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Updated: June 28, 2025
Dr Vincent, the learned editor and commentator of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, is disposed to limit the discoveries of Don Henry to Cape Verd , but Ramusio believed that the Island of St Thomas was settled in his time; and the ingenious translator of the Lusiad of Camoens is of opinion that some of his commanders passed beyond the equator . According to Mickle, it was the custom of his navigators to leave his motto, Talent de bien faire, wherever they came; and in 1525 Loaya, a Spanish captain, found that device carved on the bark of a tree in the island of St Matthew, or Anabon, in the second degree of southern latitude.
In this letter he relates his having, while engaged in translating the Lusiad, had a dispute of considerable length with Johnson, who, as usual, declaimed upon the misery and corruption of a sea life, and used this expression: 'It had been happy for the world, Sir, if your hero Gama, Prince Henry of Portugal, and Columbus, had never been born, or that their schemes had never gone farther than their own imaginations.
The African, with blunt features, thick lips, and woolly hair, sits on the marble steps of the palace in the capital of Portugal, and begs: he is the submissive slave of Camoens, and but for him, and for the copper coins thrown to him by the passers by, his master, the poet of the "Lusiad," would die of hunger. Now, a costly monument marks the grave of Camoens. There is a new picture.
But let the difficulty arise from mere imperfections of language, and the consciousness of having solved an involuntary enigma is scarcely sufficient to reward our pains. The translation of the Lusiad is that by which he is best known. In this, as in his original poems, the expression is sometimes very faulty; but he is never flat or insipid.
After various literary failures and minor successes he produced his translation of the Lusiad, from the Portuguese of Camoens, which brought him both fame and money. In 1777 he went to Portugal, where he was received with distinction. In 1784 he pub. the ballad of Cumnor Hall, which suggested to Scott the writing of Kenilworth.
"But how we boom through the billows!" cried Jack, gazing over the top-rail; then, flinging forth his arm, recited, "'Aslope, and gliding on the leeward side, The bounding vessel cuts the roaring tide. Camoens! White-Jacket, Camoens! Did you ever read him? The Lusiad, I mean? It's the man-of-war epic of the world, my lad. Give me Gama for a Commodore, say I Noble Gama!
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.
With respect to the extent of his voyage along the western coast of Africa, some modern writers assert, without any authority, that he doubled the Cape of Good Hope: this assertion is made in direct unqualified terms by Mickle the translator of the Lusiad.
I sat under a ruined wall reading alternatively Camoens' Lusiad and David Harum until darkness fell. During the night some infantry came up, both native and British. They had had stiff marching during the last few days, and were done up, but very cheerful at the prospect of an attack on the morrow. They had some hard fighting ahead of them.
Milton was the third epic poet. For if the title of epic in its highest sense be refused to the Aeneid, still less can it be conceded to the Orlando Furioso, the Gerusalemme Liberata, the Lusiad, or the Fairy Queen.
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