No More Learning

His mother, however, Anne de Macedo of Santarem, provided for the
education of her son Luis, at the University of Coimbra. What he
acquired there his works discover; an intimacy with the classics, equal
to that of a Scaliger, but directed by the taste of a Milton or a Pope.

When he left the university he appeared at court. He was a polished
scholar and very handsome,[7] possessing a most engaging mien and
address, with the finest complexion, which, added to the natural ardour
and gay vivacity of his deposition, rendered him an accomplished
gentleman. Courts are the scenes of intrigue, and intrigue was
fashionable at Lisbon. But the particulars of the amours of Camoens rest
unknown. This only appears: he had aspired above his rank, for he was
banished from the court; and in several of his sonnets he ascribes this
misfortune to love.

He now retired to his mother's friends at Santarem. Here he renewed his
studies, and began his poem on the discovery of India. John III. at this
time prepared an armament against Africa. Camoens, tired of his
inactive, obscure life, went to Ceuta in this expedition, and greatly
distinguished his valour in several _rencontres_. In a naval engagement
with the Moors in the Straits of Gibraltar, Camoens, in the conflict of
boarding, where he was among the foremost, lost his right eye. Yet
neither the hurry of actual service, nor the dissipation of the camp,
could stifle his genius. He continued his _Lusiadas_; and several of his
most beautiful sonnets were written in Africa, while, as he expresses
it,

"One hand the pen, and ant the sword employ'd. "

The fame of his valour had now reached the Court, and he obtained
permission to return to Lisbon. But while he solicited an establishment
which he had merited in the ranks of battle, the malignity of evil
tongues (as he calls it in one of his letters) was injuriously poured
upon him. Though the bloom of his early youth was effaced by several
years residence under the scorching sky of Africa, and though altered by
the loss of an eye, his presence gave uneasiness to the gentlemen of
some families of the first rank where he had formerly visited. Jealousy
is the characteristic of the Spanish and Portuguese; its resentment
knows no bounds, and Camoens now found it prudent to banish himself from
his native country. Accordingly, in 1553 he hailed for India, with a
resolution never to return. As the ship left the Tagus he exclaimed, in
the words of the sepulchral monument of Scipio Africanus, "_Ingrata
patria, non possidebis ossa mea! _" (Ungrateful country, thou shalt not
possess my bones! ) But he knew not what evils in the East would awaken
the remembrance of his native fields.

When Camoens arrived in India, an expedition was ready to sail to
revenge the King of Cochin on the King of Pimenta. Without any rest on
shore after his long voyage, he joined this armament, and, in the
conquest of the Alagada Islands, displayed his usual bravery. But his
modesty, perhaps, is his greatest praise. In a sonnet he mentions this
expedition: "We went to punish the King of Pimenta," says he, "_e
succedeones bem_" (and we succeeded well). When it is considered that
the poet bore no inconsiderable share in the victory, no ode can
conclude more elegantly, more happily than this.

In the year following, he attended Manuel de Vasconcello in an
expedition to the Red Sea. Here, says Faria, as Camoens had no use for
his sword, he employed his pen. Nor was his activity confined to the
fleet or camp. He visited Mount Felix, and the adjacent inhospitable
regions of Africa, which he so strongly pictures in the Lusiad, and in
one of his little pieces, where he laments the absence of his mistress.

When he returned to Goa, he enjoyed a tranquility which enabled him to
bestow his attention on his epic poem. But this serenity was
interrupted, perhaps by his own imprudence. He wrote some satires which
gave offence, and by order of the viceroy, Francisco Barreto, he was
banished to China.

Men of poor abilities are more conscious of their embarrassment and
errors than is commonly believed. When men of this kind are in power,
they affect great solemnity; and every expression of the most distant
tendency to lessen their dignity is held as the greatest of crimes.
Conscious, also, how severely the man of genius can hurt their interest,
they bear an instinctive antipathy against him, are uneasy even in his
company, and, on the slightest pretence, are happy to drive him from
them. Camoens was thus situated at Goa; and never was there a fairer
field for satire than the rulers of India at that time afforded. Yet,
whatever esteem the prudence of Camoens may lose in our idea, the
nobleness of his disposition will doubly gain. And, so conscious was he
of his real integrity and innocence, that in one of his sonnets he
wishes no other revenge on Barreto than that the cruelty of his exile
should ever be remembered. [8]

The accomplishments and manners of Camoens soon found him friends,
though under the disgrace of banishment. He was appointed Commissary of
the estates of deceased persons, in the island of Macao, a Portuguese
settlement on the coast of China. Here he continued his Lusiad; and
here, also, after five years residence, he acquired a fortune, though
small, yet equal to his wishes. Don Constantine de Braganza was now
Viceroy of India; and Camoens, desirous to return to Goa, resigned his
charge. In a ship, freighted by himself, he set sail, but was
shipwrecked in the gulf near the mouth of the river Meekhaun, in Cochin
China. All he had acquired was lost in the waves: his poems, which he
held in one hand, while he swam with the other, were all he found
himself possessed of when he stood friendless on the unknown shore. But
the natives gave him a most humane reception; this he has immortalized
in the prophetic song in the tenth Lusiad;[9] and in the seventh he
tells us that here he lost the wealth which satisfied his wishes.

_Agora da esperanca ja adquirida, etc. _

"Now blest with all the wealth fond hope could crave,
Soon I beheld that wealth beneath the wave
For ever lost;----
My life like Judah's Heaven-doom'd king of yore
By miracle prolong'd. "

