Page:Os Lusíadas (Camões, tr. Burton, 1880), Volume 1.djvu/16

This page has been validated.
xii
The Lusiads.

of the chivalrous age; a patriot of the purest water, so jealous of his Country's good fame that nothing would satisfy him but to see the world bow before her perfections; a genius, the first and foremost of his day, who died in the direst poverty and distress: such in merest outline was the Man, and such was the Life which won the fondest and liveliest sympathies of the translator.

Poetas por poetas sejam lidos;
Sejam só por poetas explicadas
Suas obras divinas;
(Still by the Poets be the Poets read
Only be render'd by the Poet's tongue
Their works divine);

writes Manuel Correa. Mickle expresses the sentiment with more brevity and equal point. None but a poet can translate a poet; and Coleridge assigns to a poet the property of explaining a poet. Let me add that none but a traveller can do justice to a traveller. And it so happens that most of my wanderings have unconsciously formed a running and realistic commentary upon "The Lusiads." I have not only visited almost every place named in the Epos of Commerce, in many I have spent months and even years. The Arch-poet of Portugal paints from the life, he has also the insight which we call introvision; he sees with