e pillar thus of deathless fame, begun
By other chiefs_, etc.--

"Till I now ending what those did begin,
The furthest pillar in thy realm advance;
Breaking the element of molten tin,
Through horrid storms I lead to thee the dance."

FANSHAW.

[548]

_The regent's palace high o'erlook'd the bay,
Where Gama's black-ribb'd fleet at anchor lay._--

The resemblance of this couplet to many passages in Homer, must be
obvious to the intelligent critic.

[549] _As in the sun's bright beam._--Imitated from Virgil, who, by the
same simile, describes the fluctuation of the thoughts of AEneas, on the
eve of the Latian war:--

"Laomedontius heros
Cuncta videns, magno curarum fluctuat aestu,
Atque animum nunc huc celerem, nunc dividit illuc,
In partesque rapit varias, perque omnia versat.
Sicut aquae tremulum labris ubi lumen ahenis
Sole repercussum, aut radiantis imagine Lunae,
Omnia pervolitat late loca: jamque sub auras
Erigitur, summique ferit laquearia tecti."

"This way and that he turns his anxious mind,
Thinks, and rejects the counsels he design'd;
Explores himself in vain, in ev'ry part,
And gives no rest to his distracted heart:
So when the sun by day or moon by night
Strike on the polish'd brass their trembling light,
The glitt'ring species here and there divide,
And cast their dubious beams from side to side;
Now on the walls, now on the pavement play,
And to the ceiling flash the glaring day."

Ariosto has also adopted this simile in the eighth book of his Orlando
Furioso:--

"Qual d'acqua chiara il tremolante lume
Dal Sol per percossa, o da' notturni rai,
Per gli ampli tetti va con lungo salto
A destra, ed a sinistra, e basso, ed alto."

"So from a water clear, the trembling light
Of Phoebus, or the silver ray of night,
Along the spacious rooms with splendour plays,
Now high, now low, and shifts a thousand ways."

HOOLE.

But the happiest circumstance belongs to Camoens. The velocity and
various shiftings of the sun-beam, reflected from a piece of crystal or
polished steel in the hand of a boy, give a much stronger idea of the
violent agitation and sudden shiftings of thought than the image of the
trembling light of the sun or moon reflected from a vessel of water. The
brazen vessel, however, and not the water, is only mentioned by Dryden.
Nor