a sober dialogue upon intemperance between Epicurus and Pythagoras, which he calls a Philosophical Vision, and an equally grave and ponderous absurdity, called the Banquet of Plutarch and his Family.

Even his strictly narrative episodes are composed in the same. strain of rhapsody; and the incidents related in them are for the most part full of improbabilities and devoid of interest. In no respect do any of these apply very aptly or remarkably to the elucidation of our author's subject; and they are merely bad adumbrations of sentimental stories, set off, to catch the eye, with some wretched plates. The introduction and admixture, in large proportions, of such worthless matter would alone be sufficient to degrade M. Alibert's work from the dignified rank of a philosophical treatise, even were his enquiries into the physiology of the passions, or the final causation of moral sentiments, far more worthy than they are of serious attention and critical examination. But, in truth, the book altogether is alone worth noticing as the inconsistent failure of a writer of some celebrity and considerable professional talents; and the new doctrine of moral sentiments which it advances is no farther deserving of observation, than as a curious addition of one more to the number of those wild and utterly hypothetical speculations which have, in various ages, provoked the just ridicule of the world towards their authors, and at the same time reflected so much unmerited contempt upon the real value of metaphysical researches.

ART. III. The Lusiad, an Epic Poem, by Luis de Camoens. Translated from the Portugueze, by Thomas Moore Musgrave. Svo. pp. 585. 17. 1s. London. Murray. 1826.

GREAT poets, it has been observed, arise, and great poems are written, in periods when mighty political events agitate the tranquil waters of society, and powerful minds of every description emerge and display themselves in all their strength and vigour. Thus, amidst the stormy scenes of the Persian invasion and the Peloponnesian war was formed the tragic theatre of Athens, and the noblest pieces of Sophocles and Euripides were first represented in a city which had the foe without and the plague within; the civil commotions of Florence gave birth to the Divina Commedia; and the Paradise Lost was planned at a time when all the energies of Britain were called into action by the powerful excitements of political and religious struggles. Other poets have appeared after the great commotions have subsided: the Æneis was composed when Rome, after having made her last effort for liberty, sank still and exhausted into the repose of slavery; the Gierusalemme Liberata, when Italy had just fallen into the degradation from which she has never since emerged, and Os Lusiadas, the work now under con

sideration, when Portugal, after a gallant independent existence of centuries, was on the eve of becoming a province of Spain, and of losing her most glorious conquest, her Indian empire, for ever.

Independent of its own merits, which are high, the poem of Camoens has a charm for readers of a generous nature from the circumstance of it so frequently calling up before them the recollection of the gallant and high minded poet, who in dangers and in toil, in sickness and in poverty, could still dwell on the glorious days of Portugal, and could seek to alleviate suffering by consigning to fame those illustrious men whose worthless and heartless descendants could view with cold indifference the warrior and the poet sinking into the grave in cheerless poverty. Milton, the only other epic poet who alludes to himself in his work, interests far less, for his theme was consolatory, and while he sung the loss of Eden, his thoughts must every instant have been directed to that happy period when Eden was to be restored, and those who suffered for virtue during their earthly trial were to be rewarded by the enjoyment of eternal bliss. Milton, moreover, was comparatively at ease in his worldly circumstances, and admired and esteemed by no mean portion of the British nation. But Camoens had nought to console him; in India persecuted, at home neglected; all the glorious anticipations of Portuguese triumphs under their youthful and valiant monarch Sebastian, with which he opened and closed his poem, fatally disappointed in the field of Alcazar; the view, most galling to a patriot, of his beloved country becoming a province of her ancient foe, her glorious victories over whom form the most animated portion of his work, ever present to his mind; and nought save conscious virtue, and the confidence of never-dying fame, to cheer and console him in the gloom of poverty and old age.

