste which he manifested from the commencement of his poetic cultivation, was a thing totally new in Portugal at that period. Ferreira was by no means a blind or pedantic imitator of the ancients and the Italians. He was, however, animated by an enthusiastic feeling for every thing truly exemplary in the writings of the foreign poets whom he chose for prototypes; his vigorous understanding, cherished with particular predilection the idea of reforming the national Portuguese poetry after such models; and patriotic zeal prompted him to complete what poetic feeling and sound judgment had combined to suggest. Correctness of ideas as well as of language was to him the first requisite of all poetic beauty. He wished to banish from the poetry of his native land those traces of orientalism which it still retained. It was not less his study to avoid the eccentric than the common. He attached more importance to noble than to extraordinary ideas. But to poetic energy, precision and plenitude of picturesque expression, or what may be termed the poetry of language, his attention was chiefly directed. This quality he cultivated with a degree of talent and judgment, which would have imparted to his style Horatian perfection, were it not for the philosophic laconism peculiar to the diction of Horace, and which no modern poet, Klopstock alone excepted, has been able to approach. Ferreira was the first Portuguese writer who manifested a particular interest in the poetic dignity of his native tongue. He was the first who practically proved that the soft toned accentuation and simple popular idiom of that language were not inconsistent either with the energetic expression of didactic poetry, or the sonorous rhythm of the loftier styles. In this respect he essentially departed from the manner of Saa de Miranda; and thus his poetry lost the national colouring by which that of his predecessor is peculiarly distinguished. The works of Ferreira belong indeed to that class of Portuguese poetry which is most easily intelligible to a foreigner possessing a knowledge of latin. Ferreira’s latinity of expression extends even to metrical scanning in which he assumed new freedoms;106 and the title under which he published his poems, and which they still retain, has a sort of latin air.107 Ferreira has therefore never been a favourite poet with the great mass of the Portuguese public. There was indeed a time during the seventeenth century in which he was despised even by the polite world as a learned pedant;108 but a later posterity has rendered justice to his merits. Precisely such a poet as Ferreira was wanting to create among the Portuguese that taste for sound good sense in poetry, which they but too soon lost, and which, in these latter times, they have tardily endeavoured to recover. Ferreira himself takes various opportunities of explaining the principles by which he was guided in the composition of his works. In an epistle to Diogo Bernardes, he says—his first rule is to be as distrustful of himself as he is of superficial censurers; to follow his natural feelings, and to avoid a forced use of art; to respect only the judgment of those who are capable of judging; to follow the counsel of well informed and sincere friends; and to polish the rudeness of genius by industry and judicious imitation.109
Ferreira’s sonnets which amount to a considerable number, are divided into two books. They were all, as has already been remarked, written by the poet at an early period of life. The study of the Petrarchian sonnet is every where manifest in those attempts to emulate the pure Italian style, which, though imitations, are free of all traces of effort and affectation. In general, however, Ferreira’s tender complaints exhibit only feeble glimmerings of the intensity and grace of Petrarch; but on the other hand they are disfigured by fewer extravagancies than the similar effusions of passion by other Portuguese and Spanish poets; and the energy of the expression is usually ennobled by classic grace of diction. Some of these amatory sonnets may be regarded as models.110 In others, however, the poet speaks of “burning snow and freezing fire.”111 Among the best are some which occur in the second book, in which the poet laments the death of his mistress.112 Ferreira seems to have felt no inclination to imitate Petrarch’s didactic sonnets probably, because he had at an early period given to his didactic poetry a different form, and one which bore a more decided resemblance to his favourite Horace.
In the composition of odes Ferreira unquestionably endeavoured to form his style on the model of Horace. But among the thirteen poems, which in the collection of Ferreira’s works are ranged under the title of Odas, and which notwithstanding their scanty number are divided into two books, there is not one which exhibits a truly lyric flight of fancy. In all the language is excellent; the sentiment noble; and the didactic tone and the dignity of the whole manner are in admirable unison with the sonorous melody of the metre; but no new and energetic ideas, no lyric boldness, which, at first sight, might seem irregularity, surprise and charm the reader. Ferreira indeed expressly proposed to himself to soar even as a writer of odes above “the ignorant multitude;”113 but by his frequent repetition of certain pompous and sonorous phrases, he widely departs from the character of the Horatian style.114 Even the moral energy of sentiment which appears in Ferreira’s odes, is not the energy of Horace.115 It would appear that the Italian canzoni with their superfluity of beautiful words and phrases had influenced Ferreira to an extent of which he was unconscious. Some of his odes have precisely the metrical form of the canzone, with the exception of the concluding flourish or apostrophe of the poet to his poem. Others have shorter stanzas like those of the Spanish odes of Luis de Leon.116 Is possible that Ferreira may have been acted upon by the example of Luis de Leon, as they were contemporaries and almost of equal age; or, perhaps, the Spaniard was influenced by the Portuguese poet. This, however, is a subject to which writers of neither country make allusion; but it is certain that the character of Ferreira had nothing in common with the tranquil yet captivating enthusiasm of Luis de Leon. Nevertheless in the composition of the ode he became a model for the poets of his own nation, as Luis de Leon was for those of Spain; and every poem to which the title of ode has subsequently been given in Portuguese literature, exhibits nearly the same character and metrical form of which he set the example. In Ferreira’s odes the descriptive passages are usually the best.117
The elegies of Ferreira, at the period at which they were written, had also the advantage of the charm of novelty in the literature of his country; for with the exception of the single elegy of Saa de Miranda no poem of that class existed in the Portuguese language. Ariosto seems to have been the model whom Ferreira particularly copied in elegiac composition. Like Ariosto, he very happily seized the idea of the pleasing voluptuous elegy of the ancients, which was soon after neglected and continued long lost to modern literature. His elegy on May is a classic masterpiece.118 He was less successful in plaintive elegy. Among the elegies of this kind which he composed, several deserve only to be regarded as occasional poems on the death of distinguished persons. Others are properly epistles, abounding in moral reflexions and observations on the uncertainty of human affairs, but wanting in that tone of tender melancholy which is essential to the true plaintive elegy.119 A few free translations from the Greek of Moschus and Anacreon are annexed to this collection of elegies.
