ulchra faciat te prole parentem._--VIRGIL, AEn. bk. i.

And the fiction itself is an allegory, exactly in the manner of Homer.
Orithia, the daughter of Erecteus, and queen of the Amazons, was
ravished and carried away by Boreas.

[439] Vasco de Gama.

[440] This refers to the Catholic persecutions of Protestants whom they
had previously condemned at the Diet of Spires. War was declared against
the Protestants in 1546. It lasted for six years, when a treaty of peace
was signed at Passau on the Danube, in 1552.--_Ed._

[441] _Some blindly wand'ring, holy faith disclaim._--At the time when
Camoens wrote, the German empire was plunged into all the miseries of a
religious war, the Catholics using every endeavour to rivet the chains
of Popery, the adherents of Luther as strenuously endeavouring to shake
them off.

[442]

_High sound the titles of the English crown,
King of Jerusalem.--_

The title of "King of Jerusalem" was never assumed by the kings of
England. Robert, duke of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror, was
elected King of Jerusalem by the army in Syria, but declined it in hope
of ascending the throne of England. Henry VIII. filled the throne of
England when our author wrote: his luxury and conjugal brutality amply
deserved the censure of the honest poet.

[443] France.

[444] _What impious lust of empire steels thy breast._--The French
translator very cordially agrees with the Portuguese poet in the
strictures upon Germany, England, and Italy.

[445] The Mohammedans.

[446] _Where Cynifio flows._--A river in Africa, near Tripoli.--VIRGIL,
Georg. iii. 311.--_Ed._

[447] _O Italy! how fall'n, how low, how lost!_--However these severe
reflections on modern Italy may displease the admirers of Italian
manners, the picture on the whole is too just to admit of confutation.
Never did the history of any court afford such instances of villainy and
all the baseness of intrigue as that of the pope's. That this view of
the lower ranks in the pope's dominions is just, we have the indubitable
testimony of Addison. Our poet is justifiable in his censures, for he
only follows the severe reflections of the greatest of the Italian
poets. It were easy to give fifty instances; two or three, however,
shall suffice. Dante, in his sixth canto, del Purg.--

_Ahi, serva Italia, di dolore ostello,
Nave senza nocchiero in gran tempesta,
Non donna di provincie, bordello._

"Ah, slavish Italy, the inn