ndoos are mentioned by Camoens in this book. If a
noble should touch a person of another tribe--

_A thousand rites, and washings o'er and o'er,
Can scarce his tainted purity restore._

Nothing, says Osorius, but the death of the unhappy commoner can wipe
off the pollution. Yet we are told by the same author, that Hindoo
nobility cannot be forfeited, or even tarnished by the basest and
greatest of crimes; nor can one of mean birth become great or noble by
the most illustrious actions. The noblemen, says the same writer, adopt
the children of their sisters, esteeming there can be no other certainty
of the relationship of their heirs.

[491] _The warlike song._--Though Camoens began his Lusiad in Portugal,
almost the whole of it was written while on the ocean, while in Africa,
and in India.--See his Life.

[492] _As Canace._--Daughter of Eolus. Her father, having thrown her
incestuous child to the dogs, sent her a sword, with which she slew
herself. In Ovid she writes an epistle to her husband-brother, where she
thus describes herself:--

_Dextra tenet calamum, strictum tenet altera ferrum._

[493]

_Soon I beheld that wealth beneath the wave
For ever lost.--_

See the Life of Camoens.

[494] _My life, like Judah's Heaven-doom'd king of
yore._--Hezekiah.--See Isaiah xxxviii.

[495] _And left me mourning in a dreary jail._--This, and the whole
paragraph from--

_Degraded now, by poverty abhorr'd,_

alludes to his fortunes in India. The latter circumstance relates
particularly to the base and inhuman treatment he received on his return
to Goa, after his unhappy shipwreck.--See his Life.

[496] _Who spurns the muse._--Similarity of condition has produced
similarity of sentiment in Camoens and Spenser. Each was the ornament of
his country and his age, and each was cruelly neglected by the men of
power, who, in truth, were incapable to judge of their merit, or to
relish their writings. We have seen several of the strictures of Camoens
on the barbarous nobility of Portugal. The similar complaints of Spenser
will show, that neglect of genius, however, was not confined to the
court of Lisbon:--

"O grief of griefs! O gall of all good hearts!
To see that virtue should despised be
Of such as first were raised for virtue's parts,
And now, broad spreading like an aged tree,
Let none shoot up that nigh them planted be.
O let not those of whom the muse is scorn'd,