Ferreira’s eclogues possess little poetic merit; and, excellent as is the diction, the style is not sufficiently bucolick. Ferreira was no less susceptible than Saa de Miranda of the philosophic enjoyment of a country life and the beauties of rural nature; but an ideal pastoral world was foreign to the scope of his genius, and bucolick simplicity was not at all reconcilable with his taste, which invariably inclined him to masculine reflexion, clothed in a tone of didactic seriousness. He would not, therefore, had he even possessed the natural requisites for pastoral poetry, have been disposed to prefer that style as the poetic form for occasional compositions, however agreeable it might be to the individuals of the royal family to have their festivals poetically illustrated by such contributions to the general gallantry of the court.
Ferreira’s epistles occupy the chief portion of the first volume of his poems; and they are, upon the whole, entitled to the first rank in the poet’s works. It is worthy of remark, that these epistles retain the old title of Cartas instead of that of Epistolas, notwithstanding Ferreira’s predilection for latinity in his choice of words. But they differ in so many various ways from the poetic Cartas of Saa de Miranda, that they may be regarded as the first productions of their kind in Portuguese literature. Their contents evidently shew that they were all written when the poet had attained the age of maturity. At that period he resided at court, and from his practical philosophy, for which he was partly indebted to his literary studies, he deduced the maxims which daily received confirmation from the events of real life. Yet the more he was tied to the great world, the more valuable did retirement appear to him. The natural nobleness of his turn of mind was constantly at variance with the manners and characters of the persons by whom he was surrounded. In this state of feeling he wrote his epistles. They are for the most part addressed to men of the first rank, with whom Ferreira was more or less intimate, and among whose names appear those of the most celebrated poets who laboured in common with him for the classic improvement of the national taste. The didactic poems addressed by Ferreira to these men are nearly all in the same strain. The delicacy of the didactic tone of Horace was not to be attained by a poet who had to open the first path for the restoration of classical style in a country in which the old romantic character in poetry, and the scholastic theological spirit in philosophy, were only beginning to yield to the influence of a more liberal cultivation. Neither was Ferreira, with all his elegance, sufficiently cultivated for that Horatian gaiety, which frequently rises to wanton sportiveness, and jests with the very precepts it inculcates. The characteristics of his philosophy are dignified gravity and sound judgment, unalloyed by any thing like pedantry or pretension. But the philosophic medium through which he viewed the vicissitudes of fortune and the follies of mankind, partook more of religious austerity than of epicurean pleasantry; and notwithstanding his general correctness in epistolary composition, even in that respect, he falls, like almost every other modern poet, far short of the energetic precision of the Horatian style. As an epistolary poet, therefore, Ferreira is no more a Portuguese Horace than the two Argensolas are Horaces in Spanish literature.120 But the sound judgment and noble feeling, which may be said to form the moral soul of these poems, are expressed in that natural, unostentatious, pleasing and varied manner, which belongs to the true spirit of the didactic epistle; and the poet’s fancy has scattered as many flowers on the path of ornate wisdom, as are necessary to distinguish it from the high road of moralizing prose. Patriotism and zeal for the national greatness of Portugal give a peculiar colouring to these epistles. In the spirit of this feeling Ferreira extols the union of Portuguese military glory, with the improvement of manners and the cultivation of the understanding; and with regard to cultivation, according to models, he says—one should seek to “excel others in what is best, and only in other respects to imitate.”121 He zealously exhorts his friend Andrade Caminha not to make the muses in Portugal speak any thing but Portuguese.122 He expresses his dissatisfaction at the little encouragement which in his opinion was extended to genius at that period in Portugal. He also inveighs against the perverted appreciation of good and bad, right and wrong.123 Within the limits of his faith, he himself discourses exquisitely on the beauty of reason.124 But the soft language of feeling more particularly glows in those epistles in which he speaks of the joys of friendship and the pleasures of rural life.125 Occasionally Ferreira’s didactic style takes an ironic jocular turn, and then only does it present true Horatian facility.126 Upon the whole if the poetry of reason and sentiment be not more lightly esteemed than the poetry of luxuriant fancy, Ferreira’s epistles must be numbered among the best in modern literature.