On the banks of the Meekhaun, he wrote his beautiful paraphrase of the
137th Psalm, where the Jews, in the finest strain of poetry, are
represented as hanging their harps on the willows by the rivers of
Babylon, and weeping their exile from their native country. Here Camoens
continued some time, till an opportunity offered to carry him to Goa.
When he arrived at that city, Don Constantine de Braganza, the viceroy,
whose characteristic was politeness, admitted him into intimate
friendship, and Camoens was happy till Count Redondo assumed the
government. Those who had formerly procured the banishment of the
satirist were silent while Constantine was in power. But now they
exerted all their arts against him. Redondo, when he entered on office,
pretended to be the friend of Camoens; yet, with the most unfeeling
indifference, he suffered the innocent man to be thrown into the common
prison. After all the delay of bringing witnesses, Camoens, in a public
trial, fully refuted every accusation against his conduct while
commissary at Macao, and his enemies were loaded with ignominy and
reproach. But Camoens had some creditors; and these detained him in
prison a considerable time, till the gentlemen of Goa began to be
ashamed that a man of his singular merit should experience such
treatment among them. He was set at liberty; and again he assumed the
profession of arms, and received the allowance of a
gentleman-volunteer, a character at that time common in Portuguese
India. Soon after, Pedro Barreto (appointed governor of the fort of
Sofala), by high promises, allured the poet to attend him thither. The
governor of a distant fort, in a barbarous country, shares in some
measure the fate of an exile. Yet, though the only motive of Barreto
was, in this unpleasant situation, to retain the conversation of Camoens
at his table, it was his least care to render the life of his guest
agreeable. Chagrined with his treatment, and a considerable time having
elapsed in vain dependence upon Barreto, Camoens resolved to return to
his native country. A ship, on the homeward voyage, at this time touched
at Sofala, and several gentlemen[10] who were on board were desirous
that Camoens should accompany them. But this the governor ungenerously
endeavoured to prevent, and charged him with a debt for board. Anthony
de Cabral, however, and Hector de Sylveyra, paid the demand, and
Camoens, says Faria, and the honour of Barreto were sold together.

After an absence of sixteen years, Camoens, in 1569, returned to Lisbon,
unhappy even in his arrival, for the pestilence then raged in that city,
and prevented his publishing for three years. At last, in 1572, he
printed his Lusiad, which, in the opening of the first book, in a most
elegant turn of compliment, he addressed to his prince, King Sebastian,
then in his eighteenth year. The king, says the French translator, was
so pleased with his merit, that he gave the author a pension of 4000
reals, on condition that he should reside at court. But this salary,
says the same writer, was withdrawn by Cardinal Henry, who succeeded to
the crown of Portugal, lost by Sebastian at the battle of Alcazar.

But this story of the pension is very doubtful. Correa and other
contemporary authors do not mention it, though some late writers have
given credit to it. If Camoens, however, had a pension, it is highly
probable that Henry deprived him of it. While Sebastian was devoted to
the chase, his grand-uncle, the cardinal, presided at the council board,
and Camoens, in his address to the king, which closes the Lusiad,
advises him to exclude the clergy from State affairs. It was easy to see
that the cardinal was here intended. And Henry, besides, was one of
those statesmen who can perceive no benefit resulting to the public
from elegant literature. But it ought also to be added in completion of
his character, that under the narrow views and weak hands of this Henry,
the kingdom of Portugal fell into utter ruin; and on his death, which
closed a short inglorious reign, the crown of Lisbon, after a faint
struggle, was annexed to that of Spain. Such was the degeneracy of the
Portuguese, a degeneracy lamented in vain by Camoens, whose observation
of it was imputed to him as a crime.

Though the great[11] patron of theological literature--a species the
reverse of that of Camoens--certain it is, that the author of the Lusiad
was utterly neglected by Henry, under whose inglorious reign he died in
all the misery of poverty. By some, it is said, he died in an
almshouse. It appears, however, that he had not even the certainty of
subsistence which these houses provide. He had a black servant, who had
grown old with him, and who had long experienced his master's humanity.
This grateful dependant, a native of Java, who, according to some
writers, saved his master's life in the unhappy shipwreck where he lost
his effects, begged in the streets of Lisbon for the only man in
Portugal on whom God had bestowed those talents which have a tendency to
erect the spirit of a downward age. To the eye of a careful observer,
the fate of Camoens throws great light on that of his country, and will
appear strictly connected with it. The same ignorance, the same
degenerate spirit, which suffered Camoens to depend on his share of the
alms begged in the streets by his old hoary servant--the same spirit
which caused this, sank the kingdom of Portugal into the most abject
vassalage ever experienced by a conquered nation. While the grandees of
Portugal were blind to the ruin which impended over them, Camoens beheld
it with a pungency of grief which hastened his end. In one of his
letters he has these remarkable words, "_Em fim accaberey a vida, e
verram todos que fuy afeicoada a minho patria_," etc. --"I am ending the
course of my life, the world will witness how I have loved my country. I
have returned, not only to die in her bosom, but to die with her. " In
another letter, written a little before his death, he thus, yet with
dignity, complains, "Who has seen on so small a theatre as my poor bed,
such a representation of the disappointments of Fortune. And I, as if
she could not herself subdue me, I have yielded and become of her party;
for it were wild audacity to hope to surmount such accumulated evils. "

In this unhappy situation, in 1579, in his sixty-second year, the year
after the fatal defeat of Don Sebastian, died Luis de Camoens, the
greatest literary genius ever produced by Portugal; in martial courage
and spirit of honour nothing inferior to her greatest heroes. And in a
manner suitable to the poverty in which he died was he buried. Soon
after, however, many epitaphs honoured his memory; the greatness of his
merit was universally confessed, and his Lusiad was translated into
various languages. [12] Nor ought it to be omitted, that the man so
miserably neglected by the weak king Henry, was earnestly enquired after
by Philip of Spain when he assumed the crown of Lisbon. When Philip
heard that Camoens was dead, both his words and his countenance
expressed his disappointment and grief.

From the whole tenor of his life, and from that spirit which glows
throughout the Lusiad, it evidently appears that the courage and manners
of Camoens flowed from true greatness and dignity of soul. Though his
polished conversation was often courted by the great, he appears so
distant from servility that his imprudence in this respect is by some
highly blamed. Yet the instances of it by no means deserve that severity
of censure with which some writers have condemned him. Unconscious of
the feelings of a Camoens, they knew not that a carelessness in securing
the smiles of fortune, and an open honesty of indignation, are almost
inseparable from the enthusiasm of fine imagination. The truth is, the
man possessed of true genius feels his greatest happiness in the
pursuits and excursions of the mind, and therefore makes an estimate of
things very different from that of him whose unremitting attention is
devoted to his external interest. The profusion of Camoens is also
censured. Had he dissipated the wealth he acquired at Macao, his
profusion indeed had been criminal; but it does not appear that he ever
enjoyed any other opportunity of acquiring independence. But Camoens was
unfortunate, and the unfortunate man is viewed--

"Through the dim shade his fate casts o'er him:
A shade that spreads its evening darkness o'er
His brightest virtues, while it shows his foibles
Crowding and obvious as the midnight stars,
Which, in the sunshine of prosperity
Never had been descried. "

Yet, after the strictest discussion, when all the causes are weighed
together, the misfortunes of Camoens will appear the fault and disgrace
of his age and country, and not of the man. His talents would have
secured him an apartment in the palace of Augustus, but such talents are
a curse to their possessor in an illiterate nation. In a beautiful,
digressive exclamation at the end of the Lusiad, he affords us a
striking view of the neglect which he experienced. Having mentioned how
the greatest heroes of antiquity revered and cherished the muse, he thus
characterizes the nobility of his own age and country.