Critics have doubted whether Camoens was fortunate or otherwise in his choice of a theme. Some have regarded his subject and plan as superior to that of the Æneis, while others have thought him hapless in his choice, in having selected a story so barren of incident as the Discovery of India. For our part, we doubt much whether any great poet can with justice be said to have been unhappy in his choice of a subject; we rather think that, with very few exceptions, poets of eminence will be found to have selected the very best that were within their reach. The man on whom Heaven has bestowed great poetic powers, when he feels the flame of genius within him struggling for vent, looks round for some great and important action, the narration of which he may employ as a frame, and insert in it the copious knowledge and the mighty and glorious images with which his soul is pregnant, and the fittest and most appropriate soon presents itself. Where could Homer, for example, in the tales of preceding times have found an event in itself more important, as affording greater room for the embellishment of episode, than the Trojan war? The two other great events of the heroic age, the Argonautic expedition and the Theban war,

could not equal it; and it had the further advantage from its comparative lateness in point of time, by means of reference to the latter and other events, to transport the mind of the reader into periods of still more remote antiquity, and thus to bestow the gratification which results from mental excursion into times dimly gleaming through the cloud of years. In like manner, when Virgil felt the epic muse within his breast, no subject could be found more adequate than the origin of that mighty empire, which from the smallest beginnings had grown to such exceeding power, and now pressed nearly the whole civilised world beneath its sway. And what theme could equally with Paradise Lost have suited the mighty muse of Milton? Of the happiness of Tasso's choice, no critic has ever doubted; and when we reflect that the object of Camoens was to celebrate the glories of his native land, her chivalrous conflicts with the Moor and with the Castilian, her gallant warriors, and her illustrious kings, it would not perhaps be possible to point out any action, in the narration of which so many opportunities would be afforded to the poet for recurrence to the honours and the deeds of former years, as that expedition and those discoveries which form so bright an era in the annals of Portugal.

"

The beauties of the Lusiad are numerous: a sweet, rich, and harmonious versification clothes and adorns the noblest sentiments, the clearest narration, and the most picturesque and beautiful descriptions. The march to battle, the shock and conflict of hostile armies, the confusion, hurry, and dismay of discomfited hosts, are drawn with a strength and fidelity hardly to be attained but by him who has himself been an actor in the scenes of glorious war; and we may safely oppose the battle of Aljubarrota, in the fourth canto, to any similar description in ancient or modern poetry, in Homer or in Walter Scott. No storm in either the Æneis or the Odyssey exceeds the Tempest in the sixth canto in terror and fury; and one of the most beautiful pieces of poetic art is the skilful device of making it to be immediately preceded by the gallant and romantic galley story" of Villoso. And the gardens of Alcina, Armida and Adonis, to say nothing of those of Alcinous, can boast no pre-eminence over the island of Venus, which, however faulty the fiction may be in other respects, is one of the most beautiful pieces of poetry in existence. The sublime fiction of the Spirit of the Cape is universally known and admired; the pathetic episode of Ignez de Castro has awakened many a sigh; but to us the most attractive portions of the poem are the trumpet-toned strains, in which are sung the gallant deeds of Lusitania's heroes and kings, and their glorious contests with their Moorish and Castilian foes for empire and independence. It is impossible to read the third, and fourth, and eighth cantos, without finding a strong feeling of national glory, liberty, and independence excited in our breasts, and a zeal kindled for the maintenance of those laws

that, to use the powerful language of the only poetical translator of Camoens, were

"Framed ere the hard earned drops of victory

On our forefathers' helm-hacked swords were dry."

This is the great merit of the Lusiad, it is intensely national: the Iliad is not more so; and no poem is so highly calculated to excite and cherish strong national and public feeling.

