70 COSMOS. 



of Europe,* from the coldest north to " the Lusitaniaii realm 

 and the strait where Hercules achieved his last labor." Al 

 lusion is constantly made to the manners and civilization of 

 the nations who inhabit this diversified portion of the earth 

 From the Prussians, Muscovites, and the races " que o Rhe 

 no frio lava" he hastens to the glorious plains of Hellas 

 " qice creastes os peitos eloquentes^ e osjuizos cle alta phanta 

 sia." In the tenth book he takes a more extended view. 

 Tethys leads Gama to a high mountain, to reveal to him the 

 secrets of the mechanism o±" the earth [machina do mundo), 

 and to disclose the course of the planets (according to the 

 Ptolemaic hypothesis).! It is a vision in the style of Dante, 

 and as the earth forms the center of the moving universe, all 

 the knowledge then acquired concerning the countries already 

 discovered, and their produce, is included in the description 

 of the globe.| Europe is no longer, as in the third book, the 

 sole object of attention, but all portions of the earth are in 

 turns passed in review ; even " the land of the Holy Cross" 

 (Brazil) is named, and the coasts discovered by Magellan, "by 

 birth but not by loyalty a son of Lusitania." 



If I have specially extolled Camoens as a sea painter, it 

 was in order to indicate that the aspect of a terrestrial life 

 appears to have attracted his attention less powerfully. Sis- 

 mondi has justly remarked that the whole poem bears no 

 trace of graphical description of tropical vegetation, and its 

 peculiar physiognomy. Spices and other aromatic substances, 



* Canto iii., est. 7-21. In my references I have always followed the 

 text of Camoens according to the editio princeps of 1572, which has 

 been given afresh in the excellent and splendid editions of Dom Joze 

 Maria de Souza-Botelho (Paris, 1818). In the German quotations I 

 have generally used the translation of Donner (1833). The principal 

 aim of the Lusiad of Camoens is to do honor to his nation. It would be 

 a monument well worthy of his fame, and of the nation whom he extols, 

 if a hall were constructed in Lisbon, after the noble examples of the 

 halls of Schiller and Gothe in the Grand Ducal Palace of Weimar, and 

 if the twelve grand compositions of my talented and deceased liiend 

 Gerai'd, which adorn the Souza edition, were executed in large dimen- 

 sions, in fresco, on well-lighted walls. The dream of the King Dom 

 Mauoel, in which the rivers Indus and Ganges appear to him ; the 

 Giant Adamastor hovering over the Cape of Good Hope {'^Eu sou 

 aquelle occulto e graride Cabo, a quern chamais vos outros Tormentorio'^^ ; 

 the murder of Ignes de Castro, and the lovely Ilha de Venus, would 

 all produce the most admirable effect. 



t Canto X., est. 79-90. Camoens, like Vespucci, speaks of the part 

 of the heavens nearest to the southern pole as poor in stars (canto v., 

 est. 14). He is also acquainted with the ice of the southern seas (canto 

 v., est. 27). t Canto x., est, 91-141. 



I 