Ferreira endeavoured to introduce epigrams, composed after the manner of the ancients, into the poetry of his native country. But he did not succeed in seizing the spirit of the ancient epigram. Ausonius was his model; and the epigrammas and epitaphios which appear among the works of Ferreira are not distinguished either by the tenderness or the energy of the esteemed Greek poems of the same class. Their chief merit is an elegant precision of language conveyed in the metrical form of the Italian octaves; but it is only in a few instances that this elegant precision is in any degree poignant and pleasing.127 The epitaphs are in general dedicated to the memory of men distinguished in Portuguese history.
Ferreira is the author of a tale written in honour of a female national saint, named Colomba, or, according to the popular pronunciation, Comba. Beauty of language also constitutes the whole poetic merit of this piece; and even the introduction, which is long and tedious, sufficiently proves that when Ferreira undertook to celebrate the virtues of St. Colomba he stepped out of his sphere. The subject of the tale is a legend which might have formed the ground-work of a better production. The fair saint, a Portuguese shepherdess, tending her flocks and singing pious songs, becomes the object of the ardent passion of a Moorish king, who discovers her in one of his hunting excursions. The king pursues her until she has no longer any hope of saving herself by flight. In this extremity she implores a rock to open and receive her. The miracle takes place. The disappointed king strikes his lance against the rock, and a clear fountain gushes forth, the waters of which continue to possess miraculous properties. The narrative is, however, much too cold for such a subject; and the description given of the Moorish king is so extremely grotesque, that it is difficult to conceive how a man of Ferreira’s taste could have brought himself to sketch so rude a picture. He has represented the king as being covered with shag like a bear; and in addition to this ornament has given to one side of his head the ear of an ass, and to the other the ear of a dog.128
Ferreira likewise wished to introduce into the dramatic poetry of Portugal a classical style, approximating to that of the ancients as closely as the difference of times and manners would permit. Among his dramatic works there are a tragedy and two comedies. Ferreira’s patriotic feeling induced him to borrow the subject of his tragedy from the history of Portugal; and he selected the story of Inez de Castro, which has since been so frequently handled by Portuguese poets, though before Ferreira’s time it seems to have been untouched. When it is recollected that at the same period the Dominican Bermudez was engaged in writing a Spanish tragedy on the same story, and according to similar principles,129 the conclusion that one of these tragedies in some measure owes its existence to the other is not easily avoided. Both present a striking similarity in invention and arrangement. But neither poet alludes in any way to his contemporary; and even the critics who notice the one work are silent with respect to the other. The prize of tragic art must, however, be awarded to the Inez de Castro of Bermudez. Ferreira’s Castro (for so the tragedy is briefly called by the Portuguese) contains many beautiful passages; but throughout the whole piece there is a deficiency of true pathos; the imitation of the Greek style in form and manner is painfully elaborate; the dramatic, interest of the composition is extremely feeble, and the dignity of tragic poetry is maintained in the language alone. Inez de Castro with her attendant or nurse (ama), the Infante Don Pedro with his secretary, King Alphonso with his three inhuman counsellors, and finally a messenger, are the acting or rather the speaking characters; and a chorus of Coimbrian women are brought into co-operation with these characters in the same manner as in the tragedy of Bermudez. Ferreira, like Bermudez, deviates from the strict laws of the Greek drama only in the neglect of the unities of time and place; and it is evident that this liberty is by both poets only taken from necessity, because they had not sufficient art otherwise to connect the requisite scenes. Both tragedies contain in appearance five acts; but Ferreira has also rendered his fifth act merely an historical appendage. In the opening of Ferreira’s tragedy Inez enters with her attendant, and after some preliminary complaints circumstantially relates the way in which she became connected with the Prince, and through him with the royal family; though it may be presumed that these particulars must have been sufficiently well known to her confidante long before. The scene changes, and the Infante appears accompanied by the female chorus, which Bermudez has more suitably introduced in connection with Inez. The Infante engages in a long discussion with his secretary on the situation of a Prince who has to maintain a conflict between love, and duty and policy. A hymn to love by the chorus closes the first act. The following acts are constructed in a similar manner. At the close of the fourth act the death of Inez is announced by the chorus; and in the fifth a messenger relates the event to the Prince. The lyric passages are the best in the whole tragedy, and among them the hymn to love is particularly beautiful.130 The lines which Inez delivers on her first entrance indicate at once the lyric character of the piece. The dialogue is elegant throughout, but it frequently exhibits over-strained antitheses. The observations occasionally delivered by the chorus, in a metre formed on the model of the sapphic, are sufficiently moral, though they are in general of the commonest character. The decisive scene, in which Inez appears before the king, approaches nearest to true pathos, but never completely attains that height.131 Upon the whole Ferreira was not a tragic poet. He totally failed in seizing the true idea of modern tragedy.
