To rapine train'd, arise a brutal hoft, The Christian terror, and the Turkish boast. Yet fleep, ye powers of Europe, careless sleep, Το you in vain your eastern brethren weep; Yet not in vain their woe-wrung tears shall fue; And could new worlds by human step be trod, Thofe worlds should tremble at the Lufian m nod. The facred forines the Lufian heroes rear'd See the note on page 49. vol. ii. 1 —of deepest west Brazils by the Portuguese. And Alludes to the discovery and conqueft of the mat the Lufian nod.-If our former defences of the exuberant declamations of Camoëns are allowed by the critic, we doubt not but the digreffion, now concluded, will appear with peculiar propriety. The poet having brought his heroes to the shore of India, indulges himself with a review of the And now their enfigns blazing o'er the tide On India's fhore the Lufian heroes ride. High the ftate of the western and eastern worlds; the latter of which is now, by the labour of his heroes, rendered acceffible to the former. The purpose of his poem is also strictly kept in view. The Weft and the Eaft he confiders as two great empires, the one of the true religion, the other of a falfe. The profeffors of the true, difunited and destroying each other; the profeffors of the falfe religion all combined to extirpate the adherents of the other. He upbraids the profeffors of the true religion for their vices, particularly for their difunion and for deferting the interefts of holy faith. His countrymen, however, he boafts, have been its defenders and planters, and, without the affiftance of their brother-powers, will plant it in Afia. This, as it is the purpose of his hero, is directly to the fubject of the poem, and the honour, which Heaven, he fays, vouchfafed to his countrymen, in choofing them to defend and propagate its laws, is mentioned in the genuine spirit of that religious enthusiafm which breathes through the two great epic poems of Greece and Rome, and which gives an air of the most folemn importance to the Gierufalemme of Taffo. Yet whatever liberties a poet may be allowed to take when he treats of the fabulous ages, any abfurdity of opinion, where authentic history, and the state of modern nations afford the topic, muft to the intelligent reader appear ridiculous, and therefore a blemish in a folemn poem. There are many, the translator is aware, to whom a serious and warm exhortation to a general crufade will appear as an absurdity, and a blemish of this kind. "The crufaders," according to what M. Voltaire calls their true character, "des brigands liguès pour venir, &c. were a band of vagabond thieves, who "had agreed to ramble from the heart of Europe in order to defolate a coun66 try they had no right to, and massacre, in cold blood, a venerable prince "more than fourfcore years old, and his whole people, against whom they "had no pretence of complaint." Yet however confidently Voltaire and others may please to talk, it will be no difficult matter to prove that the crufades were neither so unjustifiable, so impolitical, nor fo unhappy in their confequences as the fuperficial readers of history are habituated to esteem them. Were the Aborigines of all America to form one general confederacy against the defcendants of thofe Europeans, who maffacred upwards of forty millions of Mexicans, and other American natives, and were these confederates totally to difpoffefs the present poffeffors of an empire so unjustly acquired, no man, it is prefumed, would pronounce that their combination and High to the fleecy clouds refplendant far Imperial and hoftilities were against the law of nature or nations. Yet, whatever Voltaire may please to affert, this fuppofition is by no means unapplicable to the confederacy of the crofs. A party of wandering Arabs are joined by the Turks or Turcomans, who inhabited the frozen wilds of mount Caucafus, and whose name fignifies wanderers; thefe, incorporated with other banditti, from the deserts of Scythia, now called Tartary, over-run the regions of Syria, to which they had no title, whofe inhabitants had given them no offence. They profess that they are commiffioned by heaven to establish the religion of Mohammed by violence and the fword. In a few ages they fubdue the finest countries around the Euphrates, and the Christian inhabitants, the rightful poffeffors, are treated with the moft brutal policy and all its attendant cruelties. Bound by their creed to make war on the Christians, their ambition neglects no opportunity to extend their conquefts; and already poffeffed of immense territory, their acknowledged purpose and their power threaten destruction to the Chriftian empire of the Greeks. Having conquered and pofelyted Africa, from the Nile to the Straits of Gibraltar, the princes of that country, their tributaries and allies, combining in the great defign to extirpate Christianity, turn their arms against Europe, and are fuccefsful: they establish kingdoms in Spain and Portugal; and France, Italy, and the western islands of the Mediterranean, suffer by their excurfions; while Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, and Italy itself, from its vicinage to Dalmatia, are immediately concerned in the impending fate of the Grecian empire. While fuch dangers threatened, it is impoffible the princes of Europe could have been unconcerned. Nor were prefent injuries wanting to ftimulate them to arms. Cofmas, a writer of the fixth century, mentions the confiderable trade which the Franks carried on with Syria through the Levant. He himself travelled to India, and he informs us that in his time Juftinian fent two monks to China. In the ninth century, says M. de Guignes, an affociation of French merchants went twice a year to Alexandria, from whence they brought to Europe the commodities of India and Arabia. Kalif Haroun made a formal ceffion of the Holy Sepulchre to Charlemagne, and