No More Learning

Nor let the critic, if he find
the meaning of Camoens in some instances altered, imagine that he has
found a blunder in the translator. He who chooses to see a slight
alteration of this kind will find an instance, which will give him an
idea of others, in Canto 8, st. 48, and another in Canto 7, st. 41. It
was not to gratify the dull few, whose greatest pleasure in reading a
translation is to see what the author exactly says; it was to give a
poem that might live in the English language, which was the ambition of
the translator. And, for the same reason, he has not confined himself to
the Portuguese or Spanish pronunciation of proper names. Regardless,
therefore, of Spanish pronunciation, the translator has accented
Granada, Evora, etc. in the manner which seemed to him to give most
dignity to English versification. In the word Sofala he has even
rejected the authority of Milton, and followed the more sonorous usage
of Fanshaw. Thus Sir Richard: "Against Sofala's batter'd fort. " Which is
the more sonorous there can be no dispute.

[23] Judges xviii. 7, 9, 27, 28.

[24] This ferocity of savage manners affords a philosophical account how
the most distant and inhospitable climes were first peopled. When a
Romulus erects a monarchy and makes war on his neighbours, some
naturally fly to the wilds.
As their families increase, the stronger
commit depredations on the weaker; and thus from generation to
generation, they who either dread just punishment or unjust oppression,
fly farther and farther in search of that protection which is only to be
found in civilized society.

[25] The author of that voluminous work, _Histoire Philosophique et
Politique des Etablissements et du Commerce des Europeens dans les deux
Indes_, is one of the many who assert that savage life is happier than
civil. His reasons are thus abridged: The savage has no care or fear for
the future; his hunting and fishing give him a certain subsistence. He
sleeps sound, and knows not the diseases of cities. He cannot want what
he does not desire, nor desire that which he does not know, and vexation
or grief do not enter his soul. He is not under the control of a
superior in his actions; in a word, says our author, the savage only
suffers the evils of nature.

If the civilized, he adds, enjoy the elegancies of life, have better
food, and are more comfortably defended against the change of seasons,
it is use which makes these things necessary, and they are purchased by
the painful labours of the multitude who are the basis of society. To
what outrages is not the man of civil life exposed? if he has property,
it is in danger; and government or authority is, according to our
author, the greatest of all evils. If there is a famine in North
America, the savage, led by the wind and the sun, can go to a better
clime; but in the horrors of famine, war, or pestilence, the ports and
barriers of civilized states place the subjects in a prison, where they
must perish. There still remains an infinite difference between the lot
of the civilized and the savage; a difference, all entirely to the
disadvantage of society, that injustice which reigns in the inequality
of fortunes and conditions.

[26] The innocent simplicity of the Americans in their conferences with
the Spaniards, and the horrid cruelties they suffered from them, divert
our view from their complete character. Almost everything was horrid in
their civil customs and religious rites. In some tribes, to cohabit with
their mothers, sisters, and daughters was esteemed the means of domestic
peace. In others, catamites were maintained in every village; they went
from house to house as they pleased, and it was unlawful to refuse them
what victuals they chose. In every tribe, the captives taken in war were
murdered with the most wanton cruelty, and afterwards devoured by the
victors.