And one on treacherous pinions foaring high,

O'er ocean's waves dar'd fail the liquid fky:

Dafh'd from their height they mourn their blighted aim;
One gives a river, one a fea the name!

Alas! the poor reward of that gay meteor Fame!
Yet fuch the fury of the mortal race,

Though fame's fair promise ends in foul disgrace,
Though conqueft ftill the victor's hope betrays,
The prize a fhadow, or a rainbow blaze,
Yet ftill through fire and raging feas they run
To catch the gilded fhade, and fink undone!

The departure of the fleet from the Tagus.In no circumftance does the judgment and art of Homer appear more confpicuous, than in the constant attention he pays to his proposed subjects, the wrath of Achilles, and the fufferings of Ulyffes. He bestows the utmost care on every incident that could poffibly imprefs our minds with high ideas of the determined rage of the injured hero, and of the invincible patience of the hurdas dios 'oducatus. Virgil throughout the Eneid has followed the fame course. Every incident that could poffibly tend to magnify the dangers and difficulties of the wanderings of Æneas, in his long fearch for the promised Italy, is fet before us in the fulleft magnitude. Eut, however this method of Ennobling the epic, by the utmost attention to give a grandeur to every circumftance of the propofed fubject, may have been neglected by Voltaire in his Henriade, and by fome other moderns, who have attempted the Epopoeia; it has not been omitted by Camoëns. The Portuguese poet has, with great art, conducted the voyage of Gama. Every circumstance attending it is reprefented with magnificence and dignity. John II. defigns what had never been attempted before. Meffengers are fent by land to discover the climate and riches of India. Their rout is defcribed in the manner of Homer. The palm of difcovery, however, is referved for a fucceeding monarch. Emmanuel is warned by a dream, which affords another striking inftance of the fpirit of the Grecian poet. The enthusiasm which the king beholds on the afpect of Gama is a noble stroke of poetry; the folemnity of the night spent in devotion; the fullen refolution of the adventurers when going aboard the Acet; the affecting grief of their friends and fellow-citizens,

whe

who viewed them as felf-devoted victims, whom they were never more to behold; and the angry exclamations of the venerable old man, give a dignity and interesting pathos to the departure of the fleet of Gama, unborrowed from any of the claffics. In the Æneid, where the Trojans leave a colony of invalids in Sicily, nothing of the awfully tender is attempted. And in the Odyssey there is no circumstance which can be called fimilar.

END OF THE FOURTH BOOK.

THE

LUSIA D.

BOOK V.

WHILE on the beach the hoary father stood

And fpoke the murmurs of the multitude,
We fpread the canvas to the rifing gales;
The gentle winds diftend the fnowy fails.
As from our dear-lov'd native shore we fly
Our votive fhouts, redoubled, rend the sky;
"Succefs, fuccefs," far echoes o'er the tide,
While our broad hulks the foamy waves divide.
From Leo now, the lordly ftar of day,
Intenfely blazing, fhot his fierceft ray;

When flowly gliding from our wishful eyes,

The Lufian mountains mingled with the skies;

Tago's

Tago's loved stream, and Cyntra's mountains cold
Dim fading now, we now no more behold;
And still with yearning hearts our eyes explore,
Till one dim fpeck of land appears no more.
Our native foil now far behind, we ply

The lonely dreary waste of seas and boundless sky.
Through the wild deep our venturous navy bore,
Where but our Henry plough'd the wave a before:
The verdant islands, firft by him descry'd,
We paft; and now in prospect opening wide,
Far to the left, increafing on the view,
Rofe Mauritania's hills of paly blue:
Far to the right the reftlefs ocean roared,
Whofe bounding furges never keel explored;
If bounding fhore, as reafon deems, divide
The vaft Atlantic from the Indian tide.

Named from her woods, with fragrant bowers adorn'd,

с

From fair Madeira's purple coast we turn'd:

Cyprus and Paphos' vales the smiling loves

Might leave with joy for fair Madeira's groves;

A fhore

a Where but cur Henry- -Don Henry, prince of Portugal, of whom, fee

the Preface.

If bounding fhore.- -The discovery of fome of the West-Indian islands by Columbus was made in 1492 and 1493. His difcovery of the continent of America was not till 1498. The fleet of Gama failed from the Tagus in 1497.

• Madeira's purple coaft-Called by the ancients Infulæ Purpuraria. Now Madeira and Porto Santo. The former was fo named by Juan Gonzales, and Tristan Vaz, from the Spanish word Madera, wood.

A fhore fo flowery, and fo fweet an air,

Venus might build her dearest temple there.
Onward we pafs Maffilia's barren strand,
A waste of wither'd grafs and burning fand;
Where his thin herds the meagre native leads,
Where not a rivulet laves the doleful meads;
Nor herds nor fruitage deck the woodland maze :
O'er the wild waste the stupid oftrich strays,
In devious fearch to pick her scanty meal,
Whose fierce digeftion gnaws the temper'd steel.
From the green verge, where Tigitania ends,
To Ethiopia's line the dreary wild extends.
Now past the limit, which his course divides,
When to the north the fun's bright chariot rides,
We leave the winding bays and swarthy shores,
Where Senegal's black wave impetuous roars;
A flood, whofe course a thousand tribes surveys,
The tribes who blacken'd in the fiery blaze,
When Phaeton, devious from the solar height,
Gave Afric's fons the sable hue of night.

And now from far the Lybian cape is seen,

Now by my mandate named the Cape of Green.
Where midst the billows of the ocean fmiles

e

A flowery fifter-train, the happy ifles,
Our onward prows the murmuring surges lave;
And now our veffels plough the gentle wave,

d

e

·Cape of Green-Called by Ptolemy, Caput Afinarium.

Where

the happy ifles Called by the ancients, Infulæ Fortunatæ, now

the Canaries.