"Alas! on Tago's hapless shore alone
The muse is slighted, and her charms unknown;
For this, no Virgil here attunes the lyre,
No Homer here awakes the hero's fire;
Unheard, in vain their native poet sings,
And cold neglect weighs dawn the muse's wings. "

In such an age, and among such a barbarous nobility, what but wretched
neglect could be the fate of a Camoens! After all, however, if he was
imprudent on his first appearance at the court of John III. ; if the
honesty of his indignation led him into great imprudence, as certainly
it did, when at Goa he satirised the viceroy and the first persons in
power; yet let it also be remembered, that "The gifts of imagination
bring the heaviest task upon the vigilance of reason; and to bear those
faculties with unerring rectitude, or invariable propriety, requires a
degree of firmness and of cool attention, which doth not always attend
the higher gifts of the mind. Yet, difficult as nature herself seems to
have rendered the task of regularity to genius, it is the supreme
consolation of dullness and of folly to point with Gothic triumph to
those excesses which are the overflowings of faculties they never
enjoyed. Perfectly unconscious that they are indebted to their stupidity
for the consistency of their conduct, they plume themselves on an
imaginary virtue which has its origin in what is really their
disgrace. --Let such, if such dare approach the shrine of Camoens,
withdraw to a respectful distance; and should they behold the ruins of
genius, or the weakness of an exalted mind, let them be taught to lament
that nature has left the noblest of her works imperfect. "[13]




DISSERTATION ON THE LUSIAD, AND ON EPIC POETRY,

BY THE TRANSLATOR.


When Voltaire was in England, previous to his publication of his
Henriade, he published in English an essay on the epic poetry of the
European nations. In this he both highly praised, and severely attacked,
the Lusiad. In his French editions of this essay, he has made various
alterations, at different times, in the article on Camoens. It is not,
however, improper to premise, that some most amazing falsities will be
here detected; the gross misrepresentation of every objection refuted;
and demonstration brought, that when Voltaire wrote his English essay,
his knowledge of the Lusiad was entirely borrowed from the bold, harsh,
unpoetical version of Fanshaw.

"While Trissino," says Voltaire, "was clearing away the rubbish in
Italy, which barbarity and ignorance had heaped up for ten centuries in
the way of the arts and sciences, Camoens, in Portugal, steered a new
course, and acquired a reputation which lasts still among his countrymen
who pay as much respect to his memory as the English to Milton. "

Among other passages of the Lusiad which he criticises is that where
"Adamastor, the giant of the Cape of Storms, appears to them, walking in
the depth of the sea; his head reaches to the clouds; the storms, the
winds, the thunders, and the lightnings hang about him; his arms are
extended over the waves. It is the guardian of that foreign ocean,
unploughed before by any ship. He complains of being obliged to submit
to fate, and to the audacious undertaking of the Portuguese, and
foretells them all the misfortunes they must undergo in the Indies. I
believe that such a fiction would be thought noble and proper in all
ages, and in all nations.

"There is another, which perhaps would have pleased the Italians as well
as the Portuguese, but no other nation besides: it is the enchanted
island, called the Island of Bliss, which the fleet finds in its way
home, just rising from the sea, for their comfort, and for their reward.
Camoens describes that place, as Tasso some years after depicted his
island of Armida. There a supernatural power brings in all the beauties,
and presents all the pleasures which nature can afford, and the heart
may wish for; a goddess, enamoured with Vasco de Gama, carries him to
the top of a high mountain, from whence she shows him all the kingdoms
of the earth, and foretells the fate of Portugal.

"After Camoens hath given loose to his fancy, in the description of the
pleasures which Gama and his crew enjoyed 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, Autonous, he slew;
Ophites, Dolops, Klytis' son beside;
Opheltius also, Agelaus too,
AEsymnus, and the battle-bide
Hipponous, 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 Alcathous was slain;
Sacrator laid Hydaspes on the plain;
Orses the strong to greater strength must yield,
He, with Parthenius, were by Rapo killed.
Then brave Messapus Ericetes slew,
Who from Lycaon's blood his lineage drew. "

DRYDEN'S version.

With, such catalogues is every battle extended; and what can be more
tiresome than such uninteresting descriptions, and their imitations! If
the idea of the battle be raised by such enumeration, still the copy and
original are so near each other that they can never please in two
separate poems. Nor are the greater part of the battles of the AEneid
much more distant than those of the Iliad. Though Virgil with great art
has introduced a Camilla, a Pallas, and a Lausus, still, in many
particulars, and in the action upon the whole, there is such a sameness
with the Iliad, that the learned reader of the AEneid is deprived of the
pleasure inspired by originality. If the man of taste, however, will be
pleased to mark how the genius of a Virgil has managed a war after
Homer, he will certainly be tired with a dozen epic poems in the same
style. Where the siege of a town and battles are the subject of an epic,
there will, of necessity, in the characters and circumstances, be a
resemblance to Homer; and such poem must therefore want originality.
Happily for Tasso, the variation of manners, and his masterly
superiority over Homer in describing his duels, has given to his
Jerusalem an air of novelty. Yet, with all the difference between
Christian and pagan heroes, we have a Priam, an Agamemnon, an Achilles,
etc. , armies slaughtered, and a city besieged. In a word, we have a
handsome copy of the Iliad in the Jerusalem Delivered. If some
imitations, however, have been successful, how many other epics of
ancient and modern times have hurried down the stream of oblivion! Some
of their authors had poetical merit, but the fault was in the choice of
their subjects. So fully is the strife of war exhausted by Homer, that
Virgil and Tasso could add to it but little novelty; no wonder,
therefore, that so many epics on battles and sieges have been suffered
to sink into utter neglect. Camoens, perhaps, did not weigh these
circumstances, but the strength of his poetical genius directed him. He
could not but feel what it was to read Virgil after Homer; and the
original turn and force of his mind led him from the beaten track of
Helen's and Lavinia's, Achilles's and Hector's sieges and slaughters,
where the hero hews down, and drives to flight, whole armies with his
own sword. Camoens was the first who wooed the modern Epic Muse, and she
gave him the wreath of a first lover; a sort of epic poetry unheard of
before; or, as Voltaire calls it, _une nouvelle espece d'epopee_; and
the grandest subject it is (of profane history) which the world has ever
beheld. [14] A voyage esteemed too great for man to dare; the adventures
of this voyage through unknown oceans deemed unnavigable; the eastern
world happily discovered, and for ever indissolubly joined and given to
the western; the grand Portuguese empire in the East founded; the
humanization of mankind, and universal commerce the consequence! What
are the adventures of an old, fabulous hero's arrival in Britain, what
are Greece and Latium in arms for a woman compared to this! Troy is in
ashes, and even the Roman empire is no more. But the effects of the
voyage, adventures, and bravery of the hero of the Lusiad will be felt
and beheld, and perhaps increase in importance, while the world shall
remain.

