No More Learning

It was to him the Romish Friars of the East
transmitted their childish forgeries of inscriptions and miracles. He
corresponded with them, directed their labours, and received the first
accounts of their success. Under his patronage it was discovered, that
St. Thomas ordered the Indians to worship the cross; and that the
Moorish tradition of Perimal (who, having embraced Mohammedanism,
divided his kingdom among his officers, whom he rendered tributary to
the Zamorim) was a malicious misrepresentation, for that Perimal, having
turned Christian, resigned his kingdom and became a monk. Such was the
learning patronized by Henry, under whose auspices that horrid tribunal,
the Inquisition, was erected at Lisbon, where he himself long presided
as Inquisitor-General. Nor was he content with this: he established an
Inquisition, also, at Goa, and sent a whole apparatus of holy fathers to
form a court of inquisitors, to suppress the Jews and reduce the native
Christians to the see of Rome. Nor must the treatment experienced by
Buchanan at Lisbon be here omitted. John III. , earnest to promote the
cultivation of polite literature among his subjects, engaged Buchanan,
the most elegant Latinist, perhaps, of modern times, to teach philosophy
and the _belles lettres_ at Lisbon. But the design of the monarch was
soon frustrated by the clergy, at the head of whom was Henry, afterwards
king. Buchanan was committed to prison, because it was alleged that he
had eaten flesh in Lent, and because in his early youth, at St. Andrew's
in Scotland, he had written a satire against the Franciscans; for which,
however, ere he would venture to Lisbon, John had promised absolute
indemnity. John, with much difficulty, procured his release from a
loathsome jail, but could not effect his restoration as a teacher. No,
he only changed his prison, for Buchanan was sent to a monastery "to be
instructed by the monks," of the men of letters patronized by Henry.
These are thus characterized by their pupil Buchanan,--_nec inhumanis,
nec malis, sed omnis religionis ignaris_: "Not uncivilized, not
flagitious, but ignorant of every religion.
"

[12] According to Gedron, a second edition of the Lusiad appeared in the
same year with the first. There are two Italian and four Spanish
translations of it. A hundred years before Castera's version it appeared
in French. Thomas de Faria, Bp. of Targa in Africa, translated it into
Latin. Le P. Niceron says there were two other Latin translations. It is
translated, also, into Hebrew, with great elegance and spirit, by one
Luzzatto, a learned and ingenious Jew, author of several poems in that
language, who died in the Holy Land.

[13] This passage in inverted commas is cited, with the alteration of
the name only, from Langhorne's account of the life of William Collins.

[14] The drama and the epopoeia are in nothing so different as in
this--the subjects of the drama are inexhaustible, those of the epopoeia
are perhaps exhausted. He who chooses war, and warlike characters,
cannot appear as an original. It was well for the memory of Pope that he
did not write the epic poem he intended. It would have been only a copy
of Virgil. Camoens and Milton have been happy in the novelty of their
subjects, and these they have exhausted. There cannot possibly be so
important a voyage as that which gave the eastern world to the western.
And, did even the story of Columbus afford materials equal to that of
Gama, the adventures of the hero, and the view of the extent of his
discoveries must now appear as servile copies of the Lusiad.