Whate'er this prodigy, it threatens more

Than midnight tempefts and the mingled roar,
When fea and fky combine to rock the marble fhore.

I fpoke, when rifing through the darken'd air, Appall'd we faw an hideous phantom glare; High and enormous o'er the flood he tower'd, And thwart our way with fullen afpect lour'd: An earthly paleness o'er his cheeks was spread, Erect uprofe his hairs of wither'd red;

Writhing to speak, his fable lips disclose,

Sharp and disjoin'd, his gnashing teeth's blue rows;
His haggard beard flow'd quivering on the wind,
Revenge and horror in his mien combined;
His clouded front, by withering lightnings scared,
The inward anguish of his foul declared.
His red eyes glowing from their dusky caves
Shot livid fires: Far echoing o'er the waves
His voice refounded, as the cavern'd fhore
With hollow groan repeats the tempeft's roar.
Cold gliding horrors thrill'd each hero's breaft,
Our bristling hair and tottering knees confeft
Wild dread; the while with visage ghaftly wan,
His black lips trembling, thus the fiend' began:

O you,

The apparition.The partiality of tranflators and editors is become almost proverbial. The admiration of their author is fuppofed when they undertake to introduce him to the public; that admiration, therefore, may without a blush be confeffed; but if the reputation of judgment is valued, all the jealoufy

you,

the boldest of the nations, fired

By daring pride, by luft of fame inspired,

Who

jealoufy of circumfpection is neceffary, for the tranfition from admiration to partiality and hypercriticism, is not only cafy, but to oneself often imperceptible. Yet however guarded against this partiality of hypercriticism the translator of Camoëns may deem himself, he is aware that some of his colder readers may perhaps, in the following instance, accuse him of it. Regard lefs however of the fang froid of those who judge by authority and not by their own feelings, he will venture to appeal to the few whofe tafte, though formed by the claffics, is untainted with claffical prejudices. To these he will appeal, and to these he will venture the affertion, that the fiction of the apparition of the Cape of Tempests, in fublimity and awful grandeur of imagination, stands unfurpaffed in human compofition.-Voltaire, and the foreign critics, have confeffed its merit. - -In the prodigy of the Harpies in

the Eneid, neither the

Virginei volucrum vultus, fœdiffima ventris

Proluvies, uncaque manus, et pallida femper
Ora fame:

Though Virgil, to heighten the defcription, introduces it with
-- nec favior ulla

Peftis et ira Deum Stygiis fefe extulit undis :

Nor the predictions of the harpy Celano, can, in point of dignity, bear any comparison with the fiction of Camoëns. The noble and admired defcription of Fame, in the fourth Æneid, may feem indeed to challenge competition:

Fama, malum quo non aliud velocius ullum:
Mobilitate viget, viresque acquirit eundo :
Parva metu primò; mox fefe attollit in auras,
Ingrediturque folo, & caput inter nubila condit :

Illam Terra parens, ira irritata Deorum,

Extremam (ut perhibent) Coo Enceladoque fororem

Progenuit; pedibus celerem et pernicibus alis :

Monftrum borrendum, ingens; cui quot funt corpore pluma,

Tot vigiles oculi fubter (mirabile diu)

Tot linguæ, totidem ora fonant, tot fubriget aures.
Nofte volat caeli medio terræque, per umbram
Stridens, nec dulci declinat lumina fomno :
Luce fedet cuftos, aut fumni culmine teƐti,
Turribus aut altis, et magnas territat urbes

Fame,

Who fcornful of the bowers of sweet repose,

Through these my waves advance

your fearless

prows, Regardless

Fame, the great ill, from fmall beginnings grows;
Swift from the first, and every moment brings
New vigour to her flights, new pinions to her wings.

Soon grows the pigmy to gigantic size,

Her feet on earth, her forehead in the skies:
Enraged against the gods, revengeful earth
Produced her laft of the Titanian birth.

Swift in her walk, more swift her winged hafte,
A monftrous phantom, horrible and vast;
As many plumes as raife her lofty flight,
So many piercing eyes enlarge her fight:
Millions of opening mouths to Fame belong,
And every mouth is furnish'd with a tongue,

And round with liftning ears the flying plague is hung;
She fills the peaceful universe with cries,

No flumbers ever close her wakeful eyes :

By day from lofty towers her head the fhews.-DRYv.