Happy in his choice, happy also was the genius of Camoens in the method
of pursuing his subject. He has not, like Tasso, given it a total
appearance of fiction; nor has he, like Lucan, excluded allegory and
poetical machinery. Whether he intended it or not (for his genius was
sufficient to suggest its propriety), the judicious precept of
Petronius[15] is the model of the Lusiad. That elegant writer proposes a
poem on the civil war, and no poem, ancient or modern, merits the
character there sketched out in any degree comparative to the Lusiad. A
truth of history is preserved; yet, what is improper for the historian,
the ministry of Heaven is employed, and the free spirit of poetry throws
itself into fictions which makes the whole appear as an effusion of
prophetic fury, and not like a rigid detail of facts, given under the
sanction of witnesses. Contrary to Lucan, who, in the above rules, drawn
from the nature of poetry, is severely condemned by Petronius, Camoens
conducts his poem _per ambages Deorumque ministeria_. The apparition,
which in the night hovers athwart the fleet near the Cape of Good Hope,
is the grandest fiction in human composition; the invention his own! In
the Island of Venus, the use of which fiction in an epic poem is also
his own, he has given the completest assemblage of all the flowers which
have ever adorned the bowers of love. And, never was the _furentis animi
vaticinatio_ more conspicuously displayed than in the prophetic song,
the view of the spheres, and the globe of the earth. Tasso's imitation
of the Island of Venus is not equal to the original; and, though
"Virgil's myrtles[16] dropping blood are nothing to Tasso's enchanted
forest," what are all Ismeno's enchantments to the grandeur and horror
of the appearance, prophecy, and vanishment of the spectre of
Camoens! [17] It has long been agreed among critics, that the solemnity
of religious observances gives great dignity to the historical narrative
of epic poetry. Camoens, in the embarkation of the fleet, and in several
other places, is peculiarly happy in the dignity of religious
allusions. Manners and character are also required in the epic poem. But
all the epics which have appeared are, except two, mere copies of the
Iliad in these respects. Every one has its Agamemnon, Achilles, Ajax,
and Ulysses; its calm, furious, gross, and intelligent hero. Camoens and
Milton happily left this beaten track, this exhausted field, and have
given us pictures of manners unknown in the Iliad, the AEneid, and all
those poems which may be classed with the Thebaid. The Lusiad abounds
with pictures of manners, from those of the highest chivalry to those of
the rudest, fiercest, and most innocent barbarism. In the fifth, sixth,
and ninth books, Leonardo and Veloso are painted in stronger colours
than any of the inferior characters in Virgil. But _character_, indeed,
is not the excellence of the AEneid. That of Monzaida, the friend of
Gama, is much superior to that of Achates. The base, selfish, perfidious
and cruel character of the Zamorim and the Moors, are painted in the
strongest colours; and the character of Gama himself is that of the
finished hero. His cool command of his passions, his deep sagacity, his
fixed intrepidity, his tenderness of heart, his manly piety, and his
high enthusiasm in the love of his country are all displayed in the
superlative degree. Let him who objects the want of character to the
Lusiad, beware lest he stumble upon its praise; lest he only say, it
wants an Achilles, a Hector, and a Priam. And, to the novelty of the
manners of the Lusiad let the novelty of fire-arms also be added. It has
been said that the buckler, the bow, and the spear, must continue the
arms of poetry. Yet, however unsuccessful others may have been, Camoens
has proved that fire-arms may be introduced with the greatest dignity,
and the finest effect in the epic poem.

As the grand interest of commerce and of mankind forms the subject of
the Lusiad, so, with great propriety, as necessary accompaniments to the
voyage of his hero, the author has given poetical pictures of the four
parts of the world--in the third book a view of Europe; in the fifth, a
view of Africa; and in the tenth, a picture of Asia and America.
Homer
and Virgil have been highly praised for their judgment in the choice of
subjects which interested their countrymen, and Statius has been as
severely condemned for his uninteresting choice. But, though the subject
of Camoens be particularly interesting to his own countrymen, it has
also the peculiar happiness to be the poem of every trading nation. It
is the epic poem of the birth of commerce, and, in a particular manner,
the epic poem of whatever country has the control and possession of the
commerce of India. [18]

An unexhausted fertility and variety of poetical description, an
unexhausted elevation of sentiment, and a constant tenor of the grand
simplicity of diction, complete the character of the Lusiad of Camoens:
a poem which, though it has hitherto received from the public most
unmerited neglect, and from the critics most flagrant injustice, was yet
better understood by the greatest poet of Italy. Tasso never did his
judgment more credit than when he confessed that he dreaded Camoens as a
rival; or his generosity more honour than when he addressed the elegant
sonnet to the hero of the Lusiad, commencing--

"Vasco, le cui felici, ardite antenne
In contro al sol, che ne riporta il giorno. "

It only remains to give some account of the version of the Lusiad which
is now offered to the public. Beside the translations mentioned in the
life of Camoens, M. Duperron De Castera, in 1735, gave, in French prose,
a loose unpoetical paraphrase[19] of the Lusiad. Nor does Sir Richard
Fanshaw's English version, published during the usurpation of Cromwell,
merit a better character. Though stanza be rendered for stanza, though
at first view it has the appearance of being exceedingly literal, this
version is nevertheless exceedingly unfaithful. Uncountenanced by his
original, Fanshaw--

"Teems with many a dead-born just. "[20]

Nor had he the least idea of the dignity of the epic style,[21] or of
the true spirit of poetical translation. For this, indeed, no definite
rule can be given. The translator's feelings alone must direct him, for
the spirit of poetry is sure to evaporate in literal translation.