In spirit and in form Ferreira’s two comedies perfectly resemble those of Saa de Miranda. One which is called “Bristo,” (Comedia do Bristo) takes its name from the principal character in the piece. The other is entitled the “Jealous Man,” (Comedia do Cioso). The comedy of Bristo was the production of Ferreira’s early youth. In his dedication to the king, he says that he wrote it during the holidays, in the course of the few days which he was able to snatch from his more serious studies at the university of Coimbra. To this task he was in all probability incited by the example of Saa de Miranda. It may also be presumed that at a subsequent period, Ferreira gave a finer polish to this comedy, to which Portuguese writers usually refer, when they wish to prove how admirably their native language is adapted to light and elegant prose. But it is not merely in this philological point of view that the merits of this work ought to be estimated. In facility, precision and elegance of dialogue, it surpasses the comedies of Saa de Miranda, and many which in other respects are justly ranked among the best in modern literature. The delineation of character, so far as it goes, is natural and decided: indeed some of the characters, among which is a hectoring profligate knight of Rhodes, who resembles the ostentatious soldiers of Plautus, are particularly well sustained. In the Comedia do Cioso, the principal character, though somewhat overcharged, is strikingly sketched. Both dramas contain some comic scenes; but they are upon the whole as deficient in real comic force as they are overburthened with common place morality; and that morality too, as in the comedies of Saa de Miranda, is conveyed in tedious soliloquies.
But the public favour which the court conferred on the regular dramas of Ferreira, in common with those of Saa de Miranda, and the rude compositions of Gil Vicente, may be regarded as one of the circumstances which operated to prevent the formation of a national drama in Portugal. For the rise, as in Spain, of a national party, which might rouse and incite a poet to advance from the point at which Gil Vicente had stopped, became now much more difficult. Thus the art of dramatic invention and composition long wavered amidst heterogeneous forms, until the Portuguese poets who wished to write for the theatre, had no alternative but to become imitators of the Spanish authors who had preceded them, or entirely to renounce the formation of any thing like a national drama. No Portuguese Lope de Vega arose; and Ferreira’s name was only preserved in the recollection of the learned.
After having perused with critical reflection the history of Portuguese poetry and eloquence, from the introduction of the Italian style to the present point, the reader will be prepared to recognize the rank which Camoens holds among the poets of his country. Respecting this most celebrated of the Portuguese poets, indeed almost the only one among them who has obtained any celebrity beyond the limits of his native country, all the writers of the classic school of Saa de Miranda, Diogo Bernardes excepted, are silent, which is a sufficient proof that they did not include him in their party. But the public voice of Portuguese criticism, combined with the general national approbation, has long since elevated him above those who neglected to mention his name, though they were always ready to bestow praise on each other. Camoens, it is true, was a poor adventurer, wandering in India, at the period when Ferreira, Andrade Caminha, and other contemporary writers were setting the poetic fashion at the brilliant court of Lisbon. But the poems which he produced previously to his departure for India, approximate in a striking degree to the classic works of the school of Saa de Miranda; and hence it is probable that the influence of that school, and of the older Portuguese poetry, may have operated in an equal degree on his genius. This relationship of Camoens with all parties in the polite literature of his native country, will be placed in the clearest point of view by introducing him after Ferreira, and before the other poets, who hand in hand with the latter pursued the newly opened course. Thus the genius of Camoens, as the first of Portuguese poets, may be considered conjointly with his merits as a poet in the spirit of the age in which he lived.
CAMOENS.
The biography of Luis de Camões, or Camoens, again brings to recollection that period in which the poets of Portugal considered their character very imperfectly maintained, if their real life did not prove a faithful mirror of the poetic joys and sorrows embodied in their works. Camoens was born at Lisbon, probably in the year 1524. His parents, as it appears, were not rich; but they belonged to the class of ancient nobility, and they were enabled to give their son an education which facilitated his entrance on the career of military and civic honor. From his father, who was captain of a vessel, and who lost his life in shipwreck on the coast of India, it is probable that Camoens heard many stories, which were calculated to inspire him with a taste for adventure and daring enterprize. Of the history of his early youth no remarkable particulars are recorded. He attended the university of Coimbra, where he acquired a fund of historical and mythological knowledge. Some of his elegies and sonnets which have descended to posterity, seem to have been written at this period, though it does not appear that those productions gained for him the friendship of Ferreira, and other contemporaries of eminent talent, who were about the same time studying at Coimbra. It is probable that these young men, who had joined in a mutual and earnest endeavour to attain classic correctness, anticipated nothing extraordinary from the ardent Camoens, who adopted the new style, but did not disdain the old, and whose fancy was too restless to submit to the didactic controul of the judgment. On quitting the university Camoens returned to Lisbon, but with what design is not mentioned by Portuguese authors, nor has any conjecture been formed respecting the views of success which he might have had in that city. He soon, however, became an object of public notoriety through his imprudent conduct in gallantry, which, next to poetry, at that time engrossed his thoughts. The particulars of a love affair, in which he became involved, are not accurately known; and, therefore, how far with respect to it, he was to blame, cannot now be ascertained. It however appears, that the object of his regard was named Catharina de Attayda, and that she was a dama do paço, (lady of honor) at the court. Either on account of this lady, or of some other circumstance which operated unfavourably for the romantic poet, he was banished from Lisbon; and with this event commences the second part of the life of this extraordinary man.
