al merit is obvious, nor
need we fear to assert, that the happiness of our author, in uniting all
these parts together in one great episode, would have excited the
admiration of Longinus. The heroes of the Lusiad receive their reward in
the Island of Love. They are led to the palace of Thetis, where, during
a divine feast, they hear the glorious victories and conquests of the
heroes who are to succeed them in their Indian expedition, sung by a
siren; and the face of the globe itself, described by the goddess,
discovers the universe, and particularly the extent of the eastern
world, now given to Europe by the success of GAMA. Neither in grandeur,
nor in happiness of completion, may the AEneid or Odyssey be mentioned in
comparison. The Iliad alone, in epic conduet (as already observed) bears
a strong resemblance. But however great in other views of poetical
merit, the games at the funeral of Patroclus, and the redemption of the
body of Hector, considered as the interesting conclusion of a great
whole, can never in propriety and grandeur be brought into competition
with the admirable episode which concludes the poem on the discovery of
India.

Soon after the appearance of the Lusiad, the language of Spain was also
enriched with an heroic poem, the author of which has often imitated the
Portuguese poet, particularly in the fiction of the globe of the world,
which is shown to GAMA. In the _Araucana_, a globe, surrounded with a
radiant sphere, is also miraculously supported in the air; and on this
an enchanter shows to the Spaniards the extent of their dominions in the
new world. But Don Alonzo d'Arcilla is in this, as in every other part
of his poem, greatly inferior to the poetical spirit of Camoens. Milton,
whose poetical conduct in concluding the action of his Paradise Lost, as
already pointed out, seems formed upon the Lusiad, appears to have had
this passage particularly in his eye. For, though the machinery of a
visionary sphere was rather improper for the situation of his
personages, he has, nevertheless, though at the expense of an impossible
supposition, given Adam a view of the terrestrial globe. Michael sets
the father of mankind on a mountain--

"From whose top
The hemisphere of earth in clearest ken
Stretch'd out to th' amplest reach of prospect lay....
His eye might there command wherever stood
City of old or modern fame, the seat
Of mightiest empire, from the