No More Learning

Camoens, perhaps, did not weigh these
circumstances, but the strength of his poetical genius directed him. He
could not but feel what it was to read Virgil after Homer; and the
original turn and force of his mind led him from the beaten track of
Helen's and Lavinia's, Achilles's and Hector's sieges and slaughters,
where the hero hews down, and drives to flight, whole armies with his
own sword. Camoens was the first who wooed the modern Epic Muse, and she
gave him the wreath of a first lover; a sort of epic poetry unheard of
before; or, as Voltaire calls it, _une nouvelle espece d'epopee_; and
the grandest subject it is (of profane history) which the world has ever
beheld. [14] A voyage esteemed too great for man to dare; the adventures
of this voyage through unknown oceans deemed unnavigable; the eastern
world happily discovered, and for ever indissolubly joined and given to
the western; the grand Portuguese empire in the East founded; the
humanization of mankind, and universal commerce the consequence! What
are the adventures of an old, fabulous hero's arrival in Britain, what
are Greece and Latium in arms for a woman compared to this! Troy is in
ashes, and even the Roman empire is no more. But the effects of the
voyage, adventures, and bravery of the hero of the Lusiad will be felt
and beheld, and perhaps increase in importance, while the world shall
remain.

Happy in his choice, happy also was the genius of Camoens in the method
of pursuing his subject. He has not, like Tasso, given it a total
appearance of fiction; nor has he, like Lucan, excluded allegory and
poetical machinery. Whether he intended it or not (for his genius was
sufficient to suggest its propriety), the judicious precept of
Petronius[15] is the model of the Lusiad. That elegant writer proposes a
poem on the civil war, and no poem, ancient or modern, merits the
character there sketched out in any degree comparative to the Lusiad. A
truth of history is preserved; yet, what is improper for the historian,
the ministry of Heaven is employed, and the free spirit of poetry throws
itself into fictions which makes the whole appear as an effusion of
prophetic fury, and not like a rigid detail of facts, given under the
sanction of witnesses. Contrary to Lucan, who, in the above rules, drawn
from the nature of poetry, is severely condemned by Petronius, Camoens
conducts his poem _per ambages Deorumque ministeria_. The apparition,
which in the night hovers athwart the fleet near the Cape of Good Hope,
is the grandest fiction in human composition; the invention his own! In
the Island of Venus, the use of which fiction in an epic poem is also
his own, he has given the completest assemblage of all the flowers which
have ever adorned the bowers of love.
And, never was the _furentis animi
vaticinatio_ more conspicuously displayed than in the prophetic song,
the view of the spheres, and the globe of the earth. Tasso's imitation
of the Island of Venus is not equal to the original; and, though
"Virgil's myrtles[16] dropping blood are nothing to Tasso's enchanted
forest," what are all Ismeno's enchantments to the grandeur and horror
of the appearance, prophecy, and vanishment of the spectre of
Camoens! [17] It has long been agreed among critics, that the solemnity
of religious observances gives great dignity to the historical narrative
of epic poetry. Camoens, in the embarkation of the fleet, and in several
other places, is peculiarly happy in the dignity of religious
allusions. Manners and character are also required in the epic poem. But
all the epics which have appeared are, except two, mere copies of the
Iliad in these respects. Every one has its Agamemnon, Achilles, Ajax,
and Ulysses; its calm, furious, gross, and intelligent hero. Camoens and
Milton happily left this beaten track, this exhausted field, and have
given us pictures of manners unknown in the Iliad, the AEneid, and all
those poems which may be classed with the Thebaid. The Lusiad abounds
with pictures of manners, from those of the highest chivalry to those of
the rudest, fiercest, and most innocent barbarism. In the fifth, sixth,
and ninth books, Leonardo and Veloso are painted in stronger colours
than any of the inferior characters in Virgil. But _character_, indeed,
is not the excellence of the AEneid. That of Monzaida, the friend of
Gama, is much superior to that of Achates. The base, selfish, perfidious
and cruel character of the Zamorim and the Moors, are painted in the
strongest colours; and the character of Gama himself is that of the
finished hero. His cool command of his passions, his deep sagacity, his
fixed intrepidity, his tenderness of heart, his manly piety, and his
high enthusiasm in the love of his country are all displayed in the
superlative degree. Let him who objects the want of character to the
Lusiad, beware lest he stumble upon its praise; lest he only say, it
wants an Achilles, a Hector, and a Priam. And, to the novelty of the
manners of the Lusiad let the novelty of fire-arms also be added.