Thus cut off in the age of aspiring pretension and glowing enthusiasm, from the hope of advancing by the course usually open to youthful ambition, Camoens remained for some time tranquilly at Santarem, the place of his exile, in the neighbourhood of Lisbon. There instead of considering what was now necessary to be done with a view to his future welfare, he occupied himself in writing verses, which have been handed down to posterity, but which only served to fix more deeply a passion the object of which was still near him. With a caprice not uncommon in such a state of feeling, Camoens, who cherished at once romantic ideas of patriotism, and indignant emotions of disgust, suddenly changed the whole system of his life. He became a soldier, and served against the Moors as a volunteer on board the Portuguese fleet in the Mediterranean. To be at once a hero and a poet was now the object of his ambition. Whenever time and opportunity permitted, he composed verses, which often, particularly those of the lyric and elegiac class, had for their subject the recollection of his hopeless passion. Whether he had at this period clearly conceived the plan of his national heroic poem, or whether he was actually engaged in its execution, are questions which, like almost every other fact relative to the history of this poet’s talent, remain enveloped in doubt. It is known, however, that he combated the enemies of his country in a naval battle fought off Ceuta. During this action, in which he eminently distinguished himself, he received a gun-shot wound in consequence of which he lost the sight of his right eye. He now hoped to obtain, in the character of a hero, that reward which he had failed to acquire as a poet. He returned to Lisbon. But no individual at court took any active interest in his welfare. All his efforts to gain an honourable competence were unsuccessful; and he was now verging on the age of maturity. More dissatisfied, and yet more proud than ever, he loudly accused his country of ingratitude, while at the same time his poetic effusions prove that his heart overflowed with the warmest feelings of national attachment. At last, determined to leave for ever a land to which his heart was still bound by the ties of another passion besides patriotism, he embarked in the year 1553, at the age of twenty-nine, for India. That his thankless country should not have even his bones, was the sentiment which, on his departure, his indignant feelings prompted him to exclaim in the words of Scipio:—Ingrata patria, non possidebis ossa mea!
From this period the life of Camoens exhibits a chain of successive adventures and calamities; but fate watched over him with miraculous care, and seemed to rescue him from every danger in order that he might complete his poetic career. The squadron with which he sailed to India consisted of four ships. Three were lost in a storm, but Camoens arrived on board the fourth, in the port of Goa. From this circumstance he augured that fortune was now about to smile on him. He soon found, however, that employment was not to be obtained at Goa, and he entered as a volunteer in a military corps, forming part of an expedition which the Portuguese viceroy was fitting out for the aid of an Indian prince. On the arrival of the troops at the place of their destination, a great portion of the Portuguese fell a sacrifice to the insalubrity of the climate; but Camoens returned in safety to Goa after the object of the expedition had been attained. In the situation in which he then stood, there remained for him no other alternative than to embark in a new expedition which was about to sail for the Red Sea to attack the Arabian corsairs. At the island of Ormus, where he passed the winter, Camoens again found leisure to indulge in the workings of his imagination. His mind gave a poetic colouring to every thing which he saw or heard; and the ardour of his patriotism continued to increase in proportion as he became more intimately acquainted with the theatre of the Portuguese atchievements in India. But many circumstances which came within his observation induced him also to indulge in satirical sports of wit. The government of Goa had hitherto done nothing for him. He did not, however, try to promote his interest by flattery. On the contrary, he ridiculed the disparates na India, (follies in India) as he unceremoniously styled some portion of the proceedings of the government of Goa. The viceroy, who took particular umbrage at this satire, banished Camoens to the Chinese island of Macao. The fate of the unfortunate hero and poet was now more deplorable than ever. He however gained permission to quit Macao and visit the Molucca islands, where he collected fresh materials for pictorial poetry; but he could no longer, as the lines beneath his portrait express, “bear in one hand the sword, in the other the pen.132” He was glad to accept the very unpoetic and unheroic post of provedor mòr dos defuntos, (administrator of the effects of deceased persons) by the emoluments of which he was enabled to subsist. Whenever circumstances permitted he turned his attention to his heroic poem, and thus indemnified himself in the ideal world for the part which he was compelled to perform in real life. At length, on the arrival of a new viceroy at Goa, he obtained permission to return to that island, but in the passage thither was shipwrecked on the coast of Camboya. With difficulty he saved his life, and also his poem, the manuscript of which, soaked with sea-water, he brought to land. This circumstance is noticed in the work itself.133 The story of his swimming ashore with his poem in one hand, while he supported himself by the action of the other, and thus saving his Lusiadas as Cæsar saved his commentaries, has obtained currency through the statement of a German writer, who seems to have misunderstood a very intelligible passage of a Portuguese author.134 On his return to Goa, Camoens was well received; but he had not long enjoyed the smiles of fortune, when another change took place in the viceroyship. The new viceroy lent a ready ear to the enemies of the poet, who was now publicly accused of malversation in the discharge of the office which he had filled at Macao. Camoens was thrown into prison, and there left to work out his justification. It appears he fully cleared himself of the charges which had been brought against him; but he was still detained because he was unable to satisfy the demands of his creditors. A poem, which he addressed to the viceroy, at length procured his liberation. After experiencing many other disagreeable adventures he ardently wished to return to Europe, but it was not in his power to defray the expence of his passage. Even when prepared to embark he was stopped by a demand for the re-payment of a loan, and was nearly reduced to despair, but several liberal individuals stepped forward and provided the sum necessary for his relief. Finally, in the year 1569, Camoens, after an absence of nearly sixteen years, arrived at Lisbon, from the rich shores of India, well in health, but in a state of the most abject poverty.
