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verything in it, as Aristotle says of the Iliad, has manners; poetry must therefore personify according to our ideas. Thus in Milton:-- "Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth." And thus in Homer, while the suitors are conducted to hell:-- "Trembling, the spectres glide, and plaintive vent Thin, hollow screams, along the deep descent:" and, unfettered with mythological distinctions, either shriek or articulately talk, according to the most poetical view of their supposed circumstances. [434] Exod. xiv. 29. [435] Noah. [436] Venus. [437] For the fable of Eolus see the tenth Odyssey. [438] _And vow, that henceforth her Armada's sails Should gently swell with fair propitious gales._ In innumerable instances Camoens discovers himself a judicious imitator of the ancients. In the two great masters of the epic are several prophecies oracular of the fate of different heroes, which give an air of solemn importance to the poem. The fate of the Armada thus obscurely anticipated, resembles in particular the prophecy of the safe return of Ulysses to Ithaca, foretold by the shade of Tiresias, which was afterwards fulfilled by the Phaeacians. It remains now to make some observations on the machinery used by Camoens in this book. The necessity of machinery in the epopea, and the, perhaps, insurmountable difficulty of finding one unexceptionably adapted to a poem where the heroes are Christians, or, in other words, to a poem whose subject is modern, have already been observed in the preface. The machinery of Camoens has also been proved, in every respect, to be less exceptionable than that of Tasso in his Jerusalem, or that of Voltaire in his Henriade. The descent of Bacchus to the palace of Neptune, in the depths of the sea, and his address to the watery gods, are noble imitations of Virgil's Juno in the first AEneid. The description of the storm is also masterly. In both instances the conduct of the AEneid is joined with the descriptive exuberance of the Odyssey. The appearance of the star of Venus through the storm is finely imagined; the influence of the nymphs of that goddess over the winds, and their subsequent nuptials, are in the spirit of the promise of Juno to Eolus:-- _Sunt mihi bis septum praestanti corpore nymphae: Quarum, quae forma pulcherrima; Deiopeiam_ _Connubio jungam stabili, propriamque dicabo: Omnes ut tecum meritis pro talibus annos Exigat, et p
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