allowed the Franks to build houses of hospitality for the reception of pilgrims, in various places of Syria. Nor was devotion the only motive of pilgrimage The emoluments of commerce were also attended to, and the houses of hofpitality poffeffed by the Franks, Italians, and Venetians in the Eaft, were of the nature of factories. But these were feized, and plundered by the Saracens, and the eastern commerce which flowed to Europe through the Levant, was almost totally interrupted. To thefe con Imperial Calicut, the lordly feat Of the first monarch of the Indian ftate. Right confiderations let it alfo be added, that several eastern Chriftians filed to Europe, and begging as pilgrims from country to country, implored the affistance of the Chriftian powers to difpoffefs the cruel and unjust ufurpers of their lands. At this period the crufades commence. To fuppofe that the princes of Europe were fo infenfible to the danger which threatened them, as some modern writers who have touched upon that fubject appear to be, is to afcribe a degree of ftupidity to them, by no means applicable to their military character. Though fuperftition inflamed the multitude, we may be affured however, that several princes found it their political intereft to fan the flames of that fuperftition; and accordingly we find that the princes of Spain and Portugal greatly availed themselves of it. The immenfe refources which the Turks received from Egypt, and the neighbouring countries, which had not been attempted by Godfrey and the firft crufaders, determined their fucceffors to alter the plan of their operations. They began their hoftilities in Spain and Portugal, and proceeded through Barbary to Egypt. By this new route of the croffes, the Spaniards and Portuguese were * enabled not only to drive the Moors from Europe, but to give a fatal blow to their power in Africa. Nor was the fafety of the Greek empire lefs neceffary to Italy and the eastern kingdoms of Europe. Injuries, however, offered by the crufaders, who even seized the throne of Conftantinople, upon which they placed an earl of Flanders, excited the refentment of the Greeks; and their averfion to the papal fupremacy rendered them fo jealous of the crufaders, that the fucceffors of Godfrey, for want of auxiliary fupport, after about ninety years poffeffion, were totally driven from their new-erected kingdom in the Holy Land. By the fall of the Greek empire, an event which followed, and which had been long forefeen, the Venetians, the Austrians, the Poles, and the Ruffians, became the natural enemies of the Turks; and many desperate wars, attended with various fuccefs, have been continued to the present time. Not much above fifty years ago, their formidable efforts to poffefs themselves of the Venetian dominions alarmed all the Christian powers; and had it not been for the repeated defeats they received from prince Eugene, a great part of the Austrian territories must have yielded to their *Lisbon itself was taken from the Moors, by the affiftance of an English fleet of crufaders. A patriarch of Conftantinople declared publickly to the pope's legate, "That he would much rather behold the turban than the triple crown upon "the great altar of Conftantinople." Right to the port the valiant GAMA bends, Joyful their yoke. However overlooked, it requires but little political philosophy to perceive the fecurity which would refult to Europe were there a powerful and warlike kingdom on the eastern fide of the Turkish empire. The western conquefts of that fierce warrior Bajazet I. were interrupted by Tamerlane, and by the enemy they found in Kouli Khan, the enraged Porte was prevented from revenging the triumphs of Eugene. A few years ago we beheld them trample on the law of nations, fend an ambassador to prison, and command the Ruffian emprefs to defert her allies. And however the forefight of the narrow politician may dread the rifing power of the Rufs, it is to be wifhed that the arms of Mufcovy may fix fuch barriers to the Turkish empire as will for ever prevent their long meditated, and often attempted defign, to possess themselves of the Venetian dominions, or to extend their conquests on the West, conquests which would render them the most dangerous power to the peace of Europe. In a word, the crusades, a combination which tended to support the Greek empire for the fecurity of the eastern part of Europe, and to drive the enemy from the southern, whatever the fuperftition of its promoters and conductors might have been, can by no means deserve to be called a moft fingular monument of human folly. And however the inutility and absurdity of their profeffed aim, to rescue the tomb of Chrift, may excite the ridicule of the modern philofopher, it was a motive admirably adapted to the superstition of the monkish ages; and where it is neceffary that an enemy should be restrained, an able politician will avail himself of the most powerful of all incitements to hostility, the superstitious or religious fervour of his army. And by thus refting the war on a religious motive, the English, who were most remote from Mohammedan depredation, were induced to join the confederacy, to which, at various times, they gave the most important assistance. It is with peculiar propriety therefore that Camoëns upbraids his age for negligently permitting the aggrandifement of the Mohammedan power. Nor is the boast that his countrymen will themselves effect this great purpose, unfounded in truth. As already obferved in the Introduction, the voyage of Gama faved the liberties of mankind. The fuperiority of the Afiatic feas in the hands of Europeans, the confequence of that voyage, is the most effectual and most important completion of the crufades. It will be found, therefore, that Camoëns talks of the political reasons of a crufade, with an accuracy in the philosophy of history, as fuperior to that |