No More Learning

[620] _O'er blood-stain'd ground. _--This is as near the original as
elegance will allow--_de sangue cheyo_--which Fanshaw has thus punned:--

"With no little loss,
Sending him home again by _Weeping-Cross_"--

a place near Banbury in Oxfordshire.

[621] Cape Comorin, the southernmost point of India. --_Ed. _

[622] _The Rumien fierce, who boasts the name of Rome. _--When the
victories of the Portuguese began to overspread the East, several Indian
princes, by the counsels of the Moors, applied for assistance to the
Sultan of Egypt, and the Grand Signior. The troops of these Mohammedan
princes were in the highest reputation for bravery, and though, composed
of many different nations, were known among the orientals by one common
name. Ignorance delights in the marvellous. The history of ancient Rome
made the same figure among the easterns, as that of the fabulous, or
heroic, ages does with us, with this difference, it was better believed.
The Turks of Roumania pretended to be the descendants of the Roman
conquerors, and the Indians gave them and their auxiliaries the name of
Rum? s, or Romans. In the same manner, the fame of Godfrey in the East
conferred the name of Franks on all the western Christians, who, on
their part, gave the name of Moors to all the Mohammedans of the East.

[623] _No hope, bold Mascarene. _--The commander of Diu, or Dio, during
this siege, one of the most memorable in the Portuguese history.

[624] _Fierce Hydal-Kan.
_--The title of the lords or princes of Decan,
who in their wars with the Portuguese have sometimes brought 400,000 men
into the field. The prince here mentioned, after many revolts, was at
last finally subdued by Don John de Castro, the fourth viceroy of India,
with whose reign our poet judiciously ends the prophetic song.
Albuquerque laid the plan, and Castro completed the system of the
Portuguese empire in the East. It is with propriety, therefore, that the
prophecy given to GAMA is here summed up. Nor is the discretion of
Camoens in this instance inferior to his judgment. He is now within a
few years of his own times, when he himself was upon the scene in India.
But whatever he had said of his contemporaries would have been liable to
misconstruction, and every sentence would have been branded with the
epithets of flattery or malice. A little poet would have been happy in
such an opportunity to resent his wrongs. But the silent contempt of
Camoens does him true honour.

In this historical song, as already hinted, the translator has been
attentive, as much as he could, to throw it into these universal
languages, the picturesque and characteristic. To convey the sublimest
instruction to princes, is, according to Aristotle, the peculiar
province of the epic muse. The striking points of view in which the
different characters of the governors of India are here placed, are in
the most happy conformity to this ingenious canon of the Stagyrite.

[625]

_In whirling circles now they fell, now rose,
Yet never rose nor fell. --_

The motions of the heavenly bodies, in every system, bear at all times
the same uniform relation to each other; these expressions, therefore,
are strictly just. The first relates to the appearance, the second to
the reality. Thus, while to us the sun appears to go down, to more
western inhabitants of the globe he appears to rise, and while he rises
to us, he is going down to the more eastern; the difference being
entirely relative to the various parts of the earth.