He now the treafon of the foe relates,

How foon, as past the mountain's upland straits,
They changed the colour of their friendly shew,
And force forbade his fteps to tread below :

BOOK V.

How

Patroclus "It is a

the critics in the same manner; and that this piece of raillery in the Lufiad is by much the politest, and the leaft reprehenfible of any thing of the kind in the four poets. In Homer are several strokes of low raillery. having killed Hector's charioteer, puns thus on his fudden fall. pity be is not nearer the fea! He would foon catch abundance of oyfters, nor would the forms frighten him. See how he dives from his chariot down to the sand! What excellent divers are the Trojans !" Virgil, the most judicious of all poets, defcends even to the ftyle of Dutch painting, where the commander of a galley tumbles the pilot into the fea, and the failors afterward laugh at him, as he fits on a rock spewing up the falt water:

Segnemque Menoten

In mare præcipitem puppi deturbat ab alta.
At gravis ut fundo vix tandem redditus imo eft
Jam fenior, madidaque fluens in vefte Menotes,
Summa petit fcopuli ficcaque in rupe refedit.
Illum et labentem Teucri, et rifere natantem;
Et falfos rident revomentem pectore fluctus.

And though the characters of the speakers, (the ingenious defence which has been offered for Milton) may in fome measure vindicate the raillery which he puts into the mouths of Satan and Belial, the lowness of it, when compared with that of Camoëns, must still be acknowledged. Talking of the execution of the diabolical artillery among the good angels, they, says Satan,

Flew off, and into strange vagaries fell

As they would dance, yet for a dance they seem'd
Somewhat extravagant and wild, perhaps

For joy of offer'd peace.

To whom thus Belial, in like gamefome mood,
Leader, the terms we sent were terms of weight,
Of hard contents, and full of force urg'd home,
Such as we might perceive amus'd them all,
And stumbled many-

this gift they have befide,
They fhew us when our foes walk not upright.

How down the coverts of the steepy brake
Their lurking ftand a treacherous ambush take;
On us, when speeding to defend his flight,
To rush, and plunge us in the shades of night:
Nor while in friendship would their lips unfold
Where India's ocean laved the orient fhores of gold.

Now profp'rous gales the bending canvas fwell'd;
From these rude fhores our fearless course we held:
Beneath the glistening wave the God of day
Had now five times withdrawn the parting ray,
When o'er the prow a fudden darkness spread,

And flowly floating o'er the mast's tall head
A black cloud hover'd: nor appear'd from far
The moon's pale glimpse, nor faintly twinkling star;
So deep a gloom the louring vapour cast,
Transfixt with awe the bravest stood aghaft.
Meanwhile a hollow bursting roar refounds,
As when hoarse surges lash their rocky mounds;
Nor had the blackening wave, nor frowning heaven
The wonted figns of gathering tempest given.
Amazed we ftood-O thou, our fortune's guide,
Avert this omen, mighty God,-I cried;
Or through forbidden climes adventurous ftray'd,
Have we the fecrets of the deep furvey'd,

Which these wide folitudes of feas and sky

Were doom'd to hide from man's unhallowed eye?

Whate'er

Whate'er this prodigy, it threatens more

Than midnight tempefts and the mingled roar,
When fea and fky combine to rock the marble fhore.

I spoke, when rifing through the darken'd air,
Appall'd we faw an hideous phantom glare;
High and enormous o'er the flood he tower'd,
And thwart our way with fullen aspect lour'd:
An earthly palenefs o'er his cheeks was fpread,
Erect uprofe his hairs of wither'd red;

Writhing to speak, his fable lips disclose,

Sharp and disjoin'd, his gnashing teeth's blue rows;
His haggard beard flow'd quivering on the wind,
Revenge and horror in his mien combined;

His clouded front, by withering lightnings scared,
'The inward anguish of his foul declared.
His red eyes glowing from their dusky caves
Shot livid fires: Far echoing o'er the waves
His voice refounded, as the cavern'd shore
With hollow groan repeats the tempest's roar.
Cold gliding horrors thrill'd each hero's breaft,
Our bristling hair and tottering knees confest
Wild dread; the while with vifage ghaftly wan,
His black lips trembling, thus the fiend began:

t

}

O you,

↑ The apparition. The partiality of translators and editors is become almost proverbial. The admiration of their author is supposed when they undertake to introduce him to the public; that admiration, therefore, may without a blush be confeffed; but if the reputation of judgment is valued, all the jealoufy

