ed in the island, he takes care
to inform the reader that he ought to understand by this fiction nothing
but the satisfaction which the virtuous man feels, and the glory which
accrues to him, by the practice of virtue; but the best excuse for such
an invention is the charming style in which it is delivered (if we may
believe the Portuguese), for the beauty of the elocution sometimes makes
amends for the faults of the poet, as the colouring of Rubens makes some
defects in his figures pass unregarded.

"There is _another_ kind of machinery continued throughout all the poem,
which nothing can excuse; that is, an injudicious mixture of the heathen
gods with our religion. Gama in a storm addresses his prayers to Christ,
but it is Venus who comes to his relief; the heroes are Christians, and
the poet heathen. The main design which the Portuguese are supposed to
have (next to promoting their trade) is to propagate Christianity; yet
Jupiter, Bacchus, and Venus, have in their hands all the management of
the voyage. So incongruous a machinery casts a blemish upon the whole
poem; yet it shows at the same time how prevailing are its beauties
since the Portuguese like it with all its faults."

The Lusiad, says Voltaire, contains "a sort of epic poetry unheard of
before. No heroes are wounded a thousand different ways; no woman
enticed away, and the world overturned for her cause." But the very want
of these, in place of supporting the objection intended by Voltaire,
points out the happy judgment and peculiar excellence of Camoens. If
Homer has given us all the fire and hurry of battles, he has also given
us all the uninteresting, tiresome detail. What reader but must be
tired with the deaths of a thousand heroes, who are never mentioned
before, nor afterwards, in the poem. Yet, in every battle we are wearied
out with such _Gazette_-returns of the slain and wounded as--

"Hector Priamides when Zeus him glory gave,
Assaeus first, Autonoues, he slew;
Ophites, Dolops, Klytis' son beside;
Opheltius also, Agelaues too,
AEsymnus, and the battle-bide
Hipponoues, chiefs on Danaian side,
And then, the multitude."

HOMER'S Iliad, bk. xi. 299, et seq.,
(W. G. T. BARTER'S translation.)

And corresponding to it is Virgil's AEneid, bk. x. line 747, et seq.:--

"By Caedicus Alcathoues was slain;
Sacrator laid Hydaspes on the plain;
Orses the strong to greater strength must yield,