Page:The Lusiad (Camões, tr. Mickle, 1791), Volume 2.djvu/113

 And one on treacherous pinions soaring high, O'er ocean's waves dar'd sail the liquid sky: Dash'd from their height they mourn their blighted aim; One gives a river, one a sea the name! Alas! the poor reward of that gay meteor fame! Yet such the fury of the mortal race, Though fame's fair promise ends in foul disgrace, Though conquest still the victor's hope betrays, The prize a shadow, or a rainbow blaze, Yet still through fire and raging seas they run To catch the gilded shade, and sink undone! <!-- The departure of the feet from the Tagus. In no circumftance does the judgment and art of Homer appear more confpicuous, than in the conftant attention he pays to his propofed fubje<rts, the wrath of Achilles, and the fuiferings of Ulyfles. He beftows the utmofl: care on every incident that could poffibly imprefs our minds with high ideas of the determined rage of the injured hero, and of the invincible patience of the moXvr'kag ^Xog 'o^va-a-tvg. Virgil throughout the JEneid has followed the fame courfe. Every incident that could poflibly tend to magnify the dangers and difficulties of the wan- derings of ^neas, in his long fearch for the promifed Italy, is fet before us in the fuUell magnitude. But, however, this method of ennobling the epic, by the utmofl: attention, to give a grandeur to every circumftance of the propofed fubjecH:, may have been negleded by Voltaire in hisHenriade, and by fome other moderns, who have attempted the epopoeia ; it has not been omitted by Camoens. The Portuguefe poet has, with great art, con- dueled the voyage of Gama. Every circumftance attending it is reprefented with magnificence and dignity. John II. defigns what had never been at- tempted before. MefTengers are fent by land to difcover the climate and riches of India. Their route is defciibed in the manner of Homer. The palm of dlfcovery, however, is reierved for a fucceeding monarch. Emma- nuel is warned by a dream, which affords another flriking inftance of the fpirit of the Grecian poet. The enthufiafm which the king beholds on the afped of Gama is a noble ftroke of poetry; the folemnity of the night fpent in devotion ; the fuUen refolution of the adventurers when going aboard the fleet; the afFeding grief of their friends and fellow-citizens, who viewed them