Indeed, literal translation of poetry is a solecism. You may construe
your author, indeed, but, if with some translators you boast that you
have left your author to speak for himself, that you have neither added
nor diminished, you have in reality grossly abused him, and deceived
yourself. Your literal translation can have no claim to the original
felicities of expression; the energy, elegance, and fire of the original
poetry. It may bear, indeed, a resemblance; but such a one as a corpse
in the sepulchre bears to the former man when he moved in the bloom and
vigour of life.

_Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere, fidus
Interpres,_

was the taste of the Augustan age. None but a poet can translate a poet.
The freedom which this precept gives, will, therefore, in a poet's
hands, not only infuse the energy, elegance, and fire of his author's
poetry into his own version, but will give it also the spirit of an
original.

He who can construe may perform all that is claimed by the literal
translator. He who attempts the manner of translation prescribed by
Horace, ventures upon a task of genius. Yet, however daring the
undertaking, and however he may have failed in it, the translator
acknowledges, that in this spirit he has endeavoured to give the Lusiad
in English. Even farther liberties, in one or two instances, seemed to
him advantageous---- But a minuteness[22] in the mention of these will
not appear with a good grace in this edition of his work; and besides,
the original is in the hands of the world.




MICKLE'S INTRODUCTION TO THE LUSIAD.


If a concatenation of events centred in one great action--events which
gave birth to the present commercial system of the world--if these be of
the first importance in the civil history of mankind, then the Lusiad,
of all other poems, challenges the attention of the philosopher, the
politician, and the gentleman.

In contradistinction to the Iliad and the AEneid, the Paradise Lost has
been called the Epic Poem of Religion. In the same manner may the Lusiad
be named the Epic Poem of Commerce. The happy completion of the most
important designs of Henry, Duke of Viseo, prince of Portugal, to whom
Europe owes both Gama and Columbus, both the eastern and the western
worlds, constitutes the subject of this celebrated epic poem. But before
we proceed to the historical introduction necessary to elucidate a poem
founded on such an important period of history, some attention is due to
the opinion of those theorists in political philosophy who lament that
India was ever discovered, and who assert that increase of trade is only
the parent of degeneracy, and the nurse of every vice.

Much, indeed, may be urged on this side of the question; but much, also,
may be urged against every institution relative to man. Imperfection, if
not necessary to humanity, is at least the certain attendant on
everything human. Though some part of the traffic with many countries
resemble Solomon's importation of apes and peacocks; though the
superfluities of life, the baubles of the opulent, and even the luxuries
which enervate the irresolute and administer disease, are introduced by
the intercourse of navigation, yet the extent of the benefits which
attend it are also to be considered before the man of cool reason will
venture to pronounce that the world is injured, and rendered less
virtuous and happy by the increase of commerce.