The Mobilitate viget, the Vires acquirit eundo, the Parva metu primo, &c. the Caput inter nubila condit, the plumæ, oculi linguæ, ora, and aures, the Nocte volat, the Luce fedet cuftos, and the Magnas territat urbes, are all very great, and finely imagined. But the whole picture is the offspring of careful attention and judgment; it is a noble display of the calm majesty of Virgil, yet it has not the enthusiasm of that heat of spontaneous conception, which the ancients honoured with the name of inspiration. The fiction of Camoëns, on the contrary, is the genuine effufion of the glow of poetical imagination. The description of the spectre, the awfulness of the prediction, and the horror that breathes through the whole, till the phantom is interrupted by Gama, are in the true spirit of the wild and grand terrific of an Homer, or a Shakespeare. But however Camoëns may, in this paffage, have excelled Virgil, he himself is infinitely surpassed by two paffages of Holy Writ,

was

"A thing

s fecretly brought to me," says the author of the book of Job, " and mine ear received a little thereof. In thoughts from the vifions of the night, when deep fleep falleth on men, fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake: then a ffirit passed before my face; the bair of my flesh stood up: it flood fill, but I could not discern the form thereof: an image was before mine eyes, there was filence, and I heard a voice: Shall mortal man be more just than God! shall a man be more pure than his Maker! Bebold, he put no truft in his fervants, and his

angels

Regardless of the lengthening watery way,

And all the storms that own my fovereign sway,
Who mid furrounding rocks and shelves explore
Where never hero braved my ráge before;
Ye fons of Lufus, who with eyes profane
Have view'd the fecrets of my awful reign,
Have pafs'd the bounds which jealous Nature drew
To veil her fecret fhrine from mortal view;
Hear from my lips what direful woes attend,
And bursting foon shall o'er your race defcend:

With every bounding keel that dares my rage,
Eternal war my rocks and ftorms fhall

wage,

The next proud fleet that through my drear" domain,
With daring search shall hoise the streaming vane,

That

angels be charged with folly: how much less in them that dwell in boufes of clay, whofe foundation is in the duft, and who are crushed before the moth!

This whole paffage, particularly the indistinguishable form and the filence, are as fuperior to Camoëns in the inimitably wild terrific, as the following, from the Apocalypfe, is in grandeur of description. "And I faw another mighty angel come down from heaven, cloathed with a cloud, and a rainbow was upon his bead, his face was as it were the fun, and his feet as pillars of fire. and be fet his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot upon the earth, and cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roureth. . . . . and be lifted up his hand to heaven, and fware by Him that liveth for ever and ever,.... that Time should be no more.

....

" The next proud fleet.-On the return of Gama to Portugal, a fleet of thirteen fail, under the command of Pedro Alvarez de Cabral, was fent out on the second voyage to India, where the admiral with only fix ships arrived. The reft were mostly destroyed by a terrible tempeft at the Cape of Good Hope, which lafted twenty days. The day-time, fays Faria, was fo dark, that the failors could fcarcely fee each other, or hear what was faid, for the horrid noise of the winds. Among those who perished was the celebrated Bartholomew Diaz, who was the first modern discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope, which he named the Cape of Tempests.

That gallant navy by my whirlwinds toft,
And raging feas fhall perish on my coaft:
Then He who first my fecret reign defcried,
A naked corfe wide floating o'er the tide
Shall drive-Unless my heart's full raptures fail,
O Lufus! oft fhalt thou thy children wail;
Each year thy fhipwreck'd fons fhalt thou deplore,
Each year thy sheeted mafts fhall ftrew my fhore.

With trophies plumed behold an hero come,
Ye dreary wilds, prepare his yawning tomb.
Though smiling fortune bleft his youthful morn,
Though glory's rays his laurel'd brows adorn,
Full oft though he beheld with sparkling eye
The Turkish moons in wild confufion fly,
While he, proud victor, thunder'd in the rear,
All, all his mighty fame shall vanish here.
Quiloa's fons, and thine, Mombaze, shall see
Their conqueror bend his laurel'd head to me;

While

× Bebold an bero come-Don Francisco de Almeyda. He was the first Portuguese viceroy of India, in which country he obtained several great victories over the Mohammedans and Pagans. He conquered Quiloa and Mombassa or Mombaze. On his return to Portugal he put into the bay of Saldanna, near the Cape of Good Hope, to take in water and provifions. The rudenefs of one of his fervants produced a quarrel with the Caffres or Hottentots. His attendants, much against his will, forced him to march against the Blacks."Ah, whither (he exclaimed) will you carry the infirm man of "fixty years?" After plundering a miferable village, on the return to their ships they were attacked by a superior number of Caffres, who fought with such fury in rescue of their children, whom the Portuguese had feized, that the viceroy and fifty of his attendants were flain.