No poem unites greater beauties and greater faults than the Lusiad. The former we have noticed, and the latter shall not be concealed. It is hardly necessary to mention the incongruous machinery which Camoens has employed: no apology, though Mickle labours hard, can ever be admitted for it; for do as we may, we can never bring our imagination to tolerate the absurd and repugnant mixture of Paganism and Christianity which composes it. We say we cannot bring our imagination to tolerate the machinery employed by the Portuguese poet, and the reason is, because that system was not, at the period when he wrote, the object of popular belief; for we hold the objections of critics to machinery of the latter kind to be utterly frivolous. We have always felt a contempt for those who could like Johnson object to the noble popular mythology of Tasso, peruse unaffected the "wonders which he sung," and coldly condemn the enchanted forest:

"Where each live plant with mortal accent spoke,

And the wild blast upheav'd the vanish'd sword."

Neither the age of Camoens nor Camoens himself believed the mythology of the Lusiad: the idea that the gods of antiquity had been devils was the established and orthodox faith, and the allegorising system of the poet could not therefore look for credence; but it is widely different in the case of a credited popular mythology it falls in with the ideas of the people at the time, and posterity must, if it would fully enjoy the poetry of a former age, by an effort of imagination transport itself back to that period. We must, in fact, to be in a condition of receiving all the pleasure which the poetry of another age and another clime is capable of giving, possess that mobility (if we may so call it) of imagination which will enable us to transport ourselves to other scenes, and mingle with other men, to become familiar with other modes of thinking and acting, to view nature with other eyes, and, forgetting the knowledge and philosophy of our own times, to embrace for a time the religion and physics of other ages. When reading the Greek and Latin classics we must in idea become Greeks and Romans, we must learn to believe in gods of human form and of different sexes, who take an immediate concern in the affairs of mortals, have human passions, have their favourites and enemies among men, are jealous of honours, and desolate countries for neglected sacrifices. Thunder and lightning we must cease to regard as

the discharge of the electric fluid: we must esteem the firewreathed bolts of the Sire of gods and men flung to announce his favour or to testify his wrath; the rainbow must become a glorious arch made to support the steps of the messenger of the Queen of Heaven, and woods, lakes, seas, and mountains, must be peopled with lovely female forms. We must attach the utmost importance to the due performance of funeral rites, cheerfully acquiesce in the decrees of destiny, and regard as impious the man who acts in opposition to the will of Heaven and the voice of oracles. When in this mood we shall read the classics in some sort as the ancients read them, we shall find that the Iliad could not with propriety end earlier than it does, and we shall take more interest in the fourth and the six last books of the Æneis than when we read them with all our modern ideas of honour and chivalry about us: we shall blame Æneas less in the former, and sympathise with Turnus less in the latter. In like manner, when reading the Jerusalem, we must for the time become Italians and Catholics of the fifteenth century, forget the blind superstition, the brutal ferocity, and the savage ignorance of the Crusaders, and the great superiority of the Mohammedans in civilisation, in knowledge, and in virtue, and regard the latter as the allies of the infernal powers, the foes of God, and the former as the chosen warriors of heaven, as men who were to be received into supernal glory for shedding their blood in this sacred cause. We must even lower our conceptions of the Divinity so much as to believe him to be interested in the recovery of the spot, where had been deposited the mortal body to which he had once deigned to unite himself; we must view angels and devils in material forms, and potent magicians whose wands and spells could controul the elements and change the face of nature, and then we shall be in a proper frame for receiving the exquisite pleasure which the Jerusalem can give. What we have instanced in these poems is true of others; and it is the want of this command of imagination, or the not exercising it, which has given birth to so much tasteless criticism, particularly in France, the most unimaginative region under heaven. But no command of imagination will ever enable the person who is aquainted with classic lore to believe for an instant in the machinery of Camoens. We therefore regard it, though nothing can be more beautiful than the poetry in which it is invested, as forming an intolerable blemish in the poem.

Another great fault in the Lusitanian bard is a frequent, a pedantic, and a wearisome habit of allusion to the mythology, the history, and the usages of classical antiquity. Whether speaking in his own person, or in that of others, Portuguese, Moor, African, or Indian, it matters not, all are equally familiar with classical subjects. It is impossible, however, for the reader not to feel that these exotic ornaments chill the most glowing bursts of martial and patriotic eloquence, weaken the most pathetic appeals, and de