If a view of the state of mankind, where commerce opens no intercourse
between nation and nation be neglected, unjust conclusions will
certainly follow. Where the state of barbarians, and of countries under
different degrees of civilization are candidly weighed, we may
reasonably expect a just decision. As evidently as the appointment of
nature gives pasture to the herds, so evidently is man born for society.
As every other animal is in its natural state when in the situation
which its instinct requires, so man, when his reason is cultivated, is
then, and only then, in the state proper to his nature. The life of the
naked savage, who feeds on acorns and sleeps like a beast in his den, is
commonly called the natural state of man; but, if there be any propriety
in this assertion, his rational faculties compose no part of his nature,
and were given not to be used. If the savage, therefore, live in a state
contrary to the appointment of nature, it must follow that he is not so
happy as nature intended him to be. And a view of his true character
will confirm this conclusion. The reveries, the fairy dreams of a
Rousseau, may figure the paradisaical life of a Hottentot, but it is
only in such dreams that the superior happiness of the barbarian exists.
The savage, it is true, is reluctant to leave his manner of life; but,
unless we allow that he is a proper judge of the modes of living, his
attachment to his own by no means proves that he is happier than he
might otherwise have been. His attachment only exemplifies the amazing
power of habit in reconciling the human breast to the most uncomfortable
situations. If the intercourse of mankind in some instances be
introductive of vice, the want of it as certainly excludes the exertion
of the noblest virtues; and, if the seeds of virtue are indeed in the
heart, they often lie dormant, and even unknown to the savage possessor.
The most beautiful description of a tribe of savages (which we may be
assured is from real life) occurs in these words:[23] And the five spies
of Dan "came to Laish, and saw the people that were there, how they
dwelt careless, after the manner of the Zidonians, quiet and secure; and
there was no magistrate in the land, that might put them to shame in
anything. . . . " And the spies said to their brethren, "Arise, that we may
go up against them; for we have seen the land, and, behold, it is very
good. . . . And they came unto Laish, unto a people that were at quiet and
secure: and they smote them with the edge of the sword, and burnt the
city with fire. And there was no deliverer, because it was far from
Zidon, and they had no business with any man. " However the happy
simplicity of this society may please the man of fine imagination, the
true philosopher will view the men of Laish with other eyes. However
virtuous he may suppose one generation, it requires an alteration of
human nature to preserve the children of the next in the same generous
estrangement from the selfish passions--from those passions which are
the parents of the acts of injustice. When his wants are easily
supplied, the manners of the savage will be simple, and often humane,
for the human heart is not vicious without objects of temptation. But
these will soon occur; he that gathers the greatest quantity of fruit
will be envied by the less industrious. The uninformed mind seems
insensible of the idea of the right of possession which the labour of
acquirement gives. When want is pressing, and the supply at hand, the
only consideration with such minds is the danger of seizing it; and
where there is no magistrate to put to shame in anything, depredation
will soon display all its horrors. Let it even be admitted that the
innocence of the men of Laish could secure them from the consequences of
their own unrestrained desires, could even this impossibility be
surmounted, still are they a wretched prey to the first invaders, and
because they have no business with any man, they will find no deliverer.
While human nature is the same, the fate of Laish will always be the
fate of the weak and defenceless; and thus the most amiable description
of savage life raises in our minds the strongest imagery of the misery
and impossible continuance of such a state. But if the view of these
innocent people terminate in horror, with what contemplation shall we
behold the wilds of Africa and America? The tribes of America, it is
true, have degrees of policy greatly superior to anything understood by
the men of Laish. Great masters of martial oratory, their popular
assemblies are schools open to all their youth. In these they not only
learn the history of their nation, and what they have to fear from the
strength and designs of their enemies, but they also imbibe the most
ardent spirit of war. The arts of stratagem are their study, and the
most athletic exercises of the field their employment and delight; and,
what is their greatest praise, they have magistrates "to put them to
shame. " They inflict no corporeal punishment on their countrymen, it is
true; but a reprimand from an elder, delivered in the assembly, is
esteemed by them a deeper degradation and severer punishment than any of
those too often most impolitically adopted by civilized nations. Yet,
though possessed of this advantage--an advantage impossible to exist in
a large commercial empire--and though masters of great martial policy,
their condition, upon the whole, is big with the most striking
demonstration of the misery and unnatural state of such very imperfect
civilization. "Multiply and replenish the earth" is an injunction of the
best political philosophy ever given to man. Nature has appointed man to
cultivate the earth, to increase in number by the food which its culture
gives, and by this increase of brethren to remove some, and to mitigate
all, the natural miseries of human life. But in direct opposition to
this is the political state of the wild aborigines of America. Their
lands, luxuriant in climate, are often desolate wastes, where thousands
of miles hardly support a few hundreds of savage hunters. Attachment to
their own tribe constitutes their highest idea of virtue; but this
virtue includes the most brutal depravity, makes them esteem the man of
every other tribe as an enemy, as one with whom nature had placed them
in a state of war, and had commanded to destroy. [24] And to this
principle their customs and ideas of honour serve as rituals and
ministers. The cruelties practised by the American savages on their
prisoners of war (and war is their chief employment) convey every idea
expressed by the word diabolical, and give a most shocking view of the
degradation of human nature. But what peculiarly completes the character
of the savage is his horrible superstition. In the most distant nations
the savage is, in this respect, the same. The terror of evil spirits
continually haunts him; his God is beheld as a relentless tyrant, and is
worshipped often with cruel rites, always with a heart full of horror
and fear. In all the numerous accounts of savage worship, one trace of
filial dependence is not to be found. The very reverse of that happy
idea is the hell of the ignorant mind. Nor is this barbarism confined
alone to those ignorant tribes whom we call savages. The vulgar of every
country possess it in certain degrees, proportionated to their
opportunities of conversation with the more enlightened. Sordid
disposition and base ferocity, together with the most unhappy
superstition, are everywhere the proportionate attendants of ignorance
and severe want. And ignorance and want are only removed by intercourse
and the offices of society. So self-evident are these positions, that it
requires an apology for insisting upon them; but the apology is at hand.
He who has read knows how many eminent writers,[25] and he who has
conversed knows how many respectable names, connect the idea of
innocence and happiness with the life of the savage and the unimproved
rustic. To fix the character of the savage is therefore necessary, ere
we examine the assertion, that "it had been happy for both the old and
the new worlds if the East and West Indies had never been discovered. "
The bloodshed and the attendant miseries which the unparalleled rapine
and cruelties of the Spaniards spread over the new world, indeed
disgrace human nature. The great and flourishing empires of Mexico and
Peru, steeped in the blood of forty millions of their sons, present a
melancholy prospect, which must excite the indignation of every good
heart. Yet such desolation is not the certain consequence of discovery.
And, even should we allow that the depravity of human nature is so great
that the avarice of the merchant and rapacity of the soldier will
overwhelm with misery every new-discovered country, still, are there
other, more comprehensive views, to be taken, ere we decide against the
intercourse introduced by navigation. When we weigh the happiness of
Europe in the scale of political philosophy, we are not to confine our
eye to the dreadful ravages of Attila the Hun, or of Alaric the Goth. If
the waters of a stagnated lake are disturbed by the spade when led into
new channels, we ought not to inveigh against the alteration because the
waters are fouled at the first; we are to wait to see the streamlets
refine and spread beauty and utility through a thousand vales which they
never visited before. Such were the conquests of Alexander, temporary
evils, but civilization and happiness followed in the bloody track. And,
though disgraced with every barbarity, happiness has also followed the
conquests of the Spaniards in the other hemisphere. Though the villainy
of the Jesuits defeated their schemes of civilization in many countries,
the labours of that society have been crowned with a success in Paraguay
and in Canada, which reflects upon their industry the greatest honour.
The customs and cruelties of many American tribes still disgrace human
nature, but in Paraguay and Canada the natives have been brought to
relish the blessings of society, and the arts of virtuous and civil
life. If Mexico is not so populous as it once was, neither is it so
barbarous;[26] the shrieks of the human victim do not now resound from
temple to temple, nor does the human heart, held up reeking to the sun,
imprecate the vengeance of Heaven on the guilty empire. And, however
impolitically despotic the Spanish governments may be, still do these
colonies enjoy the opportunities of improvement, which in every age
arise from the knowledge of commerce and of letters--opportunities which
were never enjoyed in South America under the reigns of Montezuma and
Atabalipa. But if from Spanish, we turn our eyes to British America,
what a glorious prospect! Here, formerly, on the wild lawn, perhaps
twice in the year, a few savage hunters kindled their evening fire,
kindled it more to protect them from evil spirits and beasts of prey,
than from the cold, and with their feet pointed to it, slept on the
ground. Here, now, population spreads her thousands, and society appears
in all its blessings of mutual help, and the mutual lights of
intellectual improvement. "What work of art, or power, or public
utility, has ever equalled the glory of having peopled a continent,
without guilt or bloodshed, with a multitude of free and happy
commonwealths; to have given them the best arts of life and government! "
To have given a savage continent an image of the British Constitution
is, indeed, the greatest glory of the British crown, "a greater than any
other nation ever acquired;" and from the consequences of the genius of
Henry, Duke of Viseo, did the British American empire arise, an empire
which, unless retarded by the illiberal and inhuman spirit of religious
fanaticism, will in a few centuries, perhaps, be the glory of the world.

