DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE IN CAMOENS* LTJSIAD. 425 



Camoens is, in the strictest sense of the word, a great sea- 

 painter. He had served as a soldier, and fought in the Em- 

 pire of Morocco, at the foot of Atlas, in the Red Sea, and on 

 the Persian Gulf; twice he had doubled the Cape, and, 

 inspired by a deep love of nature, he passed sixteen years in 

 observing the phenomena of the ocean on the Indian and 

 Chinese shores. He describes the electric fires of St. Elmo, 

 (the Castor and Pollux of the ancient Greek mariners,) " the 

 living light,* sacred to the seaman." He depicts the threat- 

 ening water-spout in its gradual development, "how the 

 cloud woven from fine vapour revolves in a circle, and, letting 

 down a slender tube, thirstily, as it were, sucks up the 

 water, and how when the black cloud is filled, the foot of the 

 cone recedes, and flying upwards to the sky, gives back in its 

 flight, as fresh water, that which it had drawn from the waves 

 with a surging noise. "f " Let the book-learned," says the 

 poet, and his taunting words might almost be applied to the 

 present age, "try to explain the hidden wonders of this 

 world, since, trusting to reason and science alone, they are so 

 ready to pronounce as false what is heard from the lips of the 

 sailor, whose only guide is experience." 



The talent of the enthusiastic poet for describing nature is 

 not limited to separate phenomena, but is very conspicuous in 

 the passages in which he comprehends large masses at one 

 glance. The third book sketches, in a few strokes, the form 

 of Europe, J from the coldest north to " the Lusitanian realm, 



* The fire of St. Elmo, " o lume vivo que a maritima gente tern por 

 eanto, em tempo de tormenta," (canto v. est. 18). One flame, the 

 Helena of the Greek mariners, brings misfortune, (Plin. ii. 37) ; two 

 liames, Castor and Pollux, appearing with a rustling noise, " like flut- 

 tering birds," are good omens, (Stob., Eclog. Phys., i. p. 514; Seneca, 

 Nat. Quasi., i. 1). On the eminently graphical character of Camoens' 

 descriptions of nature, see the great Paris edition of 1818, in the Vida. 

 de Canines f by Dom Joze Maria de Souza, p. cii. 



t The waterspout in canto v. est. 19-22, may be compared with the 

 equally poetic and faithful description of Lucretius, vi. 423-442. 

 On the fresh water, which, towards the close of the phenomenon, 

 appears to fall from the upper part of the column of water, see Ogden 

 On Waterspouts, (from observations made in 1820, during a voyage 

 from Havannah to Norfolk,) in Silliman's American Journal of Science, 

 vol. xxix. 1836, pp. 254-260. 



Canto iii. est. 7-21. In my reference? I have always followed the text 

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



