No More Learning

[568] _On the hard bosoms of the stubborn crowd. _--There in an elegance
in the original of this line, which the English language will not
admit:--

"Nos duros coracoens de plebe dura,"--

_i. e. _, In the hard hearts of the hard vulgar.

[569] Cupid.

[570]

_Thus from my native waves a hero line
Shall rise, and o'er the East illustrious shine. _--

"By the line of heroes to be produced by the union of the Portuguese
with the Nereids, is to be understood the other Portuguese, who,
following the steps of GAMA, established illustrious colonies in
India. "--CASTERA.

[571] _And Fame--a giant goddess. _--This passage affords a striking
instance of the judgment of Camoens. Virgil's celebrated description of
Fame is in his eye, but he copies it, as Virgil, in his best imitations,
copies after Homer. He adopts some circumstances, but, by adding others,
he makes a new picture, which justly may be called his own.

[572] _The wat'ry gods. _--To mention the gods in the masculine gender,
and immediately to apply to them--

"O peito feminil, que levemente
Muda quaysquer propositos tomados. "--

The ease with which the female breast changes its resolutions, may to
the hypercritical appear reprehensible.
The expression, however, is
classical, and therefore retained. Virgil uses it, where AEneas is
conducted by Venus through the flames of Troy:--

"Descendo, ac ducente _Deo_, flammam inter et hostes
Expedior. "

This is in the manner of the Greek poets, who use the word ? ? ? ? for god
or goddess.

[573] _White as her swans. _--A distant fleet compared to swans on a lake
is certainly a happy thought. The allusion to the pomp of Venus, whose
agency is immediately concerned, gives it besides a peculiar propriety.
This simile, however, is not in the original. It is adopted from an
uncommon liberty taken by Fanshaw:--

"The pregnant _sails_ on Neptune's surface creep,
Like her own _swans_, in _gate_, _out-chest_, and _fether_. "


[574] _Soon as the floating verdure caught their sight. _--As the
departure of GAMA from India was abrupt, he put into one of the
beautiful islands of Anchediva for fresh water. "While he was here
careening his ships," says Faria, "a pirate named Timoja, attacked him
with eight small vessels, so linked together and covered with boughs,
that they formed the appearance of a floating island. " This, says
Castera, afforded the fiction of the floating island of Venus.