The third part of the history of this ill-fated poet is the most melancholy. On his return he found Lisbon ravaged by the plague. During this calamity it was not to be expected that much regard should be paid to poetry, and the last hope of Camoens rested on his poem, the only treasure which he had brought with him from India. Considerable changes had likewise taken place at the court. King Sebastian was concerting the plan of his unfortunate expedition to Morocco. In so romantic an enterprise Camoens was predisposed to take an interest, and it served to stimulate his zeal in dedicating his poem to the youthful sovereign. The dedication was graciously received, but the poet obtained no other reward than a wretched pension, just sufficient to mark but not to relieve his misery. The honour was conceded to him of constantly accompanying the court, while he wanted means to procure the necessaries of life. It is said that a faithful slave who had accompanied him to Europe, begged in the streets of Lisbon at night, in order to enable the poet, whose name was now celebrated throughout Portugal and Spain, to appear decently in public during the day. The last blow which the patriotic heart of Camoens received, was the fatal issue of the African expedition. The poet’s hitherto robust constitution now sank under the pressure of sorrow and indigence. His last hope had vanished, and overwhelmed with affliction, he withdrew himself from the world. A few monks were the last individuals with whom he maintained any intercourse. Shortly before his death, he is said to have written a letter, which, if it be genuine, proves that he himself considered his misfortunes unparalleled. He styles it a sort of presumptuousness to attempt to oppose that fate, which had at length compressed all his sorrows within the narrow limits of a sick-bed. It appears that he ended his life in an hospital, in the year 1579, at the age of fifty-five. It was not until sixteen years after his decease that the spot where his ashes repose, was distinguished by a monument erected by one of his admirers. During the same year the learned Rodriguez Lobo Zurupita, who must not be confounded with the poet Rodriguez Lobo, published the first collection of the hitherto scattered poems of Camoens.135
The life of Camoens constitutes an essential part of the history of Portuguese poetry. With the exception of Dante no poet of the first rank has in his works so fully represented his own inward feelings combined with every extraordinary circumstance that came within his observation. His poems can only be perfectly intelligible to the reader who never loses sight of the poet; for his character is precisely theirs. But the poetry of Camoens must not on this account be confounded with the self-subjective effusions of certain enthusiasts who express their feelings clearly enough in verse, though not in poetry, except, perhaps, in their own opinion. Among the poets of all ages Camoens is one of the most eminent; and though to a foreigner it may at first sight seem strange that he has permanently obtained in the literature of his country the surname of O Grande (the Great), a title given in history only to a few distinguished sovereigns, yet in the unbounded homage which the Portuguese render to the name of the man, who during his life was suffered to languish in penury, the citizen of the world will readily recognize a general desire to compensate for the injustice with which he was treated by his contemporaries. On this side of the Pyrenees, indeed, however frequently the name of Camoens may be mentioned and written, as a poet he is still scarcely known except by name. But to form a just appreciation of his merit, he must, like Homer, be viewed in the spirit of his nation and his age. It was the ambition of Camoens to be to the Portuguese what Homer was to the Greeks, the first and at the same time the most national of poets; and if he did not entirely attain his end, he nevertheless so far approached it that no other modern poet has been able to combine all the national interests of his country, with the fulness of poetic spirit exhibited in the Lusiad. But it must be recollected that at the period when Camoens wrote, the more correct style, formed on the ancient and Italian models, had just penetrated into Portuguese literature, and that it had not yet taken deep root. Under these circumstances, Camoens, in sketching the plan of his national Epopœia, stood, as it were, severed from the age in which he lived. Modern literature contained no similar work, and, generally speaking, no epic poem worthy of perusal, except the chivalrous compositions of Bojardo and Ariosto. From Trissino Camoens could learn nothing; from Bojardo and Ariosto he might have learned much, but assuredly not the spirit and style of a serious national heroic poem; and Camoens was numbered with the dead before Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered appeared in print.136 Camoens was the first modern who succeeded in the production of a serious heroic poem. But with all his endeavours to attain classic perfection, he was a Portuguese in the spirit of his age, and too good a patriot to wish to be any thing else. He rose to the height at which he aimed only by flights; having reached it he sank, rose to it again, and again fell from it. He was unable to produce a classically perfect whole of any extent. But the more beautiful passages of his poems, particularly of his Lusiad, will stand the test of the most rigid criticism according to the rules of pure poetry and classic excellence.
