considerable, and he so far fixed the written language that at
the present day it is commonly and not inaccurately called "the language
of Camoens." The _Lusiads_ is the most successful modern epic cast in
the ancient mould, and it has done much to preserve the corporate life
of the Portuguese people and to keep alive the spirit of nationality in
times of adversity like the "Spanish Captivity" and the Napoleonic
invasion. Even now it forms a powerful bond between the mother-country
and her potentially mighty daughter-nation across the Atlantic, the
United States of Brazil. The men of the Renaissance saw nothing
incongruous in that mixture of paganism and Christianity which is found
in the _Lusiads_ as in Ariosto, though some modern critics, like
Voltaire, consider it a grave artistic defect in the poem. The fact that
the _Lusiads_ is written in a little-known language, and its intensely
national and almost exclusively historical character, undoubtedly
militate against a right estimate of its value, now that Portugal, once
a world power, has long ceased to hold the East in fee or to guide the
destinies of Europe. But though political changes may and do react on
literary appreciations, the _Lusiads_ remains none the less a great
poem, breathing the purest religious fervour, love of country and spirit
of chivalry, with splendid imaginative and descriptive passages full of
the truest and deepest poetry. The structure is Virgilian, but the whole
conception is the author's own, while the style is natural and noble,
the diction nearly always correct and elegant, and the verse, as a rule,
sonorous and full of harmony.

In addition to his epic, Camoens wrote sonnets, canzons, odes, sextines,
eclogues, elegies, octaves, roundels, letters and comedies. The roundels
include _cartas, motes, voltas, cantigas, trovas, pastorals_ and
_endechas_. In the opinion of many competent judges Camoens only attains
his true stature in his lyrics; and a score of his sonnets, two or three
of the canzons, eclogues and elegies, and the Babylonian roundels will
bear comparison with any composition of the same kind that other
literatures can show. Referring to the _Lusiads_, A. von Humboldt calls
Camoens a "great maritime painter," but in his best lyrics he is a
thinker as well as a poet, and when free from the trammels of the epic
and inherited respect for classical traditions, he reveals a personality
so virile and deep, a philosophy so broad and hum