No More Learning

Of his departure
for Europe, and his unfortunate shipwreck at the mouth of the river
Meekhaun,[4] in Cochin China, Mickle has also given a sufficient
account.

Lord Strangford has related, on the authority of Sousa, that while our
poet was languishing in poverty at Lisbon, "a cavalier, named Ruy de
Camera, called on him one day, asking him to finish for him a poetical
version of the seven penitential psalms. Raising his head from his
wretched pallet, and pointing to his faithful Javanese attendant, he
exclaimed, 'Alas, when I was a poet, I was young, and happy, and blest
with the love of ladies; but now I am a forlorn, deserted wretch.
See--there stands my poor Antonio, vainly supplicating fourpence to
purchase a little coals--I have them not to give him. ' The cavalier, as
Sousa relates, closed both his heart and his purse, and quitted the
room. Such were the grandees of Portugal. " Camoens sank under the
pressure of penury and disease, and died in an alms-house, early in
1579, and was buried in the church of Sta. Anna of the Franciscan
Friars. Over his grave Gonzalo Coutinho placed the following
inscription:--

"HERE LIES LUIS DE CAMOENS.
HE EXCELLED ALL THE POETS OF HIS TIME.
HE LIVED POOR AND MISERABLE, AND HE DIED SO.
MDLXXIX. "

The translator of the Lusiad was born, in 1734, at Langholm, in
Dumfriesshire, where his father, a good French scholar, was the
Presbyterian minister. At the age of sixteen William Julius Mickle was
removed, to his great dislike, from school, and sent into the
counting-house of a relation of his mother's, a brewer, where, against
his inclination, he remained five years. He subsequently, for family
reasons, became the head of the firm, and carried on the business.
It is
not to be wondered at, however, that with his dislike to business in
general and to this one in particular, he did not succeed; and it is
quite reasonable to suppose that the cause of his failure, and
subsequent pecuniary embarrassments, arose from his having devoted those
hours to his poetical studies which should have been dedicated to
business. Mickle obtained afterwards the appointment of corrector of the
Clarendon Press in Oxford, and died at Wheatly, in Oxfordshire, in 1789.

Southey speaks of Mickle (_Quarterly Review_, liii. p. 29) as a man of
genius who had ventured upon the chance of living by his literary
labours, and says that he "did not over-rate the powers which he was
conscious of possessing, knew that he could rely upon himself for their
due exertion, and had sufficient worldly prudence to look out for a
subject which was likely to obtain notice and patronage. " His other
poems, Pollio, Sir Martyn, etc. , with the exception of his Cumnor Hall,
are not held in high estimation.

Describing the several poetic versions of the Lusiad, Mr. Musgrave
says,[5] of Fanshaw's version, that "its language is antiquated, and in
many instances it travesties the original, and seldom long sustains the
tone of epic gravity suited to the poem. It is, however," says he, "more
faithful than the translation of Mickle, but it would be ungenerous," he
adds, "to dwell on the paraphrastic licences which abound in Mickle's
performance, and on its many interpolations and omissions. Mr. Mickle
thought, no doubt," says Musgrave, "that by this process he should
produce a poem which in its perusal might afford a higher gratification.
Nor am I prepared to say that by all readers this would be deemed a
miscalculation. Let it not be supposed, however, that I wish to detract
from the intrinsic merit of his translation. It is but an act of justice
to admit, that it contains many passages of exquisite beauty, and that
it is a performance which discovers much genius, a cultivated taste, and
a brilliant imagination. Many parts of the original are rendered with
great facility, elegance, and fidelity.