Every style of poetic composition of which he had formed a definite idea was attempted by Camoens. But the Lusiad rises so vastly above his other works, and bears such powerful and various traces of the peculiar character of his poetry, that all his lesser compositions must be considered merely as inferior scions sprung from the same root.
The Lusiad of Camoens is a heroic poem; but so essentially different in the unity of the epic plan from all other heroic poems, that to avoid falling into the unwarrantable misconception with which this noble work is every where judged except in Portugal and Spain, it is necessary in considering it, to drop the ordinary rules of comparison, and to proceed upon the general idea of epic poetry unmodified by any prepossession for known models.137 Camoens struck out a totally new path in the region of epopœia. The style of his poem is indeed formed chiefly on the ancient models, and in his diction he has imitated the elegant stanzas of the Italians; but the epic idea of the work is entirely his own; and the kind of composition, which forms its groundwork, was something entirely new in poetic literature. The object of Camoens was to recount in epic strains, with pure poetic feeling, the atchievements of the heroes and great men of Portugal in general, not of any individual in particular, and consequently not of Vasco da Gama, who is commonly considered the hero of the Lusiad. He was not to be satisfied with drawing up a poetically adorned official report, like the Spanish Araucana, written at a later period by Ercilla.138 The title which Camoens gave to his heroic poem sufficiently denotes the nature of its subject. He named it Os Lusiadas, that is to say, the Lusitanians, or Portuguese. This choice of a title was doubtless influenced by the prevailing taste of the Portuguese poets of that age, to whom the common name of their nation appeared unpoetic, and also by the popular notion that the favourite term Lusitania was derived from a certain mythological hero, named Lusus, who visited Portugal in company with Ulysses, and who conjointly with the Greek warrior, built the city of Lisbon (Ulyssipolis). Camoens is not to blame if the editors of his poem, wishing to reconcile its somewhat unusual title with the names of other epic compositions, have converted the Lusiadas into the Lusiada.139 But the poem may be designated by its common title without offence to its spirit or its subject. At the same time it must not be forgotten that the Lusiad is a totally different kind of heroic poem from all those epopees, whether successful or unsuccessful, in which a single hero is the main spring of the whole epic action. According to the plan which Camoens sketched for his national poem, he was enabled to dispense with the choice of a hero whose atchievements should throw those of all others into the shade, and form the sole source of epic interest. To this plan, however, an essential beauty of epic poetry was necessarily sacrificed. The composition lost the advantage of those little groupes of characters which would otherwise have been assembled around the principal character. From its plan, therefore, the Lusiad cannot be accounted such a model of epic perfection as the Iliad, or even as the Æneid, in which that perfection more faintly presented is still to be found. But as a narrative poem, deriving a total effect from the union of its parts, the Lusiad may be considered an epic whole, and consequently, a poem entirely different in kind from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, or even the Divina Comedia of Dante. A poetic and epic grouping of all the great and most interesting events in the annals of his native country, was what Camoens wished to accomplish. He therefore very happily selected the event which constitutes the most brilliant epoch in Portuguese history, as a common keeping point for all the different parts of his epic picture. The discovery of the passage to India by Vasco da Gama was certainly not an heroic atchievement in the usual sense of the term, but in that age, when such adventures bordered on the incredible, it was a truly heroic enterprize. Camoens made this event the groundwork of the epic unity of his poem. But in that unity Vasco da Gama is merely the spindle round which the thread of the narrative is wound. His dignity, as the leader of his intrepid countrymen, renders him in some degree conspicuous; but in other respects he is not distinguished, and the interest of the whole poem depends no more on him than on his companions. The heroes who shine with the greatest lustre in the Lusiad, even the Constable, Nuno Alvarez Pereira, who is the most remarkable among them, are all introduced in what are styled the episodes. But the Lusiad has in reality no episode, except the short story of the giant Adamastor. Another portion of the work, which is commonly called an episode, is a poetic sketch from the ancient history of Portugal, and belongs as essentially to the whole as any of the other principal parts of the great picture. It even occupies nearly one half of the poem. It is precisely on these parts, called episodes, that the epic grandeur of the whole composition rests; and in them the finest passages of the poem occur. Unless the idea of the plan of the Lusiad be rightly seized, the composition will appear in a false light on whatever side it may be viewed.
