Page:Os Lusíadas (Camões, tr. Burton, 1880), Volume 1.djvu/11



that I had no light task before me when I undertook to edit my Husband's Translation of Camoens "Lusiads." The nearer I come to that work the more mountainous does it appear, instead of dispersing as most work does when one sets one's shoulder to the wheel.

Yet, I feel that no other than myself should do this office for him; for I shared his travels in Portugal, his four years up country in Brazil, learnt the language with him, and I have seen for nineteen and a-half years the Camoens table duly set apart—the bonne bouche of the day. I have been daily and hourly consulted as to this expression, or this or that change of word, this or that peculiarity of Camoens.

What, then, are those difficulties, you, the reader, will ask me? Let me try to explain. So many enterprising poet-authors have translated Camoens, and received their meed of praise and popularity. In old times, Fanshawe,