No More Learning

Some short account of the writers whose authorities have been adduced in
the course of these notes may not now be improper. Fernando Lopez de
Castagneda went to India on purpose to do honour to his countrymen, by
enabling himself to record their actions and conquests in the East. As
he was one of the first writers on that subject, his geography is often
imperfect. This defect is remedied in the writings of John de Barros,
who was particularly attentive to this head. But the two most eminent,
as well as fullest, writers on the transaction of the Portuguese in the
East, are Manuel de Faria y Sousa, knight of the Order of Christ, and
Hieronimus Osorius, bishop of Sylves. Faria, who wrote in Spanish, was a
laborious inquirer, and is very full and circumstantial. With honest
indignation he rebukes the rapine of commanders and the errors and
unworthy resentments of kings. But he is often so drily particular, that
he may rather be called a journalist than an historian. And by this
uninteresting minuteness, his style, for the greatest part, is rendered
inelegant. The Bishop of Sylves, however, claims a different character.
His Latin is elegant, and his manly and sentimental manner entitles him
to the name of historian, even where a Livy or a Tacitus are mentioned.
But a sentence from himself, unexpected in a father of the communion of
Rome, will characterize the liberality of his mind. Talking of the edict
of King Emmanuel, which compelled the Jews to embrace Christianity under
severe persecution: "Nec ex lege, nec ex religione factum . . .
tibi
assumas," says he, "ut libertatem voluntatis impedias, et vincula
mentibus effrenatis injicias? At id neque fleri potest, neque Christi
sanctissimum numen approbat. Voluntarium enim sacrificium non vi malo
coactum ab hominibus expetit: neque vim mentibus inferri, sed voluntates
ad studium verae religionis allici et invitari jubet. "

It is said, in the preface to Osorius, that his writings were highly
esteemed by Queen Mary of England, wife of Philip II. What a pity is it,
that this manly indignation of the good bishop against the impiety of
religious persecution, made no impression on the mind of that bigoted
princess!

[677] _And the wide East is doom'd to Lusian sway. _--Thus, in all the
force of ancient simplicity, and the true sublime, ends the poem of
Camoens. What follows is one of those exuberances we have already
endeavoured to defend in our author, nor in the strictest sense is this
concluding one without propriety. A part of the proposition of the poem
is artfully addressed to King Sebastian, and he is now called upon in an
address (which is an artful second part to the former), to behold and
preserve the glories of his throne.

[678] _And John's bold path and Pedro's course pursue. _--John I. and
Pedro the Just, two of the greatest of the Portuguese monarchs.

[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_.