O you, the boldest of the nations, fired

By daring pride, by luft of fame inspired,

Who

jealoufy of circumfpection is neceffary, for the tranfition from admiration to partiality and hypercriticism, is not only easy, but to oneself often imperceptible. Yet however guarded against this partiality of hypercriticism the translator of Camoëns may deem himself, he is aware that some of his colder readers may perhaps, in the following instance, accuse him of it. Regard less however of the fang froid of those who judge by authority and not by their own feelings, he will venture to appeal to the few whose taste, though formed by the claffics, is untainted with claffical prejudices. To these he will appeal, and to thefe he will venture the affertion, that the fiction of the apparition of the Cape of Tempests, in fublimity and awful grandeur of imagination, stands unsurpassed in human compofition.-Voltaire, and the foreign critics, have confeffed its merit. In the prodigy of the Harpies in the Eneid, neither the

Virginei volucrum vultus, fœdiffima ventris

Proluvies, uncæque manus, et pallida femper
Ora fame :

Though Virgil, to heighten the defcription, introduces it with
nec favior ulla

Peftis et ira Deum Stygiis fefe extulit undis :

Nor the predictions of the harpy Celano, can, in point of dignity, bear any comparison with the fiction of Camoëns. The noble and admired defcription of Fame, in the fourth Æneid, may feem indeed to challenge competition :

Fama, malum quo non aliud velocius ullum:
Mobilitate viget, virefque acquirit eundo :
Parva metu primò; mox fefe attollit in auras,
Ingrediturque folo, & caput inter nubila condit :

Illam Terra parens, ira irritata Deorum,
Extremam (ut perhibent) Cao Enceladoque fororem
Progenuit; pedibus celerem et pernicibus alis ;

Monftrum borrendum, ingens; cui quot funt corpore plumæ,
Tot vigiles oculi fubter (mirabile dictu)

Tot lingua, totidem ora fonant, tot fubriget aures.
Nocte volat coeli medio terraque, per umbram
Stridens, nec dulci declinat lumina fomno:
Luce fedet cuftos, aut fumni culmine teɛti,
Turribus aut altis, et magnas territat urbes.

Fame,

Who fcornful of the bowers of fweet repose,

Through thefe my waves advance your fearless prows,

Fame, the great ill, from small beginnings grows;
Swift from the first, and every moment brings
New vigour to her flights, new pinions to her wings.
Soon grows the pigmy to gigantic size,

Her feet on earth, her forehead in the fkies:
Enraged against the gods, revengeful earth
Produced her laft of the Titanian birth.
Swift in her walk, more fwift her winged hafte,
A monstrous phantom, horrible and vaft;
As many plumes as raise her lofty flight,
So many piercing eyes enlarge her fight:
Millions of opening mouths to Fame belong,
And every mouth is furnish'd with a tongue,

Regardlefs

And round with liftning ears the flying plague is hung;

She fills the peaceful universe with cries,

No flumbers ever close her wakeful eyes:

By day from lofty towers her head the fhews.

DRYD.

The Mobilitate viget, the Vires acquirit cundo, the Parva metu primo, &c. the Caput inter nubila condit, the pluma, oculi linguæ, ora, and aures, the NoƐte volat, the Luce fedet cuftos, and the Magnas territat urbes, are all very great, and finely imagined. But the whole picture is the offspring of careful attention and judgment; it is a noble display of the calm majesty of Virgil, yet it has not the enthusiasm of that heat of fpontaneous conception, which the ancients honoured with the name of infpiration. The fiction of Camoëns, on the contrary, is the genuine effusion of the glow of poetical imagination. The defcription of the spectre, the awfulness of the prediction, and the horror that breathes through the whole, till the phantom is interrupted by Gama, are in the true spirit of the wild and grand terrific of an Homer, or a Shakefpeare. But however Camoëns may, in this paffage, have excelled Virgil, he himself is infinitely furpaffed by two paffages of Holy Writ. "A thing

was fecretly brought to me," fays the author of the book of Job," and mine ear received a little thereof. In thoughts from the vifions of the night, when deep Sleep falleth on men, fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake: then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh ftood up: it flood Still, but I could not discern the form thereof: an image was before mine eyes, there as filence, and I heard a voice: Shall mortal man be more juft than God! fhall man be more pure than bis Maker! Bebold, be put no truft in bis fervants, and his

a

angels