Stubborn indeed must be the theorist who will deny the improvement,
virtue, and happiness which, in the result, the voyage of Columbus has
spread over the western world. The happiness which Europe and Asia have
received from the intercourse with each other, cannot hitherto, it must
be owned, be compared either with the possession of it, or the source of
its increase established in America. Yet, let the man of the most
melancholy views estimate all the wars and depredations which are
charged upon the Portuguese and other European nations, still will the
eastern world appear considerably advantaged by the voyage of Gama. If
seas of blood have been shed by the Portuguese, nothing new was
introduced into India. War and depredation were no unheard-of strangers
on the banks of the Ganges, nor could the nature of the civil
establishments of the eastern nations secure a lasting peace. The
ambition of their native princes was only diverted into new channels,
into channels which, in the natural course of human affairs, will
certainly lead to permanent governments, established on improved laws
and just dominion. Yet, even ere such governments are formed, is Asia no
loser by the arrival of Europeans. The horrid massacres and unbounded
rapine which, according to their own annals, followed the victories of
their Asian conquerors were never equalled by the worst of their
European vanquishers. Nor is the establishment of improved governments
in the East the dream of theory. The superiority of the civil and
military arts of the British, notwithstanding the hateful character of
some individuals, is at this day beheld in India with all the
astonishment of admiration; and admiration is always followed, though
often with retarded steps, by the strong desire of similar improvement.
Long after the fall of the Roman empire the Roman laws were adopted by
nations which ancient Rome esteemed as barbarous. And thus, in the
course of ages, the British laws, according to every test of
probability, will have a most important effect, will fulfil the prophecy
of Camoens, and transfer to the British the high compliment he pays to
his countrymen--

"Beneath their sway majestic, wise, and mild,
Proud of her victor's laws thrice happier India smiled. "

In former ages, and within these few years, the fertile empire of India
has exhibited every scene of human misery, under the undistinguishing
ravages of their Mohammedan and native princes; ravages only equalled
in European history by those committed under Atilla, surnamed "the
scourge of God," and "the destroyer of nations. " The ideas of patriotism
and of honour were seldom known in the cabinets of the eastern princes
till the arrival of the Europeans. Every species of assassination was
the policy of their courts, and every act of unrestrained rapine and
massacre followed the path of victory. But some of the Portuguese
governors, and many of the English officers, have taught them that
humanity to the conquered is the best, the truest policy. The brutal
ferocity of their own conquerors is now the object of their greatest
dread; and the superiority of the British in war has convinced their
princes,[27] that an alliance with the British is the surest guarantee
of their national peace and prosperity. While the English East India
Company are possessed of their present greatness, it is in their power
to diffuse over the East every blessing which flows from the wisest and
most humane policy. Long ere the Europeans arrived, a failure of the
crop of rice, the principal food of India, had spread the devastations
of famine over the populous plains of Bengal. And never, from the seven
years' famine of ancient Egypt to the present day, was there a natural
scarcity in any country which did not enrich the proprietors of the
granaries. The Mohammedan princes, and Moorish traders have often added
all the horrors of an artificial, to a natural, famine. But, however
some Portuguese or other governors may stand accused, much was left for
the humanity of the more exalted policy of an Albuquerque, or a Castro.
And under such European governors as these, the distresses of the East
have often been alleviated by a generosity of conduct, and a train of
resources formerly unknown in Asia. Absurd and impracticable were that
scheme which would introduce the British laws into India without the
deepest regard to the manners and circumstances peculiar to the people.
But that spirit of liberty upon which they are founded, and that
security of property which is their leading principle, must in time have
a wide and stupendous effect. The abject spirit of Asiatic submission
will be taught to see, and to claim, those rights of nature, of which
the dispirited and passive Hindus could, till lately, hardly form an
idea. From this, as naturally as the noon succeeds the dawn, must the
other blessings of civilization arise. For, though the four great castes
of India are almost inaccessible to the introduction of other manners,
and of other literature than their own, happily there is in human nature
a propensity to change. Nor may the political philosopher be deemed an
enthusiast who would boldly prophesy, that unless the British be driven
from India the general superiority which they bear will, ere many
generations shall have passed, induce the most intelligent of India to
break the shackles of their absurd superstitions,[28] and lead them to
partake of those advantages which arise from the free scope and due
cultivation of the rational powers. In almost every instance the Indian
institutions are contrary to the feelings and wishes of nature. And
ignorance and bigotry, their two chief pillars, can never secure
unalterable duration. We have certain proof that the horrid custom of
burning the wives along with the body of the deceased husband has
continued for upwards of fifteen hundred years; we are also certain that
within these twenty years it has begun to fall into disuse. Together
with the alteration of this most striking feature of Indian manners,
other assimilations to European sentiments have already taken place. Nor
can the obstinacy even of the conceited Chinese always resist the desire
of imitating the Europeans, a people who in arts and arms are so greatly
superior to themselves. The use of the twenty-four letters, by which we
can express every language, appeared at first as miraculous to the
Chinese. Prejudice cannot always deprive that people, who are not
deficient in selfish cunning, of the ease and expedition of an alphabet;
and it is easy to foresee that, in the course of a few centuries, some
alphabet will certainly take the place of the 60,000 arbitrary marks
which now render the cultivation of the Chinese literature not only a
labour of the utmost difficulty, but even the attainment impossible
beyond a very limited degree. And from the introduction of an alphabet,
what improvements may not be expected from the laborious industry of the
Chinese! Though most obstinately attached to their old customs, yet
there is a tide in the manners of nations which is sudden and rapid, and
which acts with a kind of instinctive fury against ancient prejudice and
absurdity. It was that nation of merchants, the Phoenicians, which
diffused the use of letters through the ancient, and commerce will
undoubtedly diffuse the same blessings through the modern, world.

To this view of the political happiness which is sure to be introduced
in proportion to civilization, let the divine add what may be reasonably
expected from such opportunity of the increase of religion. A factory of
merchants, indeed, has seldom been found to be a school of piety; yet,
when the general manners of a people become assimilated to those of a
more rational worship, something more than ever was produced by an
infant mission, or the neighbourhood of an infant colony, may then be
reasonably expected, and even foretold.

In estimating the political happiness of a people, nothing is of greater
importance than their capacity of, and tendency to, improvement. As a
dead lake, to continue our former illustration, will remain in the same
state for ages and ages, so would the bigotry and superstitions of the
East continue the same. But if the lake is begun to be opened into a
thousand rivulets, who knows over what unnumbered fields, barren before,
they may diffuse the blessings of fertility, and turn a dreary
wilderness into a land of society and joy.

In contrast to this, let the Gold Coast and other immense regions of
Africa be contemplated--

"Afric behold; alas, what altered view!
Her lands uncultured, and her sons untrue;
Ungraced with all that sweetens human life,
Savage and fierce they roam in brutal strife;
Eager they grasp the gifts which culture yields,
Yet naked roam their own neglected fields. . . .
Unnumber'd tribes as bestial grazers stray,
By laws unform'd, unform'd by Reason's sway.
Far inward stretch the mournful sterile dales,
Where on the parch'd hill-side pale famine wails. "

LUSIAD X.

