No More Learning

The Lusiad affords many instances which must be highly pleasing to the
Portuguese, but dry to those who are unacquainted with their history.
Nor need one hesitate to assert that, were we not acquainted with the
Roman history from our childhood, a great part of the AEneid would appear
to us intolerably uninteresting. Sensible of this disadvantage which
every version of historical poetry must suffer, the translator has not
only in the notes added every incident which might elucidate the
subject, but has also, all along, in the episode in the third and fourth
books, in the description of the painted ensigns in the eighth, and in
the allusions in the present book, endeavoured to throw every historical
incident into that universal language, the picturesque of poetry. When
Hector storms the Grecian camp, when Achilles marches to battle, every
reader understands and is affected with the bold painting. But when
Nestor talks of his exploits at the funeral games of Amarynces (Iliad
xxiii. ) the critics themselves cannot comprehend him, and have vied with
each other in inventing explanations.

[596] _Proas_, or paraos, Indian vessels which lie low on the water, are
worked with oars, and carry 100 men and upwards apiece.

[597]

_His robes are sprinkled o'er,
And his proud face dash'd, with his menials' gore. --_

See the history in the Preface.

[598] _Round Lusus' fleet to pour their sulph'rous entrails. _--How
Pacheco avoided this formidable danger, see the history in the preface.

[599] _Nor Tiber's bridge. _--When Porsenna besieged Rome, Horatius
Cocles defended the pass of a bridge till the Romans destroyed it behind
him. Having thus saved the pass, heavy armed as he was, he swam across
the Tiber to his companions. Roman history, however, at this period, is
often mixed with fable.
Miltiades obtained a great victory over Darius
at Marathon. The stand made by Leonidas at Thermopyl? is well known. The
battles of Pacheco were in defence of the fords by which alone the city
of Cochin could be entered. The numbers he withstood by land and sea,
and the victories he obtained, are much more astonishing than the
defence of Thermopylae.

[600] _Bound to the mast the godlike hero stands. _--English history
affords an instance of similar resolution in Admiral Bembo, who was
supported in a wooden frame, and continued the engagement after his legs
and thighs were shivered in splinters. Contrary to the advice of his
officers, the young Almeyda refused to bear off, though almost certain
to be overpowered, and though both wind and tide were against him. His
father had sharply upbraided him for a former retreat, where victory was
thought impossible. He now fell the victim of his father's ideas of
military glory.

[601] _The fleets of India fly. _--After having cleared the Indian seas,
the viceroy, Almeyda, attacked the combined fleets of Egypt, Cambaya,
and the zamorim, in the entrance and harbour of Diu, or Dio. The fleet
of the zamorim almost immediately fled. That of Melique Yaz, Lord of
Diu, suffered much; but the greatest slaughter fell upon the Egyptians
and Turks, commanded by Mir-Hocem, who had defeated and killed the young
Almeyda. Of 800 Mamelukes, or Turks, who fought under Mir-Hocem, only
22, says Osorius, survived this engagement. Melique Yaz, says Faria y
Sousa, was born in slavery, and descended of the Christians of Roxia.