Baticala inflamed by treacherous hate,

Provokes the horrors of Badala's fate :
Her feas in blood, her skies enwrapt in fire
Confess the sweeping ftorm of Souza's ire.
No hoftile fpear now rear'd on fea or strand,
The awful fceptre graces Souza's hand;
Peaceful he reigns, in counsel just and wise;
And glorious Caftro now his throne supplies:
Castro, the boast of generous fame, afar

From Dio's ftrand fhall fway the glorious war.
Madning with rage to view the Lusian band,
A troop fo few, proud Dio's towers command,
The cruel Ethiop Moor to heaven complains,
And the proud Perfian's languid zeal arraigns.
The Rumien fierce, who boafts the name of Rome,
With these conspires. and vows the Lufians' doom.

k

A thou

-When the victories of

k The Rumien fierce, who boafts the name of Rome.the Portuguese began to overspread the East, several Indian princes, by the counfels of the Moors, applied for affistance to the sultan of Egypt and the grand fignior. The troops of these Mohammedan princes were in the highest reputation for bravery, and though composed of many different nations, were known among the Orientals by one common name. Ignorance delights in the marvellous. The hiftory of ancient Rome made the fame figure among the Eafterns, as that of the fabulous or heroic ages does with us, with this difference, it was better believed. The Turks of Romania and Egypt pretended to be the defcendants of the Roman conquerors, and the Indians gave them and their auxiliaries the name of Rumes, or Romans. It has been faid that the gypsies who are now scattered over Europe, were, about four or five centuries ago, driven by war from Egypt and Syria. The name by which, in their dialect, they call themselves, Rumetch, or Rumetchin, favours this opinion.

A thousand barbarous nations join their powers

To bathe with Lufian blood the Dion towers.

Dark rolling sheets, forth belch'd from brazen wombs,
And bored, like fhowering clouds, with hailing bombs,
O'er Dio's sky spread the black fhades of death;
The mine's dread earthquakes shake the ground beneath.
No hope, bold Mascarene, mayfst thou respire,
A glorious fall alone, thy juft defire.

When lo, his gallant fon brave Caftro fends

Ah heaven, what fate the hapless youth attends!
In vain the terrors of his faulchion glare;
The cavern'd mine bursts, high in pitchy air
Rampire and fquadron whirl'd convulfive, borne
To heaven, the hero dies in fragments torn.
His loftieft bough though fall'n, the generous fire
His living hope devotes with Roman ire.
On wings of fury flies the brave Alvar

Through oceans howling with the wintery war,
Through skies of fnow his brother's vengeance bears:
And foon in arms the valiant fire appears :
Before him victory fpreads her eagle-wing

Wide sweeping o'er Cambaya's haughty king.

In vain his thundering courfers shake the ground,
Cambaya bleeding of his might's last wound

Sinks

■ No hope, bold MascareneThe commander of Diu, or Dio, during this fiege, one of the most memorable in the Portuguese hiftory.

Sinks pale in duft: Fierce Hydal-Kan m in vain
Wakes war on war; he bites his iron chain.
O'er Indus' banks, o'er Ganges' smiling vales
No more the hind his plunder'd field bewails:
O'er every field, O peace, thy bloffoms glow,
The golden bloffoms of thy olive bough;
Firm based on wifdom's laws great Caftro crowns,
And the wide Eaft the Lufian empire owns,

Thefe warlike chiefs, the fons of thy renown, And thousands more, O VASCO, doom'd to crown Thy glorious toils, fhall through these feas unfold Their victor-standards blazed with Indian gold;

f

And

m Fierce Hydal-Kan-The title of the Lords or Princes of Decan, who in their wars with the Portuguese have sometimes brought 400,000 men into the field. The prince here mentioned, after many revolts, was at laft finally fubdued by Don John de Caftro, the fourth viceroy of India, with whose reign our poet judiciously ends the prophetic fong. Albuquerque laid the plan, and Caftro completed the fyftem of the Portuguese empire in the Eaft. It is with propriety therefore that the prophecy given to Gama is here fummed up. Nor is the difcretion of Camoëns in this instance inferior to his judgment. He is now within a few years of his own times, when he himself was upon the scene in India. But whatever he had faid of his cotemporaries would have been liable to misconstruction, and every fentence would have been branded with the epithets of flattery or malice. A little poet would have been happy in such an opportunity to resent his wrongs. But the filent contempt of Camoëns does him true honour.

In this hiftorical fong, as already hinted, the tranflator has been attentive, as much as he could, to throw it into thofe univerfal languages, the picturefque and characteristic. To convey the fublimeft inftruction to princes, is, according to Aristotle, the peculiar province of the epic muse. The striking points of view, in which the different characters of the governors of India are here placed, are in the most happy conformity to this in genious canon of the Stagyrite.

And in the bofom of our flowery ifle,

Embathed in joy shall o'er their labours fmile.

Their nymphs like your's, their feast divine the fame, The raptured foretaste of immortal fame.

So fung the goddefs, while the fifter train
With joyful anthem close the sacred strain ;
Though fortune from her whirling sphere bestow
Her gifts capricious in unconftant flow,
Yet laurel'd honour and immortal fame
Shall ever conftant grace the Lufian name.
So fung the joyful chorus, while around
The filver roofs the lofty notes refound.
The fong prophetic, and the facred feast,
Now shed the glow of ftrength through every breast.
When with the grace and majesty divine,

Which round immortals, when enamour'd, fhine,
To crown the banquet of their deathlefs fame,
To happy GAMA thus the fovereign dame:
O loved of heaven, what never man before,
What wandering science never might explore,
By heaven's high will, with mortal eyes to fee
Great nature's face unveil'd, is given to thee.
Thou and thy warriors follow where I lead:

Firm be your steps, for arduous to the tread
Through matted brakes of thorn and brier, beftrew'd

With splinter'd flint, winds the steep flippery road.

She spake, and smiling caught the hero's hand,
And on the mountain's fummit foon they stand;
A beauteous lawn with pearl enamell'd o'er,
Emerald and ruby, as the gods of yore
Had sported here. Here in the fragrant a
A wondrous globe appeared, divinely fair!
Through every part the light transparent flow'd,
And in the centre as the furface glow'd.
The frame etherial various orbs compofe,
In whirling circles now they fell, now rose;
Yet never rofen nor fell, for ftill the fame
Was every movement of the wondrous frame;
Each movement ftill beginning, ftill complete,
Its author's type, felf-poised, perfection's feat.

Great

n In whirling circles now they fell, now rofe,-Yet never rose nor fell.—The motions of the heavenly bodies, in every fyftem, bear, at all times, the fame uniform relation to each other; thefe expreffions, therefore, are strictly just. The first relates to the appearance, the fecond to the reality. Thus while to us the fun appears to go down, to the more western inhabitants of the globe he appears to rise, and while he rises to us, he is going down to the more eastern; the difference being entirely relative to the various parts of the earth. And in this the expreffions of our poet are equally applicable to the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems. The ancient hypothefis which made our earth the centre of the univerfe, is the fyftem adopted by Camoëns, a happiness, in the opinion of the translator, to the English Lufiad. The new fyftem is fo well known, that a poetical description of it would have been no novelty to the English reader. The other has not only that advantage in its favour; but this defcription is perhaps the finest and fulleft that ever was given of it in poetry, that of Lucretius, 1. v. being chiefly argumentative, and therefore lefs picturesque.

Our author ftudied at the university of Coimbra, where the ancient fyftem and other doctrines of the Ariftotelians then, and long afterwards, prevailed.