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follows this book. [562] _Near where the bowers of Paradise were plac'd._--Between the mouth of the Ganges and Euphrates. [563] Swans. [564] _His falling kingdom claim'd his earnest care._--This fiction, in poetical conduct, bears a striking resemblance to the digressive histories with which Homer enriches and adorns his poems, particularly to the beautiful description of the feast of the gods with "the blameless Ethiopians." It also contains a masterly commentary on the machinery of the Lusiad. The Divine Love conducts GAMA to India. The same Divine Love is represented as preparing to reform the corrupted world, when its attention is particularly called to bestow a foretaste of immortality on the heroes of the expedition which discovered the eastern world. Nor do the wild fantastic loves, mentioned in this little episode, afford any objection against this explanation, an explanation which is expressly given in the episode itself. These wild fantastic amours signify, in the allegory, the wild sects of different enthusiasts, which spring up under the wings of the best and most rational institutions; and which, however contrary to each other, all agree in deriving their authority from the same source. [565] _A young Actaeon._--The French translator has the following characteristic note: "This passage is an eternal monument of the freedoms taken by Camoens, and at the same time a proof of the imprudence of poets; an authentic proof of that prejudice which sometimes blinds them, notwithstanding all the light of their genius. The modern Actaeon of whom he speaks, was King Sebastian. He loved the chase; but, that pleasure, which is one of the most innocent and one of the most noble we can possibly taste, did not at all interrupt his attention to the affairs of state, and did not render him savage, as our author pretends. On this point the historians are rather to be believed. And what would the lot of princes be, were they allowed no relaxation from their toils, while they allow that privilege to their people? Subjects as we are, let us venerate the amusements of our sovereigns; let us believe that the august cares for our good, which employ them, follow them often even to the very bosom of their pleasures." Many are the strokes in the Lusiad which must endear the character of Camoens to every reader of sensibility. The noble freedom and manly indignation with which he mentions the foible of his prince, and the f
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