Let us consider how many millions of these unhappy savages are dragged
from their native fields, and cut off for ever from all the hopes and
all the rights to which human birth entitled them. And who would
hesitate to pronounce that negro the greatest of patriots, who, by
teaching his countrymen the arts of society, should teach them to defend
themselves in the possession of their fields, their families, and their
own personal liberties?

Evident, however, as it is, that the voyages of Gama and Columbus have
already carried a superior degree of happiness, and the promise of
infinitely more, to the eastern and western worlds; yet the advantages
to Europe from the discovery of these regions may perhaps be denied. But
let us view what Europe was, ere the genius of Don Henry gave birth to
the spirit of modern discovery.

Several ages before this period the feudal system had degenerated into
the most absolute tyranny. The barons exercised the most despotic
authority over their vassals, and every scheme of public utility was
rendered impracticable by their continual petty wars with each other; to
which they led their dependents as dogs to the chase. Unable to read, or
to write his own name, the chieftain was entirely possessed by the most
romantic opinion of military glory, and the song of his domestic
minstrel constituted his highest idea of fame. The classic authors slept
on the shelves of the monasteries, their dark but happy asylum, while
the life of the monks resembled that of the fattened beeves which loaded
their tables. Real abilities were indeed possessed by a Duns Scotus and
a few others; but these were lost in the most trifling subtleties of a
sophistry which they dignified with the name of casuistical divinity.
Whether Adam and Eve were created with navels? and How many thousand
angels might at the same instant dance upon the point of the finest
needle without one jostling another? were two of the several topics of
like importance which excited the acumen and engaged the controversies
of the learned. While every branch of philosophical, of rational
investigation, was thus unpursued and unknown, commerce, which is
incompatible with the feudal system, was equally neglected and
unimproved. Where the mind is enlarged and enlightened by learning,
plans of commerce will rise into action, and these, in return, will from
every part of the world bring new acquirements to philosophy and
science. The birth of learning and commerce may be different, but their
growth is mutual and dependent upon each other. They not only assist
each other, but the same enlargement of mind which is necessary for
perfection in the one is also necessary for perfection in the other; and
the same causes impede, and are alike destructive of, both. The
INTERCOURSE of mankind is the parent of each. According to the
confinement or extent of intercourse, barbarity or civilization
proportionately prevail. In the dark, monkish ages, the intercourse of
the learned was as much impeded and confined as that of the merchant. A
few unwieldy vessels coasted the shores of Europe, and mendicant friars
and ignorant pilgrims carried a miserable account of what was passing in
the world from monastery to monastery. What doctor had last disputed on
the peripatetic philosophy at some university, or what new heresy had
last appeared, not only comprised the whole of their literary
intelligence, but was delivered with little accuracy, and received with
as little attention. While this thick cloud of mental darkness
overspread the western world, was Don Henry, prince of Portugal, born;
born to set mankind free from the feudal system, and to give to the
whole world every advantage, every light that may possibly be diffused
by the intercourse of unlimited commerce:--

"For then from ancient gloom emerg'd
The rising world of trade: the genius, then,
Of navigation, that in hopeless sloth
Had slumber'd on the vast Atlantic deep
For idle ages, starting heard at last
The Lusitanian prince, who, Heaven-inspir'd,
To love of useful glory rous'd mankind,
And in unbounded commerce mix'd the world. "

THOMSON.

In contrast to this melancholy view of human nature, sunk in barbarism
and benighted with ignorance, let the present state of Europe be
impartially estimated. Yet, though the great increase of opulence and
learning cannot be denied, there are some who assert that virtue and
happiness have as greatly declined. And the immense overflow of riches,
from the East in particular, has been pronounced big with destruction to
the British empire. Everything human, it is true, has its dark as well
as its bright side; but let these popular complaints be examined, and it
will be found that modern Europe, and the British empire in a very
particular manner, have received the greatest and most solid advantages
from the modern, enlarged system of commerce. The magic of the old
romances, which could make the most withered, deformed hag, appear as
the most beautiful virgin, is every day verified in popular declamation.
Ancient days are there painted in the most amiable simplicity, and the
modern in the most odious colours. Yet, what man of fortune in England
lives in that stupendous gross luxury which every day was exhibited in
the Gothic castles of the old chieftains! Four or five hundred knights
and squires in the domestic retinue of a warlike earl was not uncommon,
nor was the pomp of embroidery inferior to the profuse waste of their
tables; in both instances unequalled by all the mad excesses of the
present age.

While the baron thus lived in all the wild glare of Gothic luxury,
agriculture was almost totally neglected, and his meaner vassals fared
harder, infinitely less comfortably, than the meanest industrious
labourers of England do now; where the lands are uncultivated, the
peasants, ill-clothed, ill-lodged, and poorly fed, pass their miserable
days in sloth and filth, totally ignorant of every advantage, of every
comfort which nature lays at their feet. He who passes from the trading
towns and cultured fields of England to those remote villages of
Scotland or Ireland which claim this description, is astonished at the
comparative wretchedness of their destitute inhabitants; but few
consider that these villages only exhibit a view of what Europe was ere
the spirit of commerce diffused the blessings which naturally flow from
her improvements. In the Hebrides the failure of a harvest almost
depopulates an island. Having little or no traffic to purchase grain,
numbers of the young and hale betake themselves to the continent in
quest of employment and food, leaving a few, less adventurous, behind,
to beget a new race, the heir of the same fortune. Yet from the same
cause, from the want of traffic, the kingdom of England has often felt
more dreadful effects than these. Even in the days when her Henries and
Edwards plumed themselves with the trophies of France, how often has
famine spread all her horrors over city and village? Our modern
histories neglect this characteristic feature of ancient days; but the
rude chronicles of these ages inform us, that three or four times in
almost every reign was England thus visited. The failure of the crop was
then severely felt, and two bad harvests in succession were almost
insupportable. But commerce has now opened another scene, has armed
government with the happiest power that can be exerted by the rulers of
a nation--the power to prevent every extremity[29] which may possibly
arise from bad harvests; extremities, which, in former ages, were
esteemed more dreadful visitations of the wrath of Heaven than the
pestilence itself. Yet modern London is not so certainly defended
against the latter, its ancient visitor, than the commonwealth by the
means of commerce, under a just and humane government, is secured
against the ravages of the former. If, from these great outlines of the
happiness enjoyed by a commercial over an uncommercial nation, we turn
our eyes to the manners, the advantages will be found no less in favour
of the civilized.

Whoever is inclined to declaim at the vices of the present age, let him
read, and be convinced, that the Gothic ages were less virtuous.