The Lusiad, designated as a whole, may therefore be termed an epic national picture of Portuguese glory, something greater than a mere gallery of poetic stories, but less than a perfect epopee. The principles of the composition are exceedingly simple; but that they may not be misconceived, it is necessary to understand the epic machinery of the poem, as the poet himself would have it understood, and as it was understood in the spirit of the age by his contemporaries. Camoens was too truly a poet to exclude from his Lusiad the charm of the marvellous and the co-operation of supernatural beings. But he was either accidentally less happy than Tasso in the choice of epic machinery for a modern heroic poem, or he purposely preferred the Greek mythology as the most beautiful. Nothing prevented him from assigning the necessary parts in his machinery to the good and bad agents of popular christian belief; and the subject seems particularly calculated for such an application as the diffusion of christianity by the discoveries and conquests of the Portuguese is in the poem itself made the highest merit of the nation. Camoens, however, appears to have been of opinion that an epic poem, such as he had planned, should be adorned with learning, and particularly mythological learning; and besides, by the introduction of the Greek deities the whole composition seemed to be raised to the true poetic region of the ancient epopœia. Thus there remains the singular incongruity of the Greek mythology and the atchievements of the Portuguese christians, who, on no occasion neglect to act and discourse in the true spirit of their faith. But in the mind of Camoens this incongruity was removed by the opinion, which he shared in common with his contemporaries, that the machinery in epopœia was merely a poetic figure, and that all the heathen deities might be introduced as allegorical characters, in modern narrative poetry, by the same privilege which enables Cupid to retain his place in the lyric compositions of christian poets, without any theological or literary offence. Thus Camoens allegorically introduced Olympus into his poem. The erroneous opinion which misled the poet does not, it is true, redeem this defect in the poem, though it contributes to cast a veil over it. But if the reader admits this opinion, which he must do in order to understand the poet in his own sense, then will even the offence against taste be found to vanish imperceptibly. This compromise once made, the whole poem becomes not only singular, but even wonderful in its singularity, particularly where Vasco da Gama and his companions sport with Thetis and her nymphs allegorically, and yet in good earnest; and the historical material begins, as if suddenly ennobled by magic, to shine in the full light of poetry.
The Lusiad assumes a mythological character immediately after the introductory stanzas. Vasco da Gama with his squadron has already doubled the Cape of Good Hope; and steering along the eastern coast of Africa, he approaches the Indian seas. The gods are then assembled on Olympus, to deliberate on the fate of India. Venus and Bacchus form two parties, the former in favour of the Portuguese, and the latter against them. In this application of the allegory, the poet, doubtless, gratified his patriotic pride; for Portugal was, even by the Spaniards, styled the native land of love; and temperance in the use of wine, was a national virtue of the Portuguese. In order to give a still higher import to this allegory, Venus is made to consider the Portuguese as modern Romans, and to entertain for them the same regard which she formerly extended to the people of ancient Rome: but Bacchus recollects his expedition in India, and is indignant at the Portuguese, whose enterprize threatens to eclipse his glory. Among the gods who declare themselves friendly to the Portuguese, Mars is particularly conspicuous. Meanwhile Vasco da Gama’s fleet touches at several places on the coast of eastern Africa. Vasco endeavours to enter into amicable relations with the King of Mombaza; but Bacchus transforms himself into a Mahometan priest, and by treacherous tokens of friendship plans the destruction of the Portuguese in Mombaza. Venus, however, discovers the treachery in time to prevent it. She appeals to Jupiter. Her prayers for the Portuguese fleet are heard. Mercury warns Vasco da Gama in a dream, and Vasco escapes the danger that is prepared for him. He sails onward to the African kingdom of Melinda. The King of Melinda, though also a Mahometan, gives a hospitable reception to the Portuguese, whose courage and national glory excite his warmest admiration. Here the poet connects the thread of those narratives which have been erroneously regarded as the episodes of the Lusiad. At the request of the King of Melinda, Vasco da Gama relates the most interesting incidents of Portuguese history, and closes his patriotic narrative with a description of his own voyage up to the period of his arrival at Melinda. The King of Melinda now becomes the enthusiastic friend of the Portuguese; and here the second half of the poem commences. Vasco da Gama proceeds on his voyage with the pilots, who are to shew him the nearest course to India. Bacchus, however, descends to the bottom of the sea, and implores the gods and goddesses of Neptune’s kingdom, to assist him in destroying the Portuguese fleet before it shall reach India. A dreadful storm arises, and seems to promise the accomplishment of Bacchus’s wish: but at the critical moment Venus again rescues her favourites, and the Portuguese arrive in safety at the kingdom of Calicut, on the coast of Malabar. Vasco da Gama is at first very favourably received by the Zamorim, or Prince of Calicut. This opportunity is seized by Camoens to supply a sort of supplement to the poetic narrative of the events of Portuguese history; for he makes Paulo da Gama, the brother of the admiral, explain to the Catual, or Indian governor of Calicut, the historical tapestries and pictures on board the Portuguese ships. At length, Bacchus, who is not yet weary of playing the part of a Mussulman, for the annoyance of the Portuguese, stirs up such a misunderstanding between Vasco da Gama and the Zamorim of Calicut, that the projected commercial treaty between Calicut and Portugal is set aside, and the Portuguese fleet is once more exposed to the risk of destruction. But the grand object of the voyage is now attained, and Vasco da Gama weighs anchor, and directs his course back to Europe. During the homeward voyage Venus prepares for the enterprizing navigators a brilliant festival on an enchanted island in the great ocean, where goddesses and sea nymphs, wounded by Cupid’s darts, become enamoured of the Portuguese who land on the island. The voluptuous magic festival, at which the goddess Thetis, or Tethys, (for both names denote the same deity), becomes the bride of Vasco da Gama, affords the poet the last opportunity of completing his picture of Portuguese national glory; for a prophetic nymph relates the most conspicuous atchievements of the Portuguese commanders in India, and Thetis taking Vasco to the top of a high mountain, explains to him on a magic globe the geographical positions of the different countries.