426 COSMOS. 



and the strait where Hercules achieved his last labour/ 

 Allusion is constantly made to the manners and civilisation of 

 the nations who inhabit this diversified portion of the earth. 

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

 frio lava" he hastens to the glorious plains of Hellas, " que 

 creastes os peitos eloquentes, e os juizos de alta phantasia" 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 of the earth, (machina do mundo,} and to dis- 

 close 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 centre 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. f 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 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 



given afresh in the excellent and splendid editions of Dom Joze Maria de 

 Souza-Botelho (Paris, 1818). In the German quotations I have gene- 

 rally used the translation of Donner (1833). The principal aim of the 

 Lusiad of Camoens is to do honour to his nation. It would be a monu- 

 ment, 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 halla 

 of Schiller and Gb'the in the Grand Ducal Palace of Weimar, and if 

 the twelve grand compositions of my talented and deceased friend 

 Ggrard, which adorn the Souza edition, were executed in large dimen- 

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

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

 Adamastor hovering over the Cape of Good Hope (" Eu sou aquelte 

 occulto e grande Cabo, a quern chamais v6s outros Torments >rio") ; the 

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

 duce the most admirable effect. 



* Canto x. est. 79-90 ; Camoens, like Vespucci, speaks of the part oi 

 the heavens nearest to the southern pole as poor in stars (canto v. est. 1 4^ 

 He is also acquainted with the ice of the southern seas (canto v. est. 27) 



f Canto x. est. 91-141. 



