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On the 9th of March, 1500, a fleet of thirteen vessels left Rastello, under the command of Pedro Alvarès Cabral; on board, as a volunteer, was Luiz de Camoens, who in his poem the "Lusiad," was to render illustrious the valour and adventurous spirit of his countrymen. But little is known of Cabral, and nothing of the reason which had gained him the command of this important expedition.
Moore, in the "Sylph's Ball," speaking of Davy's Safety Lamp, is reminded of the wall that separated Thisbe and her lover: "O for that Lamp's metallic gauze, That curtain of protecting wire, Which Davy delicately draws Around illicit, dangerous fire! In Mickle's translation of the "Lusiad" occurs the following allusion to the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, and the metamorphosis of the mulberries.
Mickle, speaking in the third person as the Translator, says: 'He is happy to be enabled to add Dr. Johnson to the number of those whose kindness for the man, and good wishes for the Translation, call for his sincerest gratitude. Mickle's Lusiad, p. ccxxv. A brief record, it should seem, is given, ante, iii. 37. See ante, iii. 106, 214.
Mickle, the translator of the Lusiad, sometimes expressed his regret that he could not remember the poetry which he improvised in his dreams, for he had a vague impression that it was very beautiful. 'Well, said his wife, 'I can at least give you two lines, which I heard you muttering over during one of your poetic dreams. Here they are: "By Heaven!
And the world-finder, Christopher Columbus, was a sailor! and so was Camoens, who went to sea with Gama, else we had never had the Lusiad, White-Jacket. Yes, I've sailed over the very track that Camoens sailed round the East Cape into the Indian Ocean. I've been in Don Jose's garden, too, in Macao, and bathed my feet in the blessed dew of the walks where Camoens wandered before me.
Johnson told me in 1772, that, about twenty years before that time, he himself had a design to translate the Lusiad, of the merit of which he spoke highly, but had been prevented by a number of other engagements. Mr. Mickle reminds me in this letter of a conversation, at dinner one day at Mr. Hoole's with Dr. Johnson, when Mr.
In the May of 1786 he writes to Mickle, the translator of the Lusiad, that he is in a wavering state; he has the house of his friend Hoole, and he still retains the use of General Paoli's residence in Portman Square. When he did finally take up his own quarters in Cavendish Square, the result was not what he had expected. He was discouraged by the want of practice, and the prospect of any.
To this cause, rather than to the one the friends of MICKLE ascribed to ADAM SMITH, namely, a personal dislike to the poet, may we place the severe mortification which the unfortunate translator of Camoens suffered from the person to whom he dedicated "The Lusiad."
He said, he believed the farmer's family thought him an odd character, similar to that in which the Spectator appeared to his landlady and her children: he was The Gentleman. Mr. Mickle, the translator of The Lusiad, and I went to visit him at this place a few days afterwards.
These fiery reproaches, which his misery had wrung from the poor poet, were carried by his enemies to the ear of the Duke, and Tasso was immediately seized and imprisoned as a lunatic in the hospital of Santa Anna in Ferrara in the same year and the same month, it may be mentioned, in which another of the great epic poets of the world, Camoens, the author of the Lusiad, finished as a pauper